Goblinz Posted September 4, 2007 Report Share Posted September 4, 2007 I'm toying with an idea. I'm going to be building a SID based on Wilba's uber-sexy MB-6582 as soon as a new batch of SID chips comes in. I already have an 8580 R5 which I want to use to make a simple one SID synth so that I can learn how these things fit together and work before I jump in at the deep end. I'm thinking that I could quite easily make a complete portable mini-studio by using a Commodore keyboard and an old toshiba libretto 50ct laptop that I have laying around (if I can get it working.... It only boots up occasionally so may need some fiddling). The laptop is tiny, it has a 7" (ish) screen, 16mb (could add another 16) RAM, a 800mb hard-drive which again could be upgraded to whatever I want and a P75 processor. The processor is actually a p120 with MMX but isn't clocked that high. With a bit of micro surgery on the board and a few case fans I could clock it up to 166MHz. for operating systems I will havea choice of Windows 95, Windows 98 or preferably Linux (redhat). The 14.8V laptop power supply could hopefully be used for powering the SID too. I have an old parrallel port midi interface which should work with this laptop. I would also be mounting some sort of amplifier and speaker system into the case. Can anybody else see the attraction of this? I'm thinking that I would just need a minimal control surface and maybe even could do away with the LCD. The real question I need answering though is about suitable software. I'm currently learning to use fruity loops and was wondering if anybody could point me in the direction of some similare software that would run on such a low spec machine and maybe even on Linux. Regards, G Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glitched Posted September 8, 2007 Report Share Posted September 8, 2007 Uh, gee man. Those are really low-spec'd machines. I mean, those aren't even PII's. They make wristwatches with more processing power. What version of fruityloops runs on one of those? Any audio recording of any kind is probably out of the question.May I ask why you're even bothering?I suppose you could find MIDI-only sequencing software...but I'd just save up the $50 and get a better machine.Oh, and on your linux question: yes, there is software out there, but you'll probably be disappointed if you're into fruityloops (version 0.3 or whatever you're running). Try and find "Musix+Gnu" or something. I forget the actual name, but it's a music-centric linux distro. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stryd_one Posted September 8, 2007 Report Share Posted September 8, 2007 My first DAW was a Pentium 166 MMX with 128MB RAM, I could get quite a few tracks of midi audio and processing out of it.... but the 16MB RAM is a real showstopper for audio (although midi would be fine), and no the PSU won't be suitable for the SID (search here about switching PSU's) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goblinz Posted September 8, 2007 Author Report Share Posted September 8, 2007 Uh, gee man. Those are really low-spec'd machines. I mean, those aren't even PII's. They make wristwatches with more processing power. What version of fruityloops runs on one of those? Any audio recording of any kind is probably out of the question.May I ask why you're even bothering?I suppose you could find MIDI-only sequencing software...but I'd just save up the $50 and get a better machine.Oh, and on your linux question: yes, there is software out there, but you'll probably be disappointed if you're into fruityloops (version 0.3 or whatever you're running). Try and find "Musix+Gnu" or something. I forget the actual name, but it's a music-centric linux distro.I'm using fruity loops 6.0 at the moment on my desktop but am still learning. I just quite liked the idea of using the libretto as a sequencer to control the SID synth as I have it sat redundant on my desk. It's look smart if nothing else. G Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndrewMartens Posted September 9, 2007 Report Share Posted September 9, 2007 If you're running linux on there, you could always get tektrakker (aka ttrk). It's a pretty simple console-mode pattern sequencer for linux. I made a custom version of it (basically to change the scrolling mode) and it ran fine on a P120 laptop with 32 MB RAM. I can't remember which version of linux I put on there - it was probably debian, and I think this was back in 2002 or so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stryd_one Posted September 10, 2007 Report Share Posted September 10, 2007 http://vektor.ca/audio/ttrk/ If you have trouble finding it... I had to google it, find a forum post with a reference to the old site, visit the old site, go to wayback machine, and find the right version that said they'd moved. Ugh! Seq24 might be worth a try too.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goblinz Posted September 10, 2007 Author Report Share Posted September 10, 2007 http://vektor.ca/audio/ttrk/ If you have trouble finding it... I had to google it, find a forum post with a reference to the old site, visit the old site, go to wayback machine, and find the right version that said they'd moved. Ugh! Seq24 might be worth a try too.... Cool, thanks for that. Another option would be an Atari emulator ;D . I'm not sure if this project would be worth it, I think it would look snazzy though! I wonder if it would be possible to somehow route midi signals over wifi for a wireless setup, a bit like print sharing, but with midi... Think it may be way beyond my skillset though. G Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebula Posted September 10, 2007 Report Share Posted September 10, 2007 I was talking to a guy on bigbluelounge.com a while back who sent MIDI over WiFi using Mac OS X 10.4's MIDI-over-ethernet feature. (He did it for an installation at Burning Man) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goblinz Posted September 10, 2007 Author Report Share Posted September 10, 2007 hmnn, that would be very interesting, I'll do some research and see what I can find. i don't own a Mac, but hopefully there will be something similar for Windos or Linux. I really like he idea of a wireless Midi Synth whther it be through an old laptop or by somehow making an embedded linux system. I have a friend who's really good with Linux so hopefully I could swap a few pints for some coding help :D G Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrBunsen Posted September 11, 2007 Report Share Posted September 11, 2007 Any audio recording of any kind is probably out of the question.Bah humbug! I got 8 tracks realtime mixdown at 16/44 out of a 60MHz PowerMac.Might I suggest investigating the dedicated media/audio distributions of Linux, such as pure:dyne, dyne:bolic, ubuntu studio, AGNULA, DEMUDI etc. dyne:bolic especially is set up for low end machines.And another OS you might consider is DOS ;)There are similar threads scattered around this forum. Do a bit of thorough searching and you should turn them up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goblinz Posted September 11, 2007 Author Report Share Posted September 11, 2007 Great thanks, that's the kind of information i'm after ;D G Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrBunsen Posted September 25, 2007 Report Share Posted September 25, 2007 Check out Converter.Also have a look around the Shareware Music Machine. Their front page is a dog's breakfast these days, but you can select by operating system via the sitemap.And the BlueSynth thread Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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