[sdiy] History of SDIY?

[rsdio at audiobanshee.com]

On Jun 2, 2018, at 4:43 AM, john slee <indigoid at oldcorollas.org> wrote:
> Does the SDIY Supreme Council approve of the below (IMO glorious) creation?:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYLBjScgb7o
> 
> John

That, sir, is called “hacking” - not DIY (or Synth DIY). It’s not “bending,” either, because the furby is not a musical instrument.

It seems that DIY includes kit building as well as home-grown PCB etching, and I personally believe that DIY also includes “invention” of new circuits so long as it’s done for your own use.

Hacking and bending are different activities. Hacking is where you reverse-engineer - partially or completely - how something works and then alter its behavior to your own, new purposes. e.g. Turning a PG-300 into a generic MIDI CC control surface.

Bending is where you start with a cheesy electronic musical instrument that you have no idea how it works, and you start poking live wires into the exposed circuitry until something interesting happens. Often, the whole thing goes up in smoke, but since it was a cheap, plastic, toy synth from a garage sale then nobody cares.

I like helping the “bender” types figure out what they’re actually doing to the circuit so that a more controlled circuit modification can be designed. Sort of half way between hacking and bending.

Brian