Fairlight-CMI

Peter,

Greetings.  I am a member of the Fairlight Yahoo Group and was truly impressed and honored that you would write and join as a member.  Colin has done a terrific service to the community of users all over the world who have this resource to share information with.

Very interestingly I seem to also know one your former employees - a gentleman by the name of Simon Peters who worked at the Rushcutters Bay studio at one time - quite a character and I think an overall good man.  He befriended me via e-mail and was tremendous help to me when I purchased by Series IIx machine some years ago.  In the interim since then I have also acquired a Series III. as well as a Voicetracker (which I got from Simon incidentally).  I unfortunately have not had much time to play with the Voicetracker as I need a PAL to NTSC convertor to view the video output properly on the displays I have available to use.  

I feel blessed to have acquired 2 of the greatest electronic musical instruments of all time - blessed and tremendously lucky.  The internet explosion with resources such as eBay has afforded an opportunity to own the truly great "Dream Gear" from the 1980s.

Mainly I wanted to contact you to say thank you for being amazing - thank you and Kim Ryrie and all at Fairlight for bringing the technology of music so far forward and with such a clairvoyance of thinking.  I still remember the first time I heard the CMI - on Peter Gabriel's "Security" album, Trevor Horn's work (ZTT), Kate Bush and so many, many more -  and how truly groundbreaking that was at the time - and I feel still is.


Best Regards,
Paul Haggard



-------------- Original message from Peter Vogel <peter.vogel@icetv.info>: -------------- 


> 
> Thrilled to discover this group which Peter Connolly introduced me to. 
> I'm amazed there's still so many Fairlight CMIs operating! 
> 
> I never did own one, although I have some interesting memorabilia in my 
> attic. I have the one and only prototype of a product called 
> "Lightwriter" which was the CMI processor and graphics boards jammed 
> into a case wwith the CRT and lightpen, dual 8" floppies and word 
> processing software. I don't dare plug it in. The power supply is a 
> separate box you can hardly lift (I think it was a 50 amps 5V linear 
> supply). 
> 
> I also have one of the few Voicetrackers made. Does anyone else have 
> one of them? 
> 
> I think there's a source of pdfed user manuals and service manuals out 
> there, but if not, I have one of each for the Series III, the service 
> manual in particular would be very useful if anyone's trying to fix a 
> board or build a substitute. 
> 
> And to answer an old thread from a couple of years ago: yes, the 
> QDOS operating system was derived from the Exorciser, licensed from 
> Motorola. 
> 
> Any obscure historial questions, I'll try and remember.... 
> 
> Peter Vogel 
> ICE Personal Digital Television 
> 30 Adeline St, Faulconbridge 2776 
> Australia 
> Tel: 02 4751 8735 
> Mob: 0410 192 006 
> Fax: 02 4751 2601 
> email: peter.vogel@icetv.info 
> 
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> Yahoo! Groups Links 
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