AW: [sdiy] Can I do anything useful with this?

[Ullrich Peter]

Hallo Thomas!

>Following the recent talk about rifling through skips (dumpsters) and
>getting lucky-
>
>I just 'found' a 'knob box' - off an old CAD system I think - it
comprises 8
>pots , an 8 channel A-D converter, 8045 uC, UART + RS232 (via 8 pin
mini
>DIN) interface.
>
>It's labelled IBM 6094-010 but can find no details on line. The pots
just go
>round and round - never come across these before, they're marked Japan
Servo
>VP22 but they don't feature on the Japan Servo website.

I think the pots are not real pots - I think they are "data dials" or
"encoders"
like the encoder from Bourns that offer quadrature outputs.

>So, question is: could this be used as a MIDI controller of some kind
(via
>PC I guess) and if so how? bearing in mind I ain't the worlds most
competent
>programmer :o)

This should be possible I think. 

>Read serial port > write midi data?? 

Redesigning the clock part of the UART and replacing the RS232 level
converter
with a standard Midi-Interface-circuit should do the job.

>Could this data be merged with MIDI
>from (say) a sequencer to control a keyboard??

Merging is a little bit too much I think as the microcontroller is a
quite lame
microcontroller.

>Anyone done anything like this before or able to offer suggestions??
Seems
>such a shame to waste it...

I thought a lot of times about it but got no device until now. So I had
no pressure to design it. I also thought about making a
mouse/trackboll/graphic pad
to midi converter...

Ciao
Peter

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                   Ing. Peter Ullrich         mailto:ullrich at kapsch.net
                   Homepage: www.ullrich.at.tt , http://come.to/ullrich
   .oooO           Hardware & Software Developer /  Electronic Musician
   (   )   Oooo.   KAPSCH AG / ECCN Control Systems    Vienna / Austria
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