[sdiy] 4-bit encoder?

[Oren Leavitt]

Totally agree!

I love doing my synth the old school way.

A couple of areas I use micros for is interfacing MIDI to the analog 
world, or a sequencer that is a little more elaborate than a basic step 
sequencer. I've designed and built a few PIC based MIDI to CV interfaces 
for my system. Currently working on a MIDI to CV that lets me select 
various just intonation and microtonal scales.

- Oren

On 10/13/20 7:32 AM, Roman Sowa wrote:
> It's one of those few occasions when everybody has different opinion 
> and at the same time everybody is right.
>
> 1. Making David's project with a micro or FPGA seems so obvious, and 
> probably the easiest way.
> 2. If something with any kind of firmware in it will break in 40 
> years, there will be some clever geek around (not born today yet) who 
> will not worry about vintage chips but make functional replacement 
> using 40-years-into-the-future technology.
> 3. If David has a choice to do it with 40 chips and it makes him 
> happy, then I can fully understand it, maybe even admire it.
>
> My plan for retirement is to make a polsynth with patch memory and all 
> bells and whistles not using a single line of code. No micros, no 
> FPGAs, just plain logic and analog chips. Now try to change my mind.
>
> Roman
>
> W dniu 2020-10-13 o 13:57, john slee pisze:
>> It is a weird choice of hill to die on.
>>
>> 8051 and Z80 are both 40+ years old and very much alive in 2020. PIC 
>> and AVR families are, according to Wikipedia, 20+ years old, with 
>> PIC's origins being much older.
>>
>> And really the requirement when replacing a microcontroller isn't 
>> that the replacement is identical; the requirement is that it 
>> operates identically. Sonic Potions' TB-303 CPU replacement, for 
>> instance.
>>
>> OTOH I started playing with modular synthesizers because I was 
>> spending too much time staring at screens. So I can understand not 
>> wanting to spend hours programming things.
>>
>> John
>>
>> On Tue, 13 Oct 2020 at 22:23, Gordonjcp <gordonjcp at gjcp.net 
>> <mailto:gordonjcp at gjcp.net>> wrote:
>>
>>     On Tue, Oct 13, 2020 at 12:19:29PM +0100, Gerry Murray wrote:
>>      > One major advantage that David Dixon has in his designs is that
>>     in 20 years
>>      > time, someone plugs it in and it doesn't work, everything that
>>     makes it do
>>      > it's job is right there in plain sight and could be repaired.
>>      > Take any uProcessor driven design. In 20 years, plug it in and if
>>     it doesn't
>>      > work., it's for the trash.
>>
>>     I mean, I'm currently repairing 40-year-old microcontroller based
>>     stuff that wasn't exactly spiffy new tech when I was in primary
>>     school, but okay.
>>
>>      > So David is making something that has far greater longevity than
>>     , for
>>      > example, my precious midi message handler embedded in a 
>> Microchip 18F
>>      > microcontroller.
>>
>>     Assuming you can get the chips, or anything remotely like them. 
>>     Look at how many logic IC are simply no longer available with no
>>     reasonable replacement, like 16-to-4 encoders.
>>
>>     --     Gordonjcp
>>
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