Fairlight-CMI

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the answer. I bought a rev6.03 this summer and I also looked at the 9.34
upgrade benefits. But I'm a collector and when I saw all the modifications that were
needed, I changed my mind. To me, the rev 9.34 is a completly other machine and
the upgrade process involves too much hardware changes... But I'm not using my
CMI in a professional context, so I understand that other people need a fast and easy
to use machine.

Regards.

    Laurent.

Hi Guys,

I'm writing this just to clear up a few points regarding Fairlight 
III upgrades. Yes there are quite a few modifications done, namely to 
the channel cards, memory, sampler, and digital motherboard. However, 
these are all cards in the digital domain. There is absolutely no 
difference in sound quality from a rev 5 or a rev 9 machine. Also, 
apart from all the other advantages such as a fivefold increase in 
speed, numerous software enhancements etc, the main difference is the 
ability to acces virtually any SCSI hard or optical drive up to 4 
Gbytes. With rev 5 or 6, the largest drive used was a 380 Mbyte 
Hitachi, or the more usual NDR or Maxtor 140 or 190 Mbyte drives. 
Nobody makes or re-furbishes these drives (nor have they done for 
years), so unfortunately, when these drives die (and they've been 
spinning now for about 17-18 years) your CMI III will die too. If you 
want more information, check out the hardware overview on my site: 
www.horizontal.co.uk 

Also, if anyone is interested, I'm performing any upgrades to 
revision 9, including a 4 Gbyte drive full of amazing libraries, full 
set of new manuals, firmware, software, 3 months warranty, for a 
knock-down price.

Up to Christmas, instead of the more usual GBP 2,750, an upgrade to 
rev 9.34 will cost only GBP 1,750. Your mainframe (the only bit you 
need to send) gets a service too...

I hope this is helpful,

regards,

Peter Wielk Horizontal Productions London

email: horiprod@blueyonder.co.uk   








 
> Thanks for the answer. I bought a rev6.03 this summer and I also 
looked at the 9.34
> upgrade benefits. But I'm a collector and when I saw all the 
modifications that were
> needed, I changed my mind. To me, the rev 9.34 is a completly other 
machine and
> the upgrade process involves too much hardware changes... But I'm 
not using my
> CMI in a professional context, so I understand that other people 
need a fast and easy

> to use machine.
> 
> Regards.
> 
>     Laurent.

Hi Guys (again)

Peter Wielk from Horizontal here again. It seems when Yahoo isn't 
eating messages I've spent 40 minutes writing, it's making my email 
address unreadable.. 

It's actually: horiprod(at)blueyonder(dot)co(dot)uk

It's one of the reasons I stick with advert free broadband...

regards,

PW

PS: I was in Peter Gabriels Realworld studio last friday. Quite 
amazing to hear all the samples fromm "Passion" coming out of his 
series III. I'll post some photos of the studio later......

Hi Peter,

I understand your point of view. And I agree that an updated fairlight is
faster and have access to a wider set of scsi devices. However, from a
collector point of view, I do think that keeping the older machines alive
and running with their original specs is worthwhile.

Personnaly, I would be interested to buy the 32Mb memory board to fit in
my Series III. Could you tell the price of the WFM32 board for the yahoo group
members ?

Regards.

    Laurent.

Hi Laurent,

You obviously didn't read the hardware overview on my site as 
suggested! With an older rev 5 machine, you can't access any more 
than 14 Mbytes of RAM. This is a limit of the 68000 processor in your 
machine. An upgraded machine has a 68020 processor which can address 
up to 32 Mbytes. You can run a WFM-32 board in an older rev 5 
machine, but you can only use 14 Mbytes of it....

I don't have any of these boards at the moment. We built the first 
batch of 20, and they sold pretty quickly. I'm trying to contact the 
designer, who worked for Fairlight in Oz to rustle up some more, but 
since they went bust (again), he's been hard to find. I'll keep the 
group informed. 

Regards,

Peter Wielk


PS: A bit of friendly advice if you're keeping your machine "as is": 
Buy up a few NDR 1140 or Maxtor 1140 hard drives. The rest of the 
machine is built to last, but the hard drives will definitely go. 
They will start making noises, and you'll start getting "error #246 
read error". ALLWAYS BACKUP. "If your data isn't physically in two 
other places, it doesn't exist"....








> I understand your point of view. And I agree that an updated 
fairlight is
> faster and have access to a wider set of scsi devices. However, 
from a
> collector point of view, I do think that keeping the older machines 
alive
> and running with their original specs is worthwhile.
> 
> Personnaly, I would be interested to buy the 32Mb memory board to 
fit in
> my Series III. Could you tell the price of the WFM32 board for the 
yahoo group

> members ?
> 
> Regards.
> 
>     Laurent.

Hi Peter,

My CMI has only got 8Mb of waveform memory. Would it be cheaper to
buy three CMI-39 boards or one WFM-32 board ?

Regards.

    Laurent.

Hi Laurent,

It would be much cheaper to buy 3 x 2 Mbyte cards. I have used cards 
for GBP 60 each, I think this is about 85-90 Euros, plus postage.

I hope this is useful,

regards,

Peter Wielk



 
> My CMI has only got 8Mb of waveform memory. Would it be cheaper to
> buy three CMI-39 boards or one WFM-32 board ?