[sdiy] [OT] How did you start?

[Jim Patchell]

Back in those days, doing digital synthesis was not quite as easy as it 
is now.  For $150 I can get an eval board with 1 million gate equivalent 
FPGA on it, ready to go.  Twenty years ago, that was not the case. 
Powerful DSPs were quite expensive.  Xilinx was just starting to bring 
out FPGAs...but a HUGE part only had 5000 gates on it...and they were 
quite expensive.  Building up wire wrap pannels with hundreds of chips 
on them was just not very appealing...not that the thought did not cross 
my mind.  It really is only very recently that digital Synth DIY has 
really become practical.  And still, I am finding it hard to make the 
time...

Although, last night, I did quite a bit of work on mine.  I am working 
on first making a module for debugging the hardware.  I am making a 
simple logic analyzer which will record 1K x 32 bits.  And I am writing 
a program to display the data on my host computer...(will download the 
data via a serial port).  I am hoping to have my first digital synth 
ready for the SDIY PNW meet sometime in October!

-Jim

cheater cheater wrote:
> On 7/14/08, Jim Patchell <patchell at cox.net> wrote:
>> There was a period between about 1988 until about 1997 where I
>> did not do any SDIY.  Mostly because at the time, it seemed
>> pointless...there was nobody I knew of that seemed interested in analog
>> synths...let alone, making their own...
> 
> So why didn't you make digital ones? Not a good excuse!!!! ;P
> 
> 8)
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