Retro Cool Technology

[C3PO]

Sweet... I played on a SY99 in school, AFAIR.

I still own a SY22.

 

[orbekler]

Sweet... I played on a SY99 in school, AFAIR.

Mine is still in good shape, though the display isn't that bright and I replaced the floppy drive belt with a rubber band (!), and also board batteries are beginning to fade (have to disassemble the whole thing, but I at the time I don't care).

I'm curious... What did you play?

---------- Post added at 22:30 ---------- Previous post was at 22:24 ----------

I still own a SY22.

Wonderful machine!

---------- Post added at 22:35 ---------- Previous post was at 22:30 ----------

Sounds good.
I built two when I was really into electronics as a hobby. One disappeared, can't remember what I did with it.
The other one was a more serious kit, see #55 above for pics.
Hope to have some time later in the year to get it working again, just have to find my soldering iron...

N

...or free time to use it ?!

---------- Post added at 22:46 ---------- Previous post was at 22:35 ----------

BTW.. for the ones are interested in a pretty good FREE Mellotron VST, here is REDTRON:
http://blog.wavosaur.com/5-free-mellotron-vst/

I found a pair of bug, however easily circumvented.

Demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMa_K222hvU

You can surely recognize sounds heard in many past tracks, like the choirs in Oxygene II or the flutes in Strawberry fields forever...

---------- Post added at 22:56 ---------- Previous post was at 22:46 ----------

Apparently, analog synthesizers are the "in" thing these days:

http://www.retrothing.com/2015/01/vintage-synthesizer-reissues-invade-namm-2015.html

Not only analog, but digital too: the original designer of CMI Fairlight (a milestone for digital music) did a replica, though too expensive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPiBWfNAriA

 

[Andy44]

I have my dad's old Garrard record changer. He got this in the 60s or early 70s, and when I was a teenager he got a Technics and the Gerrard became mine. It works fine in manual mode, but the changer function doesn't work anymore. There is a repairman around here I plan on taking it to. You want to see cool retro-tech, you chould see the workshop that guy has!

Update on this: a few weeks ago I got the phonograph repaired. The guy replaced the belt (that was the most expensive part) and fixed the mechanical linkages so the changer and automatic functions all work properly now. I can stack records on the spindle, throw the "Start" lever and relax as it plays them all in sequence, parks the tone arm, and turns itself off just like it used to! Great piece of >40 year-old gear and with a modern needle cartridge and a good amp and speakers it sounds as good as anything on the market.

Tested out with Dark Side of the Moon, Black Sabbath first album, and Yes' Fragile album.

:headbang::RnR1:

 

[Urwumpe]

I'm curious... What did you play?

My music teacher at school was deeply into experimental electronic music. (And a bit crazy - genius and insanity had been really close in this one), resulting in having quite some nice toys there, all connected with MIDI on a sequencer and a Atari ST. Which was quite a nice aspect if you own an Atari ST yourself and know how to program it.

Before switching to electric guitar after my time in the army, I used to play keyboards and piano, also attended musical school there for some years. With a strong preference for rock tracks, but I also remember that I knew how to play the theme music of "Das Boot". :lol: Also I had seen some of the Yamaha stuff there during the nineties.

 

[orbekler]

This is another of my old gizmos: a radiophonograph RadioMarelli RD 224.
Strangely enough, I can't find much over the internet, so here are the pictures:


It works like the first time, with just some cracklings during the first seconds of power up.

It has a phonograph 16-33-45-78 RPM, reversable stylus for microgroove, radio with long-medium-short waves, and FM up to 100MHz, and a speaker loud enough to get you deaf.

However, here below is something I always admired, tha you can't see anymore on modern devices (actually, replaced by led arrays): the magic eye (valve), that winks at you when the station is well tuned:



Each year I power it up to check that is still working, so I did it now for the occasion.

 

[orbekler]

My music teacher at school was deeply into experimental electronic music. (And a bit crazy - genius and insanity had been really close in this one), resulting in having quite some nice toys there, all connected with MIDI on a sequencer and a Atari ST. Which was quite a nice aspect if you own an Atari ST yourself and know how to program it.

Before switching to electric guitar after my time in the army, I used to play keyboards and piano, also attended musical school there for some years. With a strong preference for rock tracks, but I also remember that I knew how to play the theme music of "Das Boot". :lol: Also I had seen some of the Yamaha stuff there during the nineties.

About me, after some 10 year of total inactivity, I started again to study, mostly classical, but I was lately introduced to proogressive rock, so I studied the intro from Genesis Firth of fifth, and I'm currently studying ELP Tarkus part 1, TDF (TOO DAMN FAST :lol.
However, I like so much electronic music, being Jarre one of my first listening, that's why I'm so interested in modern musical instrument evolution.

 

[Notebook]

To Orbekler, and thread in general

If I forgot to say, the synth is a ETI 4600. It was a project in an Australian electronics magazine of the same name. Maplin. a UK electronics chain, took it up and started making kits and parts available for it.

Its not been switched on for about 20 years, but it did all work...I'm going to pick it up this week-end and start re-furbishing it. Probably all the electrolytics will have "dried-out", and I'll need to be careful putting power on it. If they have dried low-resistance or short that can damage other components.
In the best tradition of "Sod's Law", the most expensive chip will sacrifice itself to save the fuse!

Its a modular construction with a bus-bar power supply, so if I take it slowly and carefully, I shouldn't have too much destruction...

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k207/Notebook_04/20130521_200657_zpsa2c2bc7f.jpg
That's the power-supply, bolted to the back panel. I'll start there, get it working, and move on to the smallest(and cheapest) pcb. Probably one of the 2-input mixers.

N.

 

[orbekler]

To Orbekler, and thread in general

If I forgot to say, the synth is a ETI 4600. It was a project in an Australian electronics magazine of the same name. Maplin. a UK electronics chain, took it up and started making kits and parts available for it.

Its not been switched on for about 20 years, but it did all work...I'm going to pick it up this week-end and start re-furbishing it. Probably all the electrolytics will have "dried-out", and I'll need to be careful putting power on it. If they have dried low-resistance or short that can damage other components.
In the best tradition of "Sod's Law", the most expensive chip will sacrifice itself to save the fuse!

Its a modular construction with a bus-bar power supply, so if I take it slowly and carefully, I shouldn't have too much destruction...

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k207/Notebook_04/20130521_200657_zpsa2c2bc7f.jpg
That's the power-supply, bolted to the back panel. I'll start there, get it working, and move on to the smallest(and cheapest) pcb. Probably one of the 2-input mixers.

N.

It reminds me of an accident happened in a live concert of ELP, the modular moog of Emerson was flooded by a storm. Of course when he tried to power it up the moog didn't work. He opened the rear cabinets, exposed it to the sun, and after few hours, it was working again.

 

[Andy44]

In the best tradition of "Sod's Law", the most expensive chip will sacrifice itself to save the fuse!

N.

:lol: I don't know who "Sod" is, but he's right. Must be related to Murphy.

 

[orbekler]

Here some of my remaining musical equipment:

http://www.mediafire.com/view/8q7lalq2k3hg1f1/roland_sh-101_&_mc-202.JPG

http://www.mediafire.com/view/mk1gq4tmnn0367d/sy99.jpg

I tried to add them as pictures, but they don't show, so I put just the link.

 

[Notebook]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34313005

Vintage tech goes under the hammer

An Apple 1 motherboard, a 79-year-old TV and the only surviving processor of the last supercomputer designed by Seymour Cray are being auctioned in New York.

The 1936 Baird television set may not work and delivers a huge electrical charge of 5000 volts.

But it could still fetch between $20,000 (£13,000) and $30,000, according to auctioneer Bonhams.

The Apple 1 has a starting price of $300,000.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

I remember there was a peculiar telewriter machine for getting the flight weather reports - it had a scroll of paper, and a mechanical stylus that wrote letters and numbers on the paper. I believe it was actually transcribing someone's handwriting from another location - it wasn't dot matrix or printed text, the stylus actually was writing. They used the old METAR format at I was proud that I could actually decipher what the weather report meant.

Found an old picture of a telewriter sending station. I recall the receiving stations were a smaller unit with just the paper roll and printing stylus. This model looks to be older, but this is the right idea. The one I saw in base operations was probably made in the 60's or 70's, had a goldenrod colored case, the paper was laid with less incline, and the printing stylus was visible.

http://www.atchistory.org/History/datacomm/Telewriter.htm

It was really cool watching it in action. If you attended a séance and a pen jumped up and started writing on a piece of paper without a visible agent, that was the impression I got when I watched it in action. Spooky action at a distance.

 

[Andy44]

Charles Babbage's mechanical calculator

 

[Notebook]

Amazing, his best freind, but some time earlier is being celebrated at the mo:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34505896

N.

 

[Andy44]

Speaking of synths and shepard tones, I once spent ages trying to do a shepard tone based on clavia's Nord Modular G2 demo software. (Allows you to set up oscillators, filters, etc. - worth a play by the way.)

Never got it to sound quite convincing - I could still hear the notes start at the beginning of the range, and fade out at the end. Oh well!

About those shepard tones, Vi Hart comes through:

 

[Andy44]

More about mechanical computers. A US Navy training film about fire control computers from the 1950s. This is really cool, showing the basic principles of how mechanical computers work:

 

[Andy44]

Ah, the old Soundblaster cards! Little did I know that Yamaha actually built keyboards around the same chip in the 80s:

 

[Andy44]

Any of you German guys ever seen one of these? Anyone else?

I never heard of this before, but it's really cool retro tech: a tape player, but the tape isn't magnetic, it's actually grooved like a vinyl record and played with a needle stylus that runs along the capstan. This thing is so cool!

One standard size cartridge held an hour of music, and the large cartridge in the second vid holds a staggering 4 hours, and this is 1950s tech! 7 minutes into the second vid he plays the device directly into his computer, and the sound quality is amazing.

 

[Ravenous]

I never heard of this before, but it's really cool retro tech: a tape player, but the tape isn't magnetic, it's actually grooved like a vinyl record and played with a needle stylus that runs along the capstan. This thing is so cool!

That's really interesting! I saw something like this being used for voice recording in a movie about the war ("Downfall") - one of the German military officers was pre-recording a message onto a fairly thick ribbon that obviously wasn't magnetic tape. I had no idea how it worked until I saw your post!

 

[Andy44]