In the 80´s the Mockingboard was in it´s way a kind of standard amoung the soundcards that have been availiable to  the Apple community.
 Nearly every game with soundcapabilities offered in the setup the option to activate soundoutput by one of that cards. There have been several
 versions of the Mockingboard in the market even one version ( D)  that supported it´s use with the "slotless" IIc and the electronics in an external
 housing box. The Mockingboard A offered also the ability to be expanded with speechchips ( the SSI-263A - later replaced by the SC-01 ) .
 In the basic version sold, the sound´chips were missing and could just be inserted later in the empty reserved sockets. In fact only very few software 
 packages really supported the speechchip options.  Nowadays there is also a cloneversion of the Mockingboard A availiable at ebay and as a remarkable
 "special version" there is also a version sometimes offered with a tiny tube-amp preamlifier for enthusiasts of the "old fashioned tube amp sound".

 Here the pinouts of the speechchip:

	the pinout of the SSI-263A		the pinout of SC01

 here a picture of the Mockingboard A with the soundchips inserted:

 In the end of the last year a pal of mine here in Germany started a discussion with me about another kind of version to the mockingboard with the
 YM-2203 chip from Yamaha that also was used later in commercial organ/synthiszer like keyboards for kids and amateur musicians. By the datasheet
 Yamaha claims it to be a pincompatible replacement of the AY-3-8910 soundchip that is used some versions at the Mockingboard with several advantages 
 compared with the former chip: It has more internal Registers and instead of 3 Sound outputs it has internal 9 soundgenerators with far more
 soundprogramming options. The external circuitry is nearly exact the same as at the Mockingboard with the AY-3-8913. And Yamaha offers also 2 other very 
 interesting alternate chips invery smaller packages of which Yamaha claims that they are at least in their internal programming and handling "compatible"
 with the AY-3-8910 / AY-3-8913.
 

	the pinout of the AY-3-8910	the pinout of the AY-3-8912	the pinout of the AY-3-8913

Datasheet of the 3 chips AY-3-89XX

 Experienced technicians of course could argue that also the 40 pin chip AY-3-8910 has some smaller "versions" : The AY-3-8912 in 28 pin chip and the
 AY-3-8913 in the 24 pin Chip. The difference is resulting from the fact that this chips have less "Output/Input ports". The AY-3-89810 has 3 of them a port
 A,B and C with each 8 Bits. This offers additional communications with the chip itself and from the chip to other chips. The smaller versions only have 2
 Output/Input ports ( A and B at the 8912 ) or only one port A at the 8913 and thereby reducing the need of pins at the 8912 by 8 pins less and by 16 pins less
 at the 8913.
 
 But with the YAMAHA chips and the advantaged ínternal stucture permits a design of much better sound.
 

	YM-2203	YMZ284	YM3014
	Datasheet   Commandsets	Datasheet	Datasheet

 As explained in the previous text the YM-2203 is pin- and software compatible with the AY-3-8910. The YMZ-284 is not pincompatible ( and much smaller
 than the AY-3-8913 but internal it is too software compatible with the AY-3-8913. The real jump in size is the YM-3014 - of which YAMAHA claims to be the
 smallest software compatible chip to the AY-3-8913. This advantage is result of the fact that the control and communication is not performed by 8
 parallel lines - but insteadby serial line.

 Additionally my pal demanded the Soundcard also to support the ability to support and use the IIGS Soundchip alternatively and offering a Sound-Output-
 Amplifier with at least 2 Watt power per Channel / Speaker. The card should also offer the compatibility to the software used in most games.
 

 Comparing the Mockingboard with it´s basic configuration ( without the sparely supported speech chips )  to the intended card the difference shows
 up as follows:
 

			The Mockingboard A		The planned Soundcard
	Pick sound from IIGS		no		yes
	Software compatible to AY-3-8913		yes		yes
	Hardware compatible to AY-3-8913		yes		yes
	Stereo 3 channel sound		yes		yes
	Watt  Power Output to speaker		max. 1,5    - per channel		max. 8   - per channel
	Squarewave channels		3 - per channel		9 - per channel
	Sinewave channels		1 - per channel		3 - per channel
	Noise Generators		1 - per channel		3 - per channel
	FM channels		0 - per channel		1 - per channel

 The next point ( at least about compatibility ) was that the card also is equipped with VIA chip 6522 per channel. The difference to the Mockingboard
 is, that the new card will use the 65c22 ( datasheet ) -version instead due to the fact of it´s smaller size in the PLL44 package.

So the resulting first design looked like this:
 

and the prototypcard looked like this:
 

 In simple words: because the card contains per channel ecah a YM-2203, a YMZ-284 and the YM-3014 controlled by the 65C22 - you can state
 that each channel contains 3 software AY-3-8913 compatible chips. The stereo audio amplifier chip is generally used in car-amplifiers passing max.
 of 8 to 9 Watt per speaker and therefor it should have additional cooling - resulting to the fact that the aluminium cooling plate was designed
 specially designed for this card with minimum space requirements.

 Story continued at next page.