X68000

The GB-Z80 was made by Sharp and is used inside the Nintendo Gameboy. Beside being capable of Sound Generation its actually the Main CPU of the system. The actual name depends on the system its build-in:

• Gameboy: DMG-CPU
• Gameboy Color: GBC-CPU
• Super Gameboy: SGB-CPU

As for Sound capabilities these CPUs are the same, only that the SGB-CPU runs approx. 2.4% faster (which results in a 2.4% higher frequency of the sounds produced). Noise generation varies depending on the system.

Technical Specifications

• Channels: 4
• Channel 1: Square Wave Synthesis, incl. Volume Envelope, variable pulse width (12.5%, 25%, 50% and 75%) and frequency sweep
• Channel 2: same as above but without the frequency sweep
• Channel 3: Plays back user-defined waveforms incl. up to 32 4-bit Samples
• Channel 4: Noise Synthesis. Generates White and Brown Noise
• DAC: Every Channel has its own circuitry including its own D/A Converter. After the conversion the analog signals are split into two parts (for left and right) and get mixed together.
• Stereo: Yes

Used in

• Nintendo Gameboy (Pocket/Light)
• Nintendo Gameboy Color
• Nintendo Super Gameboy

Super Mario Land

Special Applications

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Emulation

• Gameboy Music can be ripped and stored inside .gbs Files. GBS Files are basically stripped down roms that only contain the music code. There are several Players for this, as a Winamp Plugin you can use Meridian, Linux users get gbsplay. They also work fine in Hoot.

Gameboy Music running in Hoot

Music Creation

• There are lots of tools made for creating Gameboy Music. Popular examples are Little Sound DJ, Nanoloop and many others..