CPU 

  ·	16-Bit Motorola 6800 ran at 8MHz ~

  ·	64Kb of RAM

  ·	Can access 16MB

  ·	Process up to 32MB

  The Motorola chip was used in the first Mac
  and the Amiga. The chip had 64kb of cache 
  ram, which was very impressive at the time.
  It also had 1MB of ROM. The chip was 
  designed to access 16MB of data and 
  process up to 32MB of data at a time. 
  I think Sega purposely put the chip in 
  because they where planning for future 
  add-ons to the machine which needed a 
  good CPU. Also the game carts which the
  actual game is stored on has a ROM chip
  inside. This was generally about 1 to 
  4 MB in size. So the Motorola was well 
  able to handle 4MB of data.

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   Ram 

   ·	64Kb dedicated to Motorola chip

   ·	64KB dedicated to the Z-80

   ·	64Kb dedicated to the VGP 

	Total = 192Kb

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  This is the actual game. the game data 
  is stored on a ROM chip (read only 
  memory chip)

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Video

  The graphics was manly handled by the VDP (video display processor)


 
  ·	64KB of video ram

  ·	64 X 9 bits of CRAM (colour ram)

  ·	Max resolution = 320 X 224 pixels 
                (higher resolution than the SNES)

  ·	RF output (to RF socket at back of TV)

  ·	Av output (to video phono or scart 
                connection to TV or VCR ……)



  After a while Nintendo caught up with the MD and made 
  a game called Donkey Kong Country. Which had a lot
  of colours meaning it had more pixels per square
  Cm displayed on the screen.

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  	The sound chips


  a)	PSG (programmable sound generator)


  b)	FM chips (Yamaha  YM 2612) 6 - channel stereo


  Both of these had 8KB of dedicated Ram between them.

  Most people think of sound as a recording, well it is 
  and not at the same time if you know what I mean. 
  The Z-80 chips reads the Rom cart and sends the
  music as data to the sound chips. The sound chips
  then actually recreate the music from scratch! 
  using the data from the Rom cart. Think of the 
  sound chips as a keyboard and the musician 
  as the Z-80 and the music sheet as the Rom 
  cart (The game). The information about every 
  aspect of the sound and music is sent to the 
  Z-80 then to the sound chips where it is played.

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  Z80-co Processor to the Motorola 

  CPU speed 2MHz~ (much faster then the SNES 2x faster!)


  8-Bit FM synthesis played at 22KHz~

  (in other words very high quality stereo, midi 
  like music [called BMP and SFX] samples 
  and radio quality speech)



  This did several things:


  1.   Controls the sound chips

  2.   Controls access from the ROM cart 
         (The actual chip with the game stored on it)

  3.   It was also a actual emulator chip!
        (it emulated the master system games!
        This was one of the first consoles, 
        which enabled you to play previous 
        console games!)

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