[sdiy] Two interesting early SDIY projects

[Mike Pepper]

> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > To: SDIY list
> > > Subject: [sdiy] Two interesting early SDIY projects
> > >
> > > While searching for someting completely different, I stumbled across a
> > > couple of interesting early '80s SDIY projects which I haven't seen
posted
> > > before.
> > >
> > > 2-VCO monosynth with MIDI and patch storage from 1984/5:
> > >
> > >  http://koo.corpus.cam.ac.uk/projects/elric/
> > >
> > > 8-voice digital polysynth with MIDI and arpeggiator from 1983:
> > >
> > > http://koo.corpus.cam.ac.uk/projects/digipoly/index.html
> > >
> > > The Digipoly design was published in "Electronics and Wireless World"
> > > during
> > >
> > > 1985(?) - I would love to get a copy/scan of these articles if anybody
has
> > > them in their archive.
> > >

> > Mike Gorman
> > I've got the requisite Wireless World articles in front of me now.
> >
> > It will be a few days before I can get round to scanning them, so I'll
> > drop
> > you a note when they are done.
> >
> > There is very little code in the articles though, so you may have to
> > contact
> > the author for a copy. This apparently was either a 50 page listing of
the
> > 8088 source code or a BBC Micro 40 track disk!
> >
> Thanks a lot, Mike - that would be great. I've had some other expressions
of
> interest in the scans too.
>
> Even if we can't locate the 8088 code, it will still be interesting to see
> the TTL-based voice processor and how much, or haw little, it has in
common
> with units like the DK Synergy.
>

I had the articles at the time, though it was not only the problems of
getting the code and burning the EPROMS that finally put me of; if was the
sheer cost of the processor side. I had loads of TTL, and had already done a
hardware based organ/synth, but I seem to remember 8088's being over £100,
and in 1983, that was serious money for one chip!

Acorn sold an Add-On for the BBC called the Music 500/5000, which contained
a discrete component processor using TTL. Colin Fraser has a lot of info
here: http://www.colinfraser.com/m5000/m5000.htm , but as far as I am aware,
no one has ever had the circuit diagram, and the company, Hybrid,  are long
gone. It was designed by Chris Jordan, but to make things less easy, there
is a famous photographer of that name, which makes searching abit messy.
Would love to see a copy.

||\/||ike