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Atari POKEY

1979

Atari's 1979 sound and I/O chip, generating four audio channels plus keyboard scanning and paddle input on the Atari 8-bit and arcade games.

Machines

Atari 400

Atari 5200

Atari 800

Atari 800XL

Emulators

EmulatorTypeLicenseSite
AltirradownloadableGPL-2.0Website ↗
Atari 5200onlineMITWebsite ↗
Atari++downloadableGPL-2.0Website ↗
Atari800downloadableGPL-2.0Website ↗
Atari800MacXdownloadableGPL-2.0Website ↗
FujisandownloadableGPL-2.0Website ↗
JS7800onlineGPL-2.0Website ↗
RainbowdownloadableFreewareWebsite ↗
Sfotty Pie A8onlineMITWebsite ↗
XformerdownloadableFreewareWebsite ↗
jsA8EonlineFreewareWebsite ↗

Reference & documentation

External technical references for programming Atari POKEY and for writing emulators.

ResourceTypeNotes
POKEY C012294 Documentation (8BitDev) ↗DatasheetTranscribed datasheet: poly counters, filters, AUDCTL
POKEY Registers: IRQEN/IRQST ↗Interrupt listIRQEN/IRQST interrupt enable and status bits
POKEY Registers reference ↗Memory mapEvery $D2xx register, read/write, bit meanings
Engineering:POKEY (HandWiki) ↗PinoutFull 40-pin table plus register bit layouts
De Re Atari, Chapter 7: Sound ↗ProgrammingCanonical POKEY sound programming guide with code
MAME POKEY notes (pokey.txt) ↗ReferenceClock timing, polynomial generators, divide-by-N
POKEY (Wikipedia) ↗ReferenceOverview, chip variants, quad-POKEY arcade part numbers
MAME POKEY device emulator (pokey.cpp) ↗SourceReference-grade C++ POKEY emulation core
atari800 POKEY sound emulation (pokeysnd.txt) ↗SourceRon Fries C emulator internals and functions
Pokey Explorer (conformance) ↗Test suiteSweep frequencies to validate emulator against hardware
Pokey Explorer ↗ToolInteractive register sweeper for real POKEY output