TA2123AF Chipset

The Sony WM-EX610 Printed Circuit Board (PCB) is double sided with surface-mount devices (SMD) on both sides. This is the only way to pack so much electronic circuitry into a small space, hence this impressive build shows why the Japanese have always been the leaders in electronic engineering design.

OKI 512-127-1146

The main microcontroller chip, or the brain, for this Walkman is the OKI 512-127-1146 made by OKI Semiconductor. This CMOS 4-bit microcontroller operates on just 0.9 V power, and has a built-in level detector, melody circuit, and comparator. The reason why it can do so much and yet require such little power is that it follows the RISC architecture.

The melody circuit provides those familiar beep sounds through the headphones when operating the player. The microcontroller chip also communicates with the external remote controller.

Toshiba TA2123AF

The stereo audio amplifier chip is the Toshiba TA2123AF, which operates on voltages less than 1.5 V. Toshiba are the leaders of this technology and they were developing audio amplifier chips even in the early 80s. This chip has auto-switching preamplifiers for auto-reverse, stereo power amplifiers with bass and treble boost functions, and Automatic Music Sensor (AMS) function.

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