[sdiy] Buchla 500

[Peter Grenader]

The one at Cal Arts was powered by a Terdata 7/16 . But it was the
prototype. 

Kevin Haywood wrote:

> Just talked to Don about the 500 last month.  There were four made -
> the one in Europe was in Oslo.  I think there was another at Northern
> (Illinois or Indiana??) University.  Two CRTs, one displayed an 8x8
> matrix of 64 internal waveforms, oscilloscope style.
> 
> If I remember right, the 500 was based on an Intel chip whose
> production specs fell far short of its published specs, dooming the
> project from the start.
> 
> Kevin
> 
> 
> 
> On Aug 10, 2005, at 5:02 PM, Peter Grenader wrote:
> 
>> The Buchla 500 is basically a 200 with a computer interface. There was
>> no
>> special circuitry in the modules themselves - they were vanilla 200.
>> The 500
>> had a few  I/0 port modules, which were unto themselves and probably
>> had
>> drivers, maybe DACs and ADC's??? Only three 500s were ever made to my
>> knowledge...good luck finding prints!
>> 
>> Pardon me if this reads like the beginning of the Lord of the Rings:
>> 
>> 1) One was at Cal Arts, sold off in the mid 80's.  In the pictures
>> linked
>> below, can see the I/O modules right above Mort's head and the CRT
>> next to
>> his left ear. The thing barely visable under the CRT is the corner of
>> the
>> QWERTY keyboard.  Jill Fraser is the blond in the photo with her legs
>> crossed -there's more on her in a second:
>> 
>> http://www.buzzclick-music.com/mort.html
>> 
>> 2) Another is still installed at Evergreen College in Washington State
>> -
>> note interface next to output module:
>> 
>> http://www.evergreen.edu/media/musictech/images/studios/
>> buchla200big03.jpg
>> 
>> 3) And I third ring made it to the elves. Ah...i think a 3rd 500 made
>> it to
>> Europe?  Rick?
>> 
>> If I *really* had to track down schematics, I'd try the tech person at
>> Evergreen, whoever that is.  Don, forget it.  John Payne would be the
>> only
>> faculty guy at Cal Arts who would possibly know, but he retired a
>> couple of
>> years ago and I'm pretty sure when the 500 left he looked skyward, said
>> thank you and threw the books in an incinerator.
>> 
>> If you can track down a guy named Ray Wersching (not sure how you spell
>> that), he was the guy at Cal Arts who had the hood up on the 500's
>> computer
>> most of the time, but most of that was s/w.  You must remember, it was
>> archaic even before it was old.  There was no storage outside of ram
>> and a
>> punch paper tape reader on the teletype.  You had to MANUALLY load the
>> operation system on boot up with a series of 16 switches on the
>> faceplate of
>> the machine and that operating system was never completed.  Jill Fraser
>> worked with it like a dog for six months generating the control tracks
>> for
>> Subotnick's Game Room and Sky of Cloudless Sulfur from his scores.  The
>> thing was a mess.
>> 
>> hope this helps.,
>> 
>> - P
>> 
>> 
>