TheAncientOne

A most excellent decision. Thanks for my boards, they arrived today. They look great, and will be a pleasure to assemble.

Electronic music and modern dance have a long common history: Alvin Nikolais was the first purchaser of a Moog synthesiser. I think seeing TV program about his work was one of the other reasons for my interest in the subject.

OMG! the bean bag has become self-aware! run away, run away! Never mind "The Cars that Ate Paris", we'll soon have "The beabag that Ate Melbourne".

And if you want to see how it all goes back on, here's a video. I chose a big toroid so the technique would be easier to see. About the right size for a serious power amp, or a 2Hz cross over choke. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-660662384802328397

Start giving now.... unless you mean a one-for-one replica. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-One http://www.c64upgra.de/c-one/ http://www.syntiac.com/fpga64.html I've been talking to a couple of people who work on FPAA's about a possible SID clone. They said they thought it was already underway. We just need to find out where.

Never had a C64, though a friend once asked me to make him a sampler out of a VIC-20. I bought an expansion board, extra RAM, a machine code monitor cartridge, and spent a lot of time finding out that it was too slow to do anything useful, (I think I managed something like 5 seconds of 8KHz sample rate) Then the Greengate DS3 came out. Found MIDIbox whilst looking for control surface info, read up and just wanted to build them all... I had a BBC Micro, back in the day - still have some too. I must try and get the 'Music 500' unit I have working again, this was a BBC driven hardware digital synth, but most of the time sounded the wrong sort of cheesy.

Sorry - but I have to take issue with this one. Wire wrap was originally part of an initiative by the US navy in the late 40's to try and improve electronic reliability. Two things came out of the research, crimp on terminals and wire wrap. Wire wrap done properly stretches the plated wire around the square corners of the terminal pin, creating small cold welds. That's 24 small welds on a 6 wrap joint, (smoking joke may be inserted here). The modified wrap with the extra 3 turns of insulation around the pin is described as a vibration resistant gas-tight joint. In the days of big-iron mainframes, most backplanes were wire wrapped. Telephone companies routinely still use it in exchanges. Do a bit of reading up - it's still a construction method of choice for certain types of high speed one-offs and very short run devices. It's on the fade now as a result of things like FPGA, but still works well. There was a prototyping/hobbyist system that let the pin corners disrupt the insulation, and that was a bit iffy. In normal wire-wrap you strip the wire manually. Some professional 'gun' type systems have 'cut - strip - and Wrap' bits in them but they are mind blowingly expensive (£180 for a bit and sleeve), and also require a special wire. Normal wrap wire is Kynar insulated, the one for the auto strip bits uses an insulation called 'Kapton'. If anyone can get me some I'd be very grateful - I have a 'cut strip and wrap' bit that won't work with the wire I can get, sadly. Ther used to be amazing robot wire wrap machines that would wrap wire a backplane from a punched tape.. Basic tools are shown here, for manual wrap work. In answer to Sasha, the wire strippers I use are pictured too. I stopped stripping wire using my teeth when a friend at school got wire jammed between his front teeth and broke one.

Awesome work!

Sasha has really got me thinking about the sort of stuff I used to build as prototypes and test jigs. Most of them got thrown away when I moved house in 2002, (I made some serious errors in what I kept and what I threw or gave away, I'd become quite depressed and actually considered that my working in electronics was probably at an end). But I did keep a some odds and ends.... The left hand pic is a text-to-speech unit based on the GI SP0256 chip set. This one is a fully loaded version with serial and parallel inputs, buffer RAM and a few other options. I need to make a cable for the PC ans see if it still works. Might be fun through a vocoder. Made with Vero 'Speedwire', (a brilliant though quite expensive prototyping system). The right hand one is a test board for a Zilog Z* Tiny BASIC system. It's got a whole 8K of RAM The missing chip is a MAX232, I took out to use in a repair and forgot to replace. The EPROM holds the restart vector. It still works, I think, though it's a bit short on decoupling caps, because I used to use the special wire wrap 100n's, and had run out. The big silver caps are solid tantalum electrolytics - overkill for this job, but were free from the scrap box at the time. It's done with wire wrap, a technique I still use. The tools and wire can be found quite cheaply on ebay, and you can work up a reasonable speed it you get into it.

One of my old industrial customers have a computer contolled circular sawing machine, called a Wadkin TT14. You entered a cutting list onto a teletype, and then put long planks on an input conveyor, and it worked out the best cuts per length and cut them. The Processor was a Texas Instruments TI960 minicomputer. To load up the operating system and software you had to first enter a short series series of programs on front panel switches. You cleared and initialised the memory, started a tape loader, loaded the hight speed tape interface software, then the operating system, (from a punched tape!), called PAM-D, then finally a huge tape with the saw program on it. There were some patches to the main program that had to be input by hand after that. With what I know now, I would probably have re-dumped the tape with the patches installed. At one time I had to buy in an Old Remex tape reader and punch (still got it too), and re-duplicate the tape because they were getting worn out. As you say: real hardcore computing, and kind of cool too. Though perhaps not This Hardcore: They didn't take my advice to buy spares and docs for the computer when it went 'end of life', later I had to repair it twice with no docs. First time 4 bits of register went out - and a I managed to trace that to a failed 7489 memory chip, ( Bipolar RAM, 16 x 4 bits,it used 4 of these for it's main 16 bit registers - wow!). Second repair took me over a month: I had to make my own extender cards, buy and scrounge spares and design my own fault finding tools. Sadly I've no pictures from that era, though if anyone ever needs a backup tape of PAM-D, I kept one just in case. Take a look. Background is part of this week's fun, a Kleindienst extruder/moulder, heavily butchered, and drawings that are covered in dust. oil, and footprints. That's a good one.....

No actually, though that is a good point. I was actually thinking of times when the SMT version of a chip is you can easily buy, or is much cheaper than the DIL version. The AD633 multiplier used in Marc bareille's 'Warp' ring modulator is a good example. http://m.bareille.free.fr/modular1/warp633/warp633.htm. In my case I used them because I had cheap adaptors from China, and a lot of SMT good quality op-amps.

Just got through a whole heap of these on youtube. "Wonderwall" as techno, and I can't really describe "Enter Songsmith"..... Well it may not make the greatest music, but it's given us a whole new game. Still laughing.

Depends on where you are using it. If you're going on the road, PCB mounted sockets are an accident waiting to happen. Trip over a cable, or drop a plugged up box, and you risk writing off the lightweight plastic socket, and more importantly, the PCB. Even if the PCB survives, desoldering a broken PCB DIN socket is not a lot of fun. If you're going pro, then decent, chassis mounted, metal sockets are the best option. I know - I've been there. On the road, consumer stuff just doesn't cut it. If you have a metal socket, with a 2/3 pin connector to the PCB, then replacing a broken socket is a screwdriver job. I notice you have provided the connector pads on your board, so you must have had it in mind for an option. The snag is, Neutrik don't seem to make one in this format, at least it's not listed on their UK website. They do have a metal socket listed, but it's a more standard one. They also have a reversible USB, in their 'pro' range, which acts like an A to B adapter. The best metal 5 pin DIN socket seems to be the Deltron single hole types, which Wilba fancies for his sequencer - like this: [img width=200 height=200]http://rocky.digikey.com/weblib/CUI%20Inc/Web%20Photo/SD-50LS.jpg This also gives you the option to wind a few turns of the connecting wire through a ferrite, if you have EMC concerns. There's a lot of good stuff about pro MIDI on Hinton Instruments A few thoughts anyway.

At which point I'd suggest doing what I did, which was to buy an old Akai - I got an S3200 for £80, and managed to acquire the FX boards and the filter card without paying too much, (Thanks for the heads up on 'Millenium', I bought it and it seems great - with my eyesight, the built in screen needs a magnifier). They take standard RAM, and you can connect virtually any old SCSI 50 pin disc that you can get, usually free. There are still SCSI CD ROMS showing up in old workstations too. I'm more interested in short fragment sample players that will allow mad kinds of percussion, playing of trick sounds and blips, The sort of thing you don't want to tie an entire analogue patch up for. If you want a view of one of the madder gadgets out there Marc Bareille's Quantix 8 can do this sort of stuff, and load more besides. I'm fond of Arduino because it has a very pro interface, USB driven, and is a bargain basement COTS solution to a lot of problems. Nothing like as powerful as MIOS for music, and very I/O limited, but enough to get a lot of jobs done, and £22 a board, ready made.

On a different audio tack, Limor has this Audio Shield Doesn't the speakjet to MIDIbox allow that kind of thing too? It's a bit closer to home. I do love playing with voice fragments, from my early days of razor blades and audio tape. If it's using an ISD chip, it will be quite dirty. not just due to the 8 bits, but also due to the low sample rate. They are quite a fun, good value chip though.

I've ended up with a few uncollected parts, and some 'accidental orders'. I need to raise some money, so here is a chance to pick up some parts cheaper than usual: [table][tr][td]Quantity[/td][td]---------- Description ----------[/td][td]Cost[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][/tr][tr][td]40[/td][td]Green 14,2 mm Single Common Anode 7 segment displays Kingbright SA56-11GWA Data sheet[/td][td]£0.20 each[/td][/tr][tr][td]200[/td][td]12x12 Industry standard Tact switches, PCB mount Not for x0xb0x. Rapid Reference[/td][td]£0.10 each[/td][/tr][tr][td]400[/td][td]10uF 35 V Elna Red radial leaded electrolytic capacitors[/td][td]£1.20 / 50[/td][/tr][tr][td]80 [/td][td] 16 pin DIL IDC plugs, (A 16 pin chip shaped plug), can be used as a component header - just solder parts on[/td][td]£0.20 each[/td][/tr][tr][td]50[/td][td]TL 072CD opamps in SMT packages. These are SURFACE MOUNT![/td][td]£0.08 each[/td][/tr][/table] Memo me if anything here is of interest. I will update the entry if anyone buys anything. Postage and any paypal fees at cost. I've left the prices in £'s because that's what I'm working in, and the Pound is dropping against the Euro, so it might help. Got quite a few more things, but need pictures for them. Advance notice. Adafruit x0xb0x No.809, built by me, (which means 'professionally built'), with the usual transistor selection voodoo etc, will be on sale as soon as I get my Sasha x0x finished. It's probably a job for evilbay, but if a group member wants to make a sensible offer, (and avoids getting divorced like the intended owner), they could get a better price than ebay.

sadly, my favourite, (and I haven't been for a while due to other commitments), had it's last night in December Arrgh! http://www.sincitymanchester.co.uk/ Check the playlists, anyway. She does the Internet radio "The Miss Jinny Show": http://www.missjinny.com/theshow.htm Her co-presenter, Fitz also is the main musician in "Skinjob" - which I quite like http://www.skinjob.co.uk/, also http://www.myspace.com/skinjobcouk to hear some music. I'll ask the right questions at my next club night in Manchester, (Hint: my part is not musical...), and let you know what else is on. Is the "One in Twelve" in Bradford still running?

Did you look at the wiring on that thing? Pass the Parmesan. . . I can predict that the new owner will end up here asking for help. On this type of tack, a couple of questions of mine. I want to build a Traktor controller for a Goth/EBM DJ in Manchester. The reason she needs it is that she is partially sighted, for the very same reason, she won't be doing any building, though she will have major design/layout input. She will want to give me something for my efforts: If I get her to buy me some MIDIbox board/parts is that still legit? I have a Scandinavian musician friend who has never done any building, and was thinking of a P3 sequencer. In reality a MIDIbox seq would be better for him. I can get him over here for a week or so, after a UK gig, and do a kind of 'summer school' build, where I get him to do as much assembly as possible, but also make sure he has a working reliable unit when he leaves. Again, panel and style design will be all his. prior to the visit, though I will do the internal layouts and power supplies to make sure it's reliable and safe. Basically as if I were making up a 'complete kit', then supervising it's assembly. Can he pay me something for my time? In my mind, the first one is OK, not sure abut the second.

If you can chase up the "CV" number, there was a UK military spec. variant, with a gold plated metal and ceramic case. I've only got 723 power supply chips from that era, but I have seen them on boards. Made that way for light weight and better heat dissipation. And from the hand of man who effectively designed the 5532/34 Serious gear pr0n He still uses them in some of his kit, I believe. If you're on his site, look for the 'grammy' story too.

I've got some original early 20th century ones in my back yard. Some NOS, and some used. We all know that the older components give the best tone, so if you want authentic results I can cut you in for a couple. . . . ., though numbers are limited.

I think I need to get my own advanced chord tunable version out there. Better business model too, because I get to sell refills, and it comes in a choice of silver or black. Damn! Some guys are already selling it as 'Gaffa Tape'. Also part of my friend Janet's patent "Toolkit for Blondes", which contains a tin of WD40 and a roll of Gaffa Tape. Instructions: If it moves and it shouldn't, use the tape. If it doesn't move and it should, use the spray. WARNING: On no account use both at the same time.

I'm with Madox on "The Art of Electronics". I do electronic system repairs for a living, (if you can call it that), and Horowitz and Hill are still a favourite reference. The book is full of working practical designs, and well explained useful theory.

A few thoughts on this. I note from the Mouser data that these are 10K linear with a centre detent: their target market is consumer tone controls and graphic equalisers An Op-amp might be overkill here. First thing to do, once you get them is to establish your required current range. I'd put an old 20K pot, (or so, not that critical), and a 150 Ohm safety resistor in series with the LEDs, put that lot in series wirth the current range of a test meter, wire to a 5Volt supply, and establish 2 current limits: 1) The minimum current that just makes the LED glow 2) The current for the maximum brightness you want Be aware that few small LED's will be reliable at more than 25mA max current. The 150 Ohm will give roughly 25mA max current with a red LED (1.2 Volt forward drop). Get that bit sorted, and I think we can come up with an arrangement that should do it. If you're not sure how to do the steps above, PM me and I'll try to help.

There is a good explanation of the checksum at the end of This Page. The add and mask concept is easier to implement in PIC than any divide type function. I'd start with a dummy value of zero, then do a loop until the end of the sysex data, adding the next value and masking with 128 (AND 0x7F ) , to keep the numbers in the frame. You don't need to worry about carry values, because the nominal overflow is going to be masked off anyway. Note 0x7F = 0b01111111: the AND function effectively means "keep all the bits except the highest". Here is a sysex calculator on this page which will allow you to check figures during testing Hope this helps

I was with you on the Ouches, but a violinist who I showed it to tells me that a concert grade violin bow costs £500 upwards anyway. If you are a serious user, apparently the custom made ones go to the K-Bow price, without any electronics. http://www.beckley-violinbows.com/pages/Gallery.php The website videos of János Négyesy, (can somebody from Hungary tell us how to pronounce his name please), are quite cool, he's using the Max Matthews designed violin too. They are on This Page. For those who aren't into the history of electronic music, Max is like the Grandfather of computer music. Still active and teaching today. The Max language was named after him.