Fairlight-CMI

I actually bought *two* of those 32Meg boards. :-)  One for my 6.03
machine, and one "just in case."

I can't recall how much memory the 6.03 machine came with; I *think*
it was less than the full 14MB.

I really liked the idea of someone creating a new board for this old
machine, and I wanted to support that.  I also figured that with 1
DIMM, it would run a whole lot cooler than that giant pile of
1980's-era DRAMs.  It would certainly be a lot easier on the power supply.

It turned out to be fortuitous that I bought a second 32M board, since
a year or so later I wound up buying a Rev9 machine from a guy in LA.
 I put the second board in it.

I was kind of Fairlight-crazy then.  Not only did I buy the Rev9, I
also bought a non-working Rev6 (this one I *knew* was non-working when
I got it) to use as a spares machine.  And I bought a IIx that had
belonged to Herbie Hancock and Bill Laswell.  The flight cases for it
are coooool - lots of tour stickers and shipping labels from all over
the world.  And the keyboard has a couple of cigarette burns! :-)

Joe


--- In Fairlight-CMI@yahoogroups.com, "Peter Connelly"
<peter.yahoogroups@...> wrote:
>
> If you don't mind me asking, why did you get a 32 Meg board when you
have a
> 6.03 machine? Do you intend to upgrade it and while these boards were
> available, decide to grab one while you could?
> 
> Cheers,
> Peter
> 
> On 12/18/06, tama_rat <britt@...> wrote:
> >
> >   Hi,
> >
> > I bought the Series III machine that came from PUK studios through the
> > Greg Holmes site back in 1998 or 1999. I still have it, and it still
> > works. It's a Rev6.
> >
> > Sadly, it didn't come with any DM samples or sequences. The only
> > indicator that it came from PUK is a box of floppies labelled
"TOMME PUK."
> >
> > I bought it from a seller in Sweden, who crated it and shipped it to
> > me in the US.
> >
> > Getting it working was kind of a nightmare. When I received it, I was
> > really excited, as I had wanted a CMI since the 80's. I'd never
> > actually used one before.
> >
> > So, I hooked everything up, turned it on, and it booted. I couldn't
> > believe how loud those fans were! (Were they that loud when new?)
> >
> > It booted right up, and I could drive the UI with the keyboard &
> > G-pen. I loaded a sound, hit a key on the keyboard, and - nothing. I
> > explored the manual and the UI for hours, but couldn't get a sound to
> > come out. I hooked up external keyboards via MIDI, but still nothing.
> >
> > This is where I guess most people would give up. Fortunately, I'm a
> > computer engineer, so I started taking things apart and poking around
> > with a logic probe and oscilloscope. I could tell when I hit a key on
> > the keyboard that data was coming out, and from the timing on the
> > 'scope I could see that it was 31.25kbps - same as MIDI. I'd later
> > figure out that that the Series III music keyboard just sends MIDI,
> > even though it has that non-MIDI connector.
> >
> > So then I started studying the MIDI board on that back of the Series
> > III. For each of the MIDI ins, I could see MIDI data going into each
> > of the optoisolators that are used to interface those ports - but
> > nothing coming out of any of them. As unlikely as it seemed, it
> > looked like ALL of the optos were toast.
> >
> > I had a few spare optos from some MIDI project a few years ago, so I
> > swapped out the one for the music keyboard - and that fixed it! YES!
> >
> > (I had to swap all of the optos to get the MIDI ports working, too.)
> >
> > Once it was working, I found out that one of the voice boards was
> > dead. Man, like I needed that. I had spent a small fortune on this
> > thing, and it was hosed.
> >
> > The silver lining, I guess, was that when I called Fairlight in LA to
> > look for a service manual, the guy I wound up talking to was Andrew
> > Brent. As I laid out my debugging tale to him, I guess I convinced
> > him that I was worthy of a service manual, so he gave me one. Andrew,
> > if you see this, thanks. I really appreciated that. With those
> > schematics, I was able to fix the dead voice board (it was a bad
op-amp).
> >
> > I of course complained to the guy in Sweden who sold me the Series
> > III. He wound up sending me another drive full of dance voices to try
> > to make up for the problems. Who knows what happened to the machine
> > that zapped it that bad. I probably should have been more upset than
> > I was, but hey, I fixed it.
> >
> > The machine now has a Horizontal Productions 32MB RAM board in it
> > (though it only sees 14MB, since it's a Rev6).
> >
> > Joe
> >
> > --- In Fairlight-CMI@yahoogroups.com
<Fairlight-CMI%40yahoogroups.com>,
> > "Lars Johansson" <lasse@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Actually, they never used the Wave 2.2. It was a Wave 2.
> > >
> > > At the time when DM bought the Wave 2 they was promised the
> > possibility to connect it to a Waveterm/Wavecomputer but that never
> > happened. Instead PPG brought out the Wave 2.2 in 1982 which could
> > connect to the Waveterm.
> > >
> > > DM got so dissapointed after spending a ( for them at least ) huge
> > amount of money that they started using the Synclavier instead.
> > >
> > > Later, they got the Wave 2.3 ( and possibly the Waveterm B ). On
> > Violator they used the Wave 2.3.
> > >
> > > The Fairlight was used at PUK studios in Denmark when recording
> > Music for the Masses. Afaik they never bought one.
> > >
> > > LJ
> > >
> > > http://medlem.spray.se/waveterm/LJLab2006/
> > >
> > > ----- Ursprungligt meddelande -----
> > > Fr�n: "jbgrahame" <jbgrahame@>
> > > Till: <Fairlight-CMI@yahoogroups.com
<Fairlight-CMI%40yahoogroups.com>>
> > > Skickat: den 15 december 2006 21:52
> > > �mne: [Fairlight-CMI] Re: Fairlight series III and depeche mode
> > >
> > >
> > > Producer Daniel Miller was heavily into the Synclavier, not the
> > > Fairlight. Black Celebration is absolutely chock-full of Sync FM
sounds.
> > >
> > > In fact, the distinctive FM synthesis of the Synclavier was all over
> > > Construction Time Again, Some Great Reward and Black
Celebration. And
> > > even back when they recorded Construction Time, they were using
a PPG
> > > Wave 2.2, Emulator I and the Sync.
> > >
> >
> > 
> >
>