Modifying a 45 Year Old SWTPC To Play Synthesizers.
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- Опубликовано: 29 июн 2024
- The SWTPC STORY IS QUITE THE 8bit (with some 16 bit functionality) SAGA
if you'd like to Support and also Get The WAV check here :- / 77595795
Come see the SWTPC 6809 at @THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE :-
this-museum-is-not-obsolete.com/
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ROBERTS GIT HUB :-
github.com/rjp5th/SWTPCSequencer
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Massive thanks to :-
PETE :- / retrobc_pete
ADRIAN :- www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/
DAVE :- / devilish_design
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OUTRO SONG :-
• Producing A Song On an...
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CORSHAM TECH :-
www.corshamtech.com/
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List of Gear/Electronics I USE :-
www.lookmumnocomputer.com/stu...
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THANKUS HUMUNGOUSO to :-
Darren Mackay
DeltaByte
Steve Jones
Paul F
Cameron Luteraan
Ande Spenser
Arnix T-Bone
Vaz Daqui
Eric Painter
Jason Kuehl
Aaron Ritter
David Boudreau
Roland G. McIntosh
casey
Joe Pino
David Dolphin
Matt Followell (PDP-7)
Miles Flavel
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Chapters
0:00 intro/history
1:57 functional concept
4:03 the hardware prototype
9:44 the repair
15:35 beginnings of it working
17:10 the computer
20:36 the sequencer
25:50 THE MUSIC JAM
30:37 Outro
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if you want to donate to the electronic component fund! Paypal :-
www.paypal.me/lookmumnocomputer
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Facebook :- / lookmumnocomputer
Website :- www.lookmumnocomputer.com
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#retro #computer #synthesizer 
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![Remble - Colors (ft. Mozzy & Stoneda5th) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/KF-3AU9g9xg/mqdefault.jpg)
it goes without saying massive thanks to everyone involved in this, especially to robert for diving in and bossing the code and setup. make sure to say hey to him over on the github!
I am SURE the original designers would have LOVED to see this! :)
You say you have no idea what you're doing but I have no idea how you do what you do? Does that make sense. Basically, I want to know what you know!
Hey Sam, if the SWTPC has a serial I/O it may be possible to fiddle with the timings on it to make it work as a MIDI port, making it even easier to enter data into the sequencer from a MIDI keyboard. A bunch of electronics mags from the 80s have projects for MIDI adapters for all sorts of home micros, mostly based on the 6850 UART chip, which is probably very similar to any potential serial chip in that computer, so adding MIDI shouldn't be too difficult (at least not the hardware side anyway)
Of course you could always hack an old organ keyboard to connect to the SWTPC's keyboard circuit for a proper, non-MIDI really old school approach :)
So many hacking possibilities with this lovely old hardware :)
Insert the "you dunno what you're doing" voice lol
"Sam the Musical Time traveler" sounding really plausible now!
Hmm.. Mum, he does have a computer after all :)
Always has been
Telltale!
Mum don't look !
Look Mum Got Computer although for a little while there it was Look Mum Computer Broke but then finally it was Look Mum Fixed Computer
😂🤪😝🥳 Ok hahaha….
A man who makes no mistakes, makes nothing.
I agree, but it seems that these days, making mistakes puts you at risk of being cancelled...
@Ryan Gray Depends on the mistake. If you don't just straddle the line, but vault over it, like Jeremy Clarkson, then you should have your contracts removed.
"A master has failed more times than a beginner has even tried."
and if you're not making mistakes, you're not attempting to solve difficult enough problems!
Oh man, LOOK MUM BROKEN COMPUTER, you're consistently pushing out mind-blowingly inspirational videos. Please never stop.
Maybe Changing the name would be good . LOOK MUM OLD COMPUTER! :D Which is awesome ofcourse! :D :D :D
His name is Sam
@@Psythik I meant the Name of the channel ofcourse 😁
I'm glad your PSU was PAT tested... in 2002 ;-)
i take electrical safety very seriously..... in a past tense
Yeah, and Pat retired in '87
Small point of fact, the Fairlight CMI used a total of 3 Motorola 6809 CPUs - two on the main CPU card, one on the additional CMI-07 peripheral board. The music keyboard itself had a dedicated Motorola 6802, and the MIDI/SMPTE board had a dedicated Motorola 68000.
Source: I emulated the Fairlight CMI IIx in MAME. :)
The closet to 9 6809s would have been the III-series from 1985, where each channel card had a dedicated 6809 while still using the original CPU board, totaling to a whopping *ten* 6809s, plus a pair of 68000 CPUs for handling other duties.
As a huge fan of SWTPC, I have to say this is the most amazing thing I have heard from one of their products. I have a Psych-Tone and one of their stereo amplifiers which are both fantastic. If this software was available "back in the day" it would have changed music history.
It is crazy, no matter which hardware you used, i can cleary hear your unique style how you make music! like a signature of you.
its cus i only know about 4 chords :D haha. never needed to figure out any more mind, mebbe ill add a new one to the repertoire in a few years
@@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER this is so funny to read since I’ve just been brushing up on my chords from a similar situation and now my brain is exploding with the possibilities (well over a dozen for every key). OTOH now I know which chords Daft Punk used in a bunch of tracks lmao
IT TAKES A CREW TO KEEP THIS STUFF RUNNIN’, WELL DONE MATES!
Absolutely blows my mind how you get these things to do what you want. Awesome to see! :)
Well with this one it was a lot of team work ! And talented people
@@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER True but it got done. Whatever or whoever it takes. You have the idea and it gets done. I really admire that.
People would really be surprised by what is possible if they would just start. Never in a million years did I think I would design my own PCBs for analog audio gear, until one day I entertained the idea as a thought experiment. About six weeks later, I had a populated, working PCB with my name printed on it. I'm still flabbergasted at how easy it was once I decided to do it. Carl Sagan said “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” The beginning is really difficult, the rest is pretty easy.
@@SilentGloves it is an crazy feeling to have a weird idea and to make it happen. i did the same but with metal caasting and building a kiln
The funniest part... I've got calculators on my desk with more memory and processing power than that whole computer. Yet, they will never control a synthesizer with the swagger of that SWTPC. Really flippin' awesome, Sam & team! Thanks for sticking it out. Now I want to see if I can find one to try this! 👍
Well that's a proper use for a SWTPC 6809 in my opinion. Well done Sam! Cheers.
Really great video, lovely to see Pete, everyone should know a Pete, or in fact that Pete. With Adrian, and Dave it was almost like having a retro fest in one video.
Wonderful project Sam!
This is reminding me of when I wrote a BASIC program on a Sinclair ZX81 to use it as a sequencer and drum machine back in the early 80s. For the I/O port I used the Maplin 8255-based 24-bit I/O port kit, with Port A used to drive a DAC0801 chip to provide voltage control, Port B to drive a set of analogue drum voices (twin-t and noise generator - similar to the one you buit a while back on the channel), and Port C to drive an analogue multiplexer (a pair of CD4016 analogue switch chips) to provide polyphony via the DAC - Sadly the ZX81 wasn't fast enough to give reliable polyphony on more than 3 voices, but at least it could play simple 3-note chords, but it was amazing as a monophonic sequencer/arpeggiator.
Cool stuff - I think I still have most of the hardware in a box up in the attic (including the I/O board, though I know I don't have the ZX81 anymore), and now I'm tempted to dig it out and see about operating the I/O board from a parallel printer port on an old DOS laptop - that should be fun writing a more complex sequencer in QBasic or something similar :)
Even in the days of MIDI, it's still great fun to mess around with this old stuff :)
I think,my older sister(who lives in California,now)would be interested in this!I mean,how the whole synthesizer machine is set up,getting running,and working!I have a lot of respect for people who can do this!Cheer’s,here! 👍👍👍👍👍😮😮😮😮😮😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
Dud ye're real ispiration for musicians. As a musician I start to building my own analog synth just because of your videos and a lot of times something doesn't work as it should, the only thing that push me forward to finish it is just project as this one, so nothing is unpossible, just keep going on good work ye're amazing talent!😊
Sam, I've noticed it too.
A lot of the trouble can be traced to the nut on the end of the screwdriver 🙃
Man, your use of this old technology is simply fascinating. Those good old times when it was actually still possible to understand what a whole computer does, and to take influence on it, far deeper than just installing some dumb "app" on a shiny new iPhone. Please never stop making these videos! :)
I spent a none trivial part if my career coding for the 6809 so utmost respect!
I spent a few years myself writing 6809 code to talk to gas pumps. I was already good at it thanks to the CoCo, but getting paid to do it was really nice.
Imagine taking this entire setup you (and others!) made back in time and showing it to the creators of that computer! 🤯
This is super inspirational. No one starts out awesome at hardware tweaking like this (board-level repair), but get good because they made a bunch of mistakes and learned from them. I love that you have all these super capable, smart, helpful friends.
Wonderful! It's so great to see one of those magnificent old beasts learning new tricks.
Well done mate, you've done such an incredible thing here. It's so raw! Directly addressing memory banks like that! Wicked!
Really fun video. Loved the backstory to go with the walkthrough and the performance. Well done!
Man ur doing things that people would only dream of doing this is so awesome in so many levels and the ending was epic!!
Definitely one of his best projects so far
Good god man, this is awesome! You and the team are to sound synthesis what CuriousMarc is to the Apollo missions!
Considering the channel name, it's amazing how much Sam understands about computer coding and hardware! Maybe not quite enough though, as those 4 specialists really pulled together to make this work.
Brilliant machine, it’s got dual 8” floppies just like the Fairlight. There is also something magical about these green phosphorus CRT’s with character based interfaces.
Your tenacity and passion is contagious. A joy to watch and an inspiration!
I loved watching those experts in old computers talk through the troubleshooting; it's amazing that people understand this black magic!
Way back when that first video came out I whipped up a quick board layout to do just exactly this & emailed it to you… got no response, though - I figure it probably wound up in the spam bin. Nice to see it being pursued. I’m currently working on a similar project, but I’m building a machine from scratch with 6 each 68010 CPUs and a number of Z80s (how many I haven’t decided yet) as IO controllers. I’m probably going to hook up the NABU PC that I recently picked up as a front-end & pseudo-GUI for it.
Interesting! I never saw that? Mind sending again? Must have gone to junk. I check all of the emails but I sometimes forget to reply. However I do not remember seeing this at all
@@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER I’ve sent it; but I think I should do a board rev… my reading of the datasheets and schematics that are online indicates that I should be gating /CS with the system’s E clock… I think it’ll work, but it may exhibit high-frequency glitching (up in the megahertz range). Adding an OR gate should fix that…
@@darkwinter6028 thanks. I have my board layout nearly done to get fabbed. but I'll take a look! See if I can implement it at all. I'm intrigued to see what similarities there are! Sam. I'm off to bed now though not checked me mail yet.,,cheers
man... this thing is epic! can't believe how functional/capable it is, with all your supplemental gear as well.
Sam the jam at the end is sooooo good!!
Love the kicks!!
This is a fantastic story, and it has turned into an amazing piece of equipment, I love what you are able to do with the combo of live and sequenced - all via a serial terminal. Brilliant! I know some of those people, what a great team - hello Pete, hello Adrian, hello Dave. Great work Sam.
What a brilliant team effort. Make that sequencer as an iOS app! Would be great for improv riffs on the fly (I use an iPad with my modular for sequencing). The SWTPC has a little bit of Fairlight in it. Each voice card on a Fairlight has two 6809s for the audio processing [two channels per card]. Great video, and hats off to the others that helped. Awesome.
I remember when the Fairlight first came out, and how only the super-rich and successful musicians could afford it - nowadays the original Fairlight sample library is available free online and the entire system is massively outclassed by free DAW apps that we can run on our phones :)
Technology has come on in leaps and bounds in the last 40 years, but I'm still waiting for the flying cars they promised me when I was a little kid back in the late 60s :)
Incredible saga full of great work, thanks a lot to everyone. I love the way your sound design and control of your synthesis evolves over time!
Wow wow wow, what a huge effort to make it all work, kudos! Also thumbs up for all the detailed and vivid explanation on how it all works. Old computers are awesome :)
Absolutely brilliant! The application is very interesting but you also explain it in such a way that I reckon that basically anyone should be able to follow along! Very nicely done! :)
Oh my God this is so flipping cool this is the coolest thing I've ever seen anyone do with a commodore and I grew up on commodore
Hey, don't hammer yourself so much over it. You are living by your words of not being afraid to try. Which deserves much respect! I now you wont stop trying new projects, but if you call yourself an 'idiot' so harshly Im afraid others will misinterpret it and say 'well, if he's an idiot and I look up to him so much, then why would I even bother trying myself?' And you are not an idiot! ♥
There really are some very clever people kicking about. Great job 2x👍
I love old computers. In the late 90's, our family computer died. I probably could have fixed it, but parents wouldn't let me. So I bought a Commodore 64 at a garage sale. I learned so much from trying to get it to work, and coding my own shitty games. I ended up with a Sinclair 1000, a Texas Instruments TI 1000, and later a commodore 128 which I never got working. I'm feeling nostalgic now, maybe I'll peek on ebay for a C64
The project is incredible but those jams!!!!! So good! I always come back for those.
Every computer should look like that, its as sexy as hell. Hal 9000 vocoder next ? . great work from Sam and everyone involved. Good Job!
As much the oldest computer is our mind, Yes I like it!
But I really miss good old English rock!
Thank you for loving good old things! When everything was real and beautiful!
This vid is fantastic, combines the best of PC retrotech & synth scenes. Even has repair adventures! Just brilliant :)
Just brilliant. As for the organ church, "YoU DoN't KnOw WhAt YoU'rE dOiNg" (well, maybe this time it was a bit true 😜😂), but anyway I happily listened to your diatribe as your end music with much pleasure.
And don't worry, we wouldn't do any slice of what you're able to achieve. You're #1, that all you need to remember.
Great job Sam!! The sounds you were making just then were awesome!
I am currently building a retro 6502 computer and have been wondering what I might do with it when its finished. I think you have provided the answer -- this is way cooler than playing space invaders!!!
There are minor differences in the bus signals of the 6800/6809 vs the 6502, but the basic principle is the same. It's classic I/O port stuff from the late 70s / early 80s, and it's good for the soul.
Brilliant job, I always love your videos. They are like nothing else I have ever found. Keeping doing what you are doing ❤
Someone needs to come up with a word for when "legend" no longer cuts it. Until then... YOU LEGEND!
Amazing project :) Real fun to watch, must have been extremely satisfying finally seeing it working.
Wow!! The end result is so dope!!! All that to fix this lovely beast! ❤️
Absolute awesomeness - hats off to ya Sam and to those who helped - Yep it’s such a cool looking ‘sequencer’ and will look amazing with your set up when playing gigs. Great track to finish off with.
P E A C E : )
That jam at the end is really cool. Probably my fave one so far, nice job Sam!
BRILLIANT WORK! Like you always do. I LOVE this Channel! Also a big high five for Robert!
What a journey! I respect how much effort by multiple people went into resurrecting such ancient computing tech and teaching it new tricks. keeping old weird machines alive is important because there may not be many people soon that could even repair such things.
SWTPC and pooters of that era have naff ic sockets and iffy bus connectors. I tend to replace ALL ic sockets and inspect/ clean bus connectors (male and female). Ensure you have copies of all EPROM/ ROM devices AND any removable media you have.
Also have replacements for floppy drives.....
What a breathtaking jam!
you could have carried on for another 25 mins with your musical demo. brilliant!
After soldering in an IC, I always continuity test between each of it's adjacent pins.
I learned that from console repair streamers.
This is the top b*ll*cks- awesome stuff. If only Tangerine Dream had that kind of sequencing power in the 70’s - they’d surely have adopted on of these computers in their already awesome work. Top one Sam.
Prolly the most interesting vid for this month! Excellent - thanks!
This community is so wild and brilliant.
Where's Adrian of Adrian's Digital Basement when you need him, this is the second SWTPC I've seen thanks to his channel too
Dude, this is sick. Nice job of re-using a piece of history that probably would've been trashed!
Really lol'd at the "rage behind his eyes" comments. Seriously, I have great respect for people that own their mistakes. 👍
This was frikking amazing !! Awesome reuse of something so classic 😊
"Sam the Musical Time traveler" sounding really plausible now! lolz 🤣errr uhh 🤔
Fantastic collaboration - respect to all involved for making it a reality!
26:22 I thought for a moment you were playing "In the air tonight". Also, in the outro you didn't say we shouldn't be scared to try it, so in this case I think we SHOULD be scared to try it!
Look Mum Some Computer 😁
I need to like this 20 times!!! Thanks Sam! I love it!!
Sam - you've absolutely outdone yourself with this one. Fantastic!
So amazing! Finetuning idea: You could keep your DAC interface 8 bit (and your software compatible) and fine tune it to 16 bit resolution with 2 256-byte EEPROMs. Connect the EEPROMs' address buses to the 8-bit data bus and feed the high 8 bits of a 16-bit DAC from one EEPROM and the low 8 bits from the other EEPROM. Then program in a 16-bit value that corresponds, say, with a MIDI note number (or a 24-TET temperament perhaps) to each EEPROM location. You can keep sending 8 bit note numbers from your software and the EEPROMs convert the note numbers to DAC values. You could even take this further by using larger EEPROMs. For example if you have 4 extra ADDRESS bits in the EEPROMs, you could control those address bits with a 74HC573 register and have 16 different mappings for non-equal temperament experiments etc.
Thanks we did think about it when putting it together but in reality thays the job of the modular. When I put projects together I find that spending a lot of time on small features is usually lost in the big picture as they are in reality hardly used. Making something that is not a product is great because you don't have to over complicate it. Simplicity is key. Whole notes only need 7 bits and it has extra voltages you can use. There is no need for anything more. Thanks
@@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER Wow, you read my comment, I'm so pleased! Fair enough, I just felt that with 8 bits, some of the notes sound a bit out of tune (cause the DAC's response is linear and not logarithmic), and the extra 8 bits would allow you to fine tune the notes separately... you could even do that without changing a single bit in your software.. an extra EEPROM could give you up to 8 extra bits of fine tuning for each of your 256 8-bit values. But yeah.. I'm just an old 8 bit geezer, my artistry is in the digital chips, your artistry is in the music, and way better than mine. Thanks for the hands down best video of the year I've seen anywhere so far! Sorry for being so annoying!
Super cool! Dig the sound of that thing. 👏👏
OH MAN this whole setup has such a strong cold war aesthetic - I absolutely love it!!! :D I think it's my favourite project of yours so far.
bad bot!
I love this! My first computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer back in 1981. It was also based on the 6809. I still have it, and now you have me thinking that I should make a cartridge for it to turn it into a sequencer for my Eurorack gear.
What a fabulous story of collaboration between top enthusiasts via the power of the web and historic computing hobbies and passion. True community spirit and keeping the dream alive of this vintage technology.
What a sick cyberpunkish beat at 25:00
This is tremendous... great to see so many people involved in this project, even if you'd rather that hadn't been entirely necessary
MC6800L is an incredible chip. and this is an incredible system. Thank you for playing with it to such a degree and sharing it with us.
What a brilliant project and brilliantly done.
EXCELLENT EPISODE !!! - really really love it !! mistakes and all !
Brilliant video, well worth the 2 year wait.
Great to see this old gear getting a new life!
Simply beautiful!
Whoosh. Is the sound of this info flying over my head !
Still brilliant to see.
Look Mum No Computer can sure talk about computers! Fascinating, compelling viewing as always Sam. Seems you do know what you're doing!!
Crazy good road you went wandering down.
Look Mum . . COMPUTER!
This is amazing! Bravo
🤯🤯🤯 programming the sequencer reminds me of programming ye olde Boss DR-55 back in ye olde days... I kinda miss that thing, actually...
Lovely Sounds at the end x
Loving the fact that you fired up the Moog in this one. The 15 is my dreamsynth, though I have a 10. Cheers!
sadly not a moog but a club of the knobs copy! but still great :D
@@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER to be honest I'm surprised Kazike delivered it. COTK is one of the least reputable builders in 5u and super selective about his clientele. The sound sure fooled me though from the intro. I thought you had a Moog.
Reminded me of when I played a Star Trek Game on a college computer in 1974, using a large Dot Matrix Printer (no monitor) and Keyboard. You went into various grids and fought Klingon Ships. Computers (Tape) were slow back then, even thought the game was less than 100 MB in file size. The college closed the terminal that I used! =(
100MB. Thats an enormous filesize for 1974.
@@higihups Sorry, I meant 100 KB. You are correct. I actually found the game online a few years ago, that is how I remember the file size (or thought I remembered). The IT People shut my terminal off, due to computer overload! I remember taking Computer Programming back then, and they showed use an IBM Card Reader! Good times!
Those Star Trek games were usually about 8-12K in size, needing a few more K to store the map info.
Sounds like the soundtrack from "Terminator"!!!
Adrian from Adrians digital Basement also have one SWTPCs.
i love how the tuning is on the sequencer converter box. the off a little tuning makes it sound spooky futuristic. i switched to microtonal midi guitar 8 years ago and never looked back
Awesome! I've been thinking about designing a computer-controlled Minimoog to use as a sound card for the computer.
Nice that this is running that well and doing something that it probably wasn’t meant to do. I also interacted with Bailey as I got a remex paper tape reader and some floppy’s including probably some software for this machine. I’m eventually going to archive them all and the paper tape.
Aaah you got the tape reader! I had a word with him on that ad what we agreed on included that 😂 but he said he sold it. I travelled all the way there and he threw that bombshell in! Hope you are enjoying it haha! It's all good it just made me laugh! But every cloud has a silver lining! As if I didn't go I wouldn't have bought this haha
@@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER it has found a great home as I have restored it and it’s now the primary I/O storage on my 1973 data general nova 800 minicomputer with a series 30 Diablo disk drive as my hard drive.
I wanted that 6809 of yours but you beat me to it.
@@jaut-76 nice!good to hear!
@@jaut-76 and sorry bout the 6809!
@@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER no worries I got a 6800 (previous model) yesterday so all is well