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House full o' junk...
Jan. 21st, 2009 01:08 amFor once, I relaxed this evening and watched The Pianist. Nothing like a cheerful film to set the mood :) (It is, actually, a beautifully done film with some stunning direction, but it's not exactly Totoro). And I read the manuals for Cubase a bit. Earlier I sold a lens to a man who looked worryingly like I expect i might when I'm in my 50s. He designs advertising and used to work for the importer for Kramer and Schecter guitars.
I did get more studio tidying done, and part of this was finding the Dolphin Apollo speech synthesizer I bought many moons ago for music stuff. It's a serial device and basically reads what it's sent; what I can't figure out is if it has any pitch or cadence controls. It has a headphone out, I shall see what the levels are like on this later and might see if I can mod it to a line level output.
To make it talk, I need a terminal app and something with a serial port. My old solution was the Toshiba Siani rescued for me; it's under some drawers and a bit bulky. I thought perhaps the HP200LX Hirez gave me would work, but it has a female serial port and I needed male (or a "whatever is on the back of the device 25 pin to male 9 pin"). I remembered the Cambridge Z88 probably had one, but same issue there. Ultimately I reckon a cheap USB to serial lead will do the trick on my Mac, but I wanted to see if it worked.
So then Jen reminds me that there are more ancient laptops in the pile; I find an old Toshiba T1900CS or somesuch which is smaller than the T1200 (also, the T1200's PSU is MIA) and set it up. After some fuss trying to remember how to use Windows 3.1 without a mouse I get it working.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the studio, my t.c. electronics FireworX is due a firmware update. You may remember I posted a "wanted, SRAM cards" post. None were forthcoming; expensive little buggers they are. t.c. want £110 for a 1MB card with the "free" update on; a used 2MB card I saw on eBay went for lots, and the BIN ones are high.
I had seen some Cisco ones, so I asked if there were any Cisco devices liable to be getting ditched. Upon which, Jen reminds me of the little router we have lying about which I've tried to throw away on several occasions but keep failing to do so in case it's useful for something (to the extent of trying to harvest tiny screws from it once). Lo and behold, there's a bloody SRAM card in the back!
4MB though. I'm not sure the FireworX can support that, the manual says 2MB. And tbh, the patches are so small I'm amazed it needs that.
Tomorrow no doubt I'll be trying to work out how to format the damn thing!
I did get more studio tidying done, and part of this was finding the Dolphin Apollo speech synthesizer I bought many moons ago for music stuff. It's a serial device and basically reads what it's sent; what I can't figure out is if it has any pitch or cadence controls. It has a headphone out, I shall see what the levels are like on this later and might see if I can mod it to a line level output.
To make it talk, I need a terminal app and something with a serial port. My old solution was the Toshiba Siani rescued for me; it's under some drawers and a bit bulky. I thought perhaps the HP200LX Hirez gave me would work, but it has a female serial port and I needed male (or a "whatever is on the back of the device 25 pin to male 9 pin"). I remembered the Cambridge Z88 probably had one, but same issue there. Ultimately I reckon a cheap USB to serial lead will do the trick on my Mac, but I wanted to see if it worked.
So then Jen reminds me that there are more ancient laptops in the pile; I find an old Toshiba T1900CS or somesuch which is smaller than the T1200 (also, the T1200's PSU is MIA) and set it up. After some fuss trying to remember how to use Windows 3.1 without a mouse I get it working.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the studio, my t.c. electronics FireworX is due a firmware update. You may remember I posted a "wanted, SRAM cards" post. None were forthcoming; expensive little buggers they are. t.c. want £110 for a 1MB card with the "free" update on; a used 2MB card I saw on eBay went for lots, and the BIN ones are high.
I had seen some Cisco ones, so I asked if there were any Cisco devices liable to be getting ditched. Upon which, Jen reminds me of the little router we have lying about which I've tried to throw away on several occasions but keep failing to do so in case it's useful for something (to the extent of trying to harvest tiny screws from it once). Lo and behold, there's a bloody SRAM card in the back!
4MB though. I'm not sure the FireworX can support that, the manual says 2MB. And tbh, the patches are so small I'm amazed it needs that.
Tomorrow no doubt I'll be trying to work out how to format the damn thing!
