[sdiy] History of SDIY?

[rsdio at audiobanshee.com]

On May 29, 2018, at 12:33 PM, Dan Snazelle <subjectivity at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I'd love to see a history of paia, electronotes , early serge , magazine synths (new order and throbbing gristle both used some diy or kit built synths ) etc (and by the way , electronotes covered TONS of digital as well as analog ..in fact volumes 14 and on are mainly digital /programming but even early volumes have articles on using microprocessors to sequence , create sound , etc --Hal chamberlain even wrote in electronotes 
> 
> And speaking of which I think Hal's book would be an important milestone as would the BYTE articles on synthesis with computers 

I believe that Hal Chamberlin completed his masters at my school, North Carolina State University. Can anyone confirm this? His company, Micro Technology Unlimited, was right across the street. I also remember hearing about a bizarre keyboard with faders for each piano key that he’d prototyped - possibly one of the first MPE keyboards (mid to late eighties).

I’m not sure how I found it, but the library stacks at NCSU had (has?) Hal Chamberlin's masters thesis, which was a very one-of-a-kind bound book with schematics and descriptions of a pure digital synthesizer. There were circuits to generate digital square, triangle, ramp/sawtooth, and perhaps ROM sine. There were also digital mixers and other pieces to build an entire voice. I remember looking through the pages of that thesis and thinking that I didn’t want to continue after my bachelors and try for a masters degree, because everything interesting had clearly already been done.

I’m not familiar with the policy for masters theses, but I’d like to see that particular one digitized and made available as a PDF. Maybe it’s time to contact NCSU?

Brian Willoughby

p.s. I remember getting a demonstration (and brochure) of their digital recording equipment that was based on a dual floppy drive. Due to the small storage capacity of 5.25” floppies and the high sampling rate, you literally had just enough time to open the latch, insert a formatted floppy, and close the latch before it switched to accessing that drive. With the two drives, you had to constantly shuttle floppies to keep up with the sampling. Still, it was impressive that they were getting CD quality audio before digital tape was available.