Program for reading and manipulating Atari RPM Sounds for Arcade games 1980-1985
Atari used an arcade game specific POKEY driver called RPM (Rusty's Pokey Music) which was authored by Rusty Dawes while at Atari. It grew up with Atari games from the period 1980-1985 and evolved into support for Multiple POKEY's (up to 4) and eventually music support. With the adoption of the Yamaha FM Synthesis IC's around 1984/1985, the POKEY was eventually dropped from hardware designs. I believe that RPM continued to be the driver of choice after the POKEY but I am not entirely sure. RPM was originally written for the 6502 and was ported to at least the 6809 (I,Robot) and possibly even the 68000 (Food Fight/Quantum). RPM was originally focused on making typical explosions and other missle type sounds up until around 1982 when the focus on Music became of interest, it then started to support notes and structures similar to the Atari 2600 (and other computers).