DrBunsen

Oh. Mine arrived a couple of weeks ago. No problems, no duty, nicely packed. Would trade again ;D

http://matrixsynth.blogspot.com/2007/08/prophet64-meets-moog.html ;D

Heh. The QY-10 was one of the first pieces of music kit I ever bought. What a POS. "A little fiddly to program"?? Yeah, just a tad. ::) If you want a serious QY check out the QY-70 and QY-700 at the link above. I was lucky enough to find the PMA for a couple of hundred $AU in a pawn brokers. I love the way the Roland soundset sits in a mix, and the preset loops are even useable. But the QY-70/700 are much more sophisticated sequencers, have better FX, audio in, a mini keyboard etc etc etc. The touchscreen on the PMA sounds like a good idea, but in reality it's a bit of a pig to navigate, and it's not backlit. That said, it's certainly usable, and it's an essential part of my live jamming rig. Key-locked distorted guitar feedback whammy bar action, oh yeah ;D BTW PMA="Personal Music Assistant" ;D

As far as us down under panel buyers go, the big cost would be the postage back and forth around the world. Have the overseas panel sets gone out yet?

Check out minimusic.com. With an older serial Palm Pilot you can sequence external MIDI instruments with that suite. Any MIDI sound module with a serial PC/Mac "To Host" port will work; you can also make up a Palm serial to MIDI cable from schematics on the web, or use a simple 1 in 1 out Mac serial (not usb) MIDI interface. With a newer Palm device you can sequence internal sounds. For Windows Mobile devices there's Bhaji's Loops and a few other choices. Check out a blog called "Palm Sounds" for other ideas. I also own a device called a Roland PMA-5, which is a 300 instrument Sound Canvas with an integrated touch screen sequencer. Sounds awesome, interface could use some work. There is also a series of Yamaha portable sound module/sequencer devices called QY(number)

(no i didn't. got links?)

Not with a Seagate ;D

WOOOHOOO ;D ;D ;D

With a reflector? Or even: mount them to the side, pointing towards the switch, with a 45 degree reflector etched into the perspex?

Got an Ikea near you? Maybe you could try this

Or a 2-bit AOUT_LC ;D

Mount the LEDs sideways? Use smaller LEDs?

Ahhhh, so the button moves up and down, but the LED doesn't?

:o I haven't received either

Two. Wires. My bad. THIS pic seems to show how it connects to the motherboard: Presumably the pins at the rear go into holes in the CMU's PCB. And the assembly code is there, which is nice, even if it is annotated in Japanese ??? Should be able to work out from that which pins to bang and when.

Sorry, the computer I was using yesterday clearly didn't have the Asian fonts installed. All I could see was ?? ?? ? ?? ?? ?? ? ?? ? ? ?. And I cut and pasted it ::) Of course, I can see now that it's not Polish Don't hold your breath for updates on this. There's a couple of million other things I have to do before I get stuck in to it. It occurs to me that the first thing to try and achieve is probably to get the CV/gates working. Meanwhile, I'll machine translate that website and see what I can dig out.

I've also just scored a copy of Algorithm Development And Program Design Using C by Gary J. Bronson, which I hear is one of the good ones. It apparently teaches you about designing and building your program from first concept to completion, rather than just code. Again, I'll post a review when I get more into it.

Yes please and link it to/from the OS X development page

Me like

TO DO list: Dismantle and scan PCBs Print out them and schematics Document CPU pin function MIDIO128 Have fun Examine analog circuits for mods ....

Thanks maniac, but all I can see on that page is ????????????????????????????????. I see you're Polish - is it a Polish page? The little text I can make out says it's a PIC based project anyway. I'd rather MIDIbox it so I can ;D You mean this one?. Yeah.

OK, fair enough. Can we have a box for the "User projects" link though?

There's a kit one at paia.com as well

Here's the complete system on youtube:

[img width=300 height=200]http://www.synthdiy.com/files/2001/cmu800.jpg The Roland CMU-800R is an analog synthesis add-on system for early 8-bit computers such as the Apple II or Commodore 64. The analog hardware provides four bass/melody voices which are said to be similar to Roland's SH-101 or TB-303 circuits, and a drum set similar to the TR-606, although with very limited/no editability as-is. In addition there are 8 CV/gate outs, a clock in and out (which I assume is 16th note triggered) and four volume faders. Sequencing and some voice editing is provided by software running on the host computer. A computer-specific add-on card connects to the CMU via a ribbon cable. Neither the card nor the software is available and no-one seems to have them. I've looked ::) The plan is to bypass the onboard CPU and replace its signals with a MIDIbox Core and custom/adapted firmware, possibly based on the MBCV, SID and/or FM. This seems simpler than trying to reverse engineer the protocols to write to the machine via the ribbon cable, and should allow much more extensive modification into the future using MIOS. For example, MIOS control of mods and bends to allow more tonal variation, LFOs, ADSRs, groovebox SEQ ;D I've attached the schematic below. When I've fully dismantled the unit, I'll add scans of the two PCBs - a lower PCB hosts the CPU and I/O, and an upper one the analog voices and front panel hardware.