Fairlight-CMI

Hi all,

On my quest for upgrades I found a person who could develop some new
hardware.

What are we talking about? Well, how about:

>a floppy drive replacement 
>with flashcard slot, a few buttons to navigate 
>through the flashcard contents, LCD  

There are more possibilities! So share your thoughts on what you want!

So there is the issue of money.........
Well Development would cost ten thousands of euro's... That would be
too much I think. However, Read this part:

>Even a working prototype 
>doesn't get you far if you haven't taken care of 
>CE/FCC compliance, packing, manuals/installation 
>instructions, compatibility with other products 
>and compliance with local laws. A whole bunch of 
>money is burned in such paperwork if you want to 
>go professional. On the other hand, a whole lot 
>of money can be saved if you pay me for a design 
>service, and take care of all that stuff yourself.

So my thought: Let's NOT get professional, skip the paperwork etc. 

As for myself: I would love to have the possibility to to replace both
disks (Or add the new hardware next to the original floppydrives)
booting from a modern Flashcard and having all the sound data on a
flashcard!
This makes it also possible to put sounds online or exchange sounds
and songs with other users via internet.... Also it's very easy to
backup all data on a DVD or CD.

Now about this person I found, look at this:

http://www.jschoenfeld.de/indexe.htm

The product is called "Catweasel"

Read this about Catweasel and 8" drives:

"The  Catweasel IV floppy controller product is produced in Germany by
Jens Schönfeld of Individual Computers. It is sold by some US
companies. This product is primarily intended to support Atari systems
by providing a floppy controller and Atari-type hardware to support
Atari emulation on Windows-type PC's. But many people are using these
for 8-inch floppy drives, or to read and write 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch
Mac and Apple disk, or TRS-80 disks. And if you can program, this may
be an option for running 8-inch drives with weird formats on a Windows
PC."

As found on this location:

http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/s_drives.html

Well, it surely has my interest. Another good part: I live very close
to this person. (Aprox 25 minutes in my car.)

Let me know your thoughts on this subject........
Also: Who wants to help? (Providing information like docs etc.)
As for me: I'm willing and able to put alot of time and effort in this....

That's it for now.

Cheers,

Peter Kersten

This is the complete eMail reply I just got from Jens:

At 12:52 16.09.2007 +0200, you wrote:

>My direct question: How much money are we talking about?

That depends on the kind of project you're 
looking for. If you just need a serial link 
between a Fairlight and today's computers and if 
you can program software yourself, it's about a few hundred EUR.

If you're looking for a floppy drive replacement 
with flashcard slot, a few buttons to navigate 
through the flashcard contents, LCD display - 
that's a few tenthousand EUR only in development 
(meaning the first working prototype), and even more for a production run.

I need to know exactly what you want to do, what 
the target market is, what the financing model 
would be, who is going to make the production, 
product names, rights, liabilty - making a new 
product is a whole lot of paperwork before you 
can actually start. Specifying and testing are 
crucial things that most people just ignore when 
they dream of a product. Even a working prototype 
doesn't get you far if you haven't taken care of 
CE/FCC compliance, packing, manuals/installation 
instructions, compatibility with other products 
and compliance with local laws. A whole bunch of 
money is burned in such paperwork if you want to 
go professional. On the other hand, a whole lot 
of money can be saved if you pay me for a design 
service, and take care of all that stuff yourself.

ciao,
-- 
Jens Schönfeld