These are around $5 each and I'm going to be working with them on the next leg of my project. They are considered to be a DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSOR, but are way more powerful than that. They can be programmed to generate sound as well. I was trying to find the history on these to see if they were old enough. I think they are at least over 10 years old. With the right software, this 16 bit device could have 16 channels of 12bit voice polyphony.
Dan