TheAncientOne

I guess you're right about the fake: my local computer good guys have got Dene-Elec 4G x133's at £31.36, in OEM, which is around $62, and they are about the cheapest I know. SanDisk being a premium brand should com in higher than that. I'll have to do some of the same testing myself. AS you say, the CPU figure is the worst part. It might be time-out retries. Mike

Not sure about the speed problem, but "The Cosmic Supply Company", (Motto "We promise to deliver anything at anytime"), has just delivered me a battered Sony Vaio Laptop, with broken hinges and no hard disc, (but the carrier is there). Looks like I might be trying this one myself, I want a rack mounted PC for editing on my Akai 3000XL, (with my eyesight the little Akai screen is worse than a gameboy). I'll try it in a week or so, and let you know. I need to order the adapter. I've got a couple of 1G cards, to try with and somewhere a laptop SCSI card, so the Sony is the first up for audition. The Akai editor only runs under 95/98 anyway. Adding a mini keyboard and probably a trackball and the possibilities seems reasonable. Anyone any comments on using MESA II by the way? Mike

There is a home made tool for this job - I had to invent it for similar reasons, though the chip said "TRW" and had their kind of price tag. Take a wide bore hypodermic needle or a piercing cannula. Use a fine grinder or Dremel disc to cut it off square, (they have angled points). Put on your earth strap. Slip the bore over the pin and gently crank it straight, repeat as needed. Lecture miscreant about cost of chip, say "Uh-Oh!" a few times whilst doing the job to panic them. Some cannulas are full tubes with a square end - in that case a cork pushed onto the point is a good idea, then use the other end. My local piercing shop still doesn't believe what I wanted them for.....

It seems to be a wierd matter of luck: I've got 2 30G Deskstars, (being polite in case they have audio pickup), which are fine. Sitting here in a sulk, complete with legendary 'click of death', is an 80G belonging to my photographer friend. It contains amongst other things, the entire session that produced my profile pic. This is probably the best incentive I have for learning how to fix one: it simply isn't worth the £1500+ we've been quoted for an attempt at retrieval. Main problem is sorting out the fact from the fiction in the cause of the effect - as a google search will prove. I had a 60G that had a rough trip from France in a PowerPC, it keeled over after about 6 months use, though I can't wholly blame IBM for that. I stripped it, and can confirm no loose heads, so that's one cause dismissed. Best guesses so far seem to revolve around a temp sensor, and/or a mismatch between the drive data and some info cached on flash memory in the drive. I wish I'd kept it to compare with the 80G. By the way. If you have an early deskstar, there is a piece of software from IBM that will check if it needs a firmware upgrade, which you can do yourself. Both the 30G's have had the mod.

If it wouldn't be against the rules, I might consider doing a UK/European bulk buy for parts, and kitting them up. Just a thought. I have accounts with quite a few distributers but UK prices are way higher than the USA. Mike

A microdrive is is a tiny hard disc, originally made for photographers, and used in some iPods. I've been told by a photographer that the iPod drives are lower spec'd than the photography ones, with regard to read/write speeds, and that some unscrupulous sellers were selling them on ebay to unsuspecting camera owners. They have been largely replaced by flash memory, though there is the promise of a new generation with 40G capacities. they were originally built by IBM and HP, though HP seemed to lose interest, (theirs were assembled by seiko Epson), and IBM sold their disc operations to Hitachi, possibly following the 'DeathStar' fiasco. A normal 'card' is flash memory. The speed is useful - they go up to 133x original flash speed, whtever that was. If you can run without VM, even better. Mike

I've had this one a few times with other gear: the answer is to use a custom MIDI-->CV, set up for the correct scaling. Worst case was for the Old ETI 5600, but the good news was that the new revised system was so stable we retrofitted the original quasi digital keyboard. A MIDIbox driving a proper AOUT (not LC), could do it, and would probably have enough space for any other scalings you wanted to try. I did a 1/4 tone one once, using a TDS FORTH card, so that new scales could easily be uploaded. It was even possible to correct for non-linearity in the VCO, though attempts to add temperature stabilization ended in farce. Sometimes keeping it modular is best. Mike

Here are a few links - Mr google may have more http://www.richieburnett.co.uk/cwsstc.html http://www.roger-russell.com/ionovac/ionovac.htm http://www.laborantes.com/iono2.htm Basically you modulate the primary drive to the coil, and the air moves as the arc changes. Generates a lot of ozone, and can erode the terminals very fast. The Ionophone speakers mentioned above kept the arc in a quartx envelope to reduce ozone and get better air modulation. A big one would be wild at the right rave. I would fancy getting dancers in faraday cage suits in the cage with it.... Guess I just watched too many Frankenstein films as a kid. Mike

For Sasha....

This may be old hat, (and I'm in a rush so not doing a search), but this came up on the SDIY list. It's a speech synth using a SID and 6502 assembler on the C64, I figure anything a 6502 at 1/2MHz can do can be done by a PIC at 20..... http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/viewpic.php?id=48099 Just a thought Mike

For those who missed the first run, the Monome guys are doing another run of kits: http://monome.org/40h/kit Mike

Good box - and nice neat internals too - a sure sign of class! Mike

Tesla is one of my heroes too. I've built coils a while ago, getting up to about 1 metre of spark using thyratrons instead of the more usual spark gaps. Not in that guys league however. Ther have been quite a few 'singing Tesla's' on youtube, but never one that big before. Before starting with the 'MIDIbox Tesla', do give a though to keeping that level of EMI out of your PIC .... I just have this scary vision of Sasha combining a few of his ideas, and doing "Pirate broadcast Lightning SID Music", from something like an Eiffel Tower with a ball on the top, fed by machinery with lots of shiny brass and ebonite, (and of course polished wood casings). If you want to see what can be done, take a look at http://www.lod.org/ for guys who built a huge one, and in the UK http://www.hvfx.co.uk/, do some good stuff. If you want a scary thought, check the video of "Voltini" doing the 'Lighning Man' act, (and no, deffo don't try this one at home, a few people have died!) - he's not in a Faraday cage suit like 'MegaVolt'. http://www.hvfx.co.uk/video/lightningman.mpg But Tesla did it all first.

I did my first electronics properly in the 70's. I did enough "Ally panel and hardwood ends" stuff to last me forever. Nowadays I either go 'raw basic panel', or try for something more timeless and neutral - though I did say I'm trying, not that I've had anything I'd call a success! On the other hand, I really like the look you are aiming for with Endorphine - a great style. I save the wood for my 'other world' projects, or for repairs. Some of my last Teak went to replace end cheeks on a classic integrated amplifier for a friend. though I have an extra help here in the shape of an antique restorer/cabinet maker. I showed him your picture, his comments were less printable than yours.

Nikko electronics in the UK have the chip at £1.29 plus VAT and Carriage. I could do a bulk buy if enough were interested. see: http://www.dalbani.co.uk/catalogue/product_details.php?id=25337 Added Voti has them too (should have looked first!), cheaper at 1.50 Euro http://www.voti.nl/shop/catalog.html Mike

20x2 OLED displays from China on ebay. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Fantastic-20x2-Characters-OLED-LCD-Module-Display_W0QQitemZ230137565926QQihZ013QQcategoryZ26206QQcmdZViewItem Hope this may help

Not in the least! Your google-fu is strong Oh Stryder.

My thought about SwinSID was to use it to replace the SID's I taken out of C64's - might even be a novelty sale value. I wonder if Prophet 64 will work with SwinSID. I might just have a go at that..... If I find a cheap source of A->D's I'll post it in the 'fleamarket'.

Nice one! I think thta is quite a good proposition, especially at it's $999 price. For those on a more normal MIDIbox budget, (ie about zero): try https://devel.goto10.org/puredyne I've been running it in trial on an old Compaq 800MHz P3 laptop. It booted straight off the CD, and will store your data to a USB stick, (or you can squeeze up you partition and give it a bit of HDD space). The drum machine 'Hydrogen' works well. Seq24 is good too. Pd works, but I can't drive it properly yet. I've not tried the softsynths. Plugged into my network, it picked up an addy from the DHCP server and Mozilla went straight on line. I've not tried the email clients yet. Seems pretty good for free so far. Mike

Thanks! Now switched out of dumb bunny mode and moved it to the right thread.

Scary article on the effect of Vista's protection concepts. http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html The thought of ASIO not working is a real nasty. (Reposted and original deleted because I put it on the wrong thread due to late night brain fade and caffeine deprivation) Adding (playing indirect catch up here), service packs normally don't fix an architectural feature). I usually advise clients never to install the first release of anything, (unless they've had it written to a test spec). I am seeing quite a lot of Linux 'hypotheticals' at the moment. I think the real clincher has been the rise and general quality of OpenOffice. Especially in countries where the flexibility for new languages helps - like right to left text, and the fact that the OpenOffice org was part of the Opendoc specifier group, which MS ignored until the last minute.

Wow! Are you are going MIL spec then? I'm just guessing by the environmental tests. High temp, vibration, etc. On a serious note, it might indicate a power supply problem. My first ever project from 'Practical Electronics' was a 3 transistor (germanium!) amplifier. It made all kinds of weird 'motor boat' noises until I shunted the dry battery I was using with an electrolytic. My first lesson in power supply stability. Looking at the noise in 'Audacity', and 'blowing it up', I notice a background 10mS rough half sine wave, plus the HF noise. You're coming out of regulation, unless you're pulling more than (say) 150mA, so I'd try a series inductor in the 12V make sure you have local decoupling capacitors on all your boards. You should have both a small electrolytic with a ceramic in parallel, (Electrolytic don't work too well at high - like PIC clock - frequencies). All in all my vote is for the PSU as a source of the noise. From the description, I'd say your supply was a switch mode. I prefer a linear for most audio kit. There are usable switch modes, (I've just bought an old Akai 3000 sampler that uses one), but they are 'instrumentation grade' and expensive. Try loading the supply with resistors - suggest 4.7Ohm on the 5V and 150 Ohm on the 12 V rails, (get big ones 10 watt for the 4.7 and 2 watt for the 150's), and then put a scope across the power rails, on AC coupling, an see what you get. I use a test like this often, before trusting the supply with the expensive stuff. I've just done something similar with both the Oakley 3030 I've just completed, (welll all bar 1 LED), I put the regulator chip in before any others and set and tested the power supplies before inserting the expensive stuff. With the AVRx board I've just started, I built the PSU section first, out of the normal order, both to make sure it worked, and as a first test of my surface mount skills. With surface mount a failure is usually a lot more expensive.... Perhaps as an overall hint to MIDIboxers in general. A couple of bench power supplies, either second hand, or kits to save money, are a really worthwhile investment, second only to a test meter. I say a couple because you are going to need at least a 5V and the analogue power.

You're right about the Jomox. It's not a bad price either at 549 Euro, though they're currently not giving delivery dates. I don't know if there are any additional costs, but that's no more than you'd pay for a x0xb0x, if you had to get it assembled, rather than build it yourself.

You want to see what a rig like that could do using PD etc under Linux? Get real !

Have you heard about the XP Vista simulator? Easy: in XP0 Turn on all animations and special effects. Turn your display palette up to the max. Unplug 50% of your RAM. Eh Voila! a perfecly good approximation of your machines performance under Vista.