Vault Entry
[📷 suggested: portrait of Bob Yannes or an annotated SID chip]
Overview
As an engineer at MOS Technology, Bob Yannes designed the SID (Sound Interface Device) chip for the Commodore 64. His goal: to bring synthesizer flexibility into a home computer, complete with filters and modulation options rarely seen in consumer hardware.
Fast facts
- Background: amateur musician and electronics tinkerer before joining MOS.
- Other work: co-founded Ensoniq, producing digital synthesizers and samplers like the Mirage.
- Design ethos: disliked simplistic square-wave chips, so he built SID to sound musical, not merely functional.
Lesson connections
- BASIC Block 4’s sound exercises introduce SID registers with Yannes’ design decisions in mind.
- Transition course lessons use his work to explain how hardware constraints shape software techniques.
- Assembly Act II dives into waveform control and filters inspired by Yannes’ synthesizer roots.