Laser Illusions Graphics Workstation Alphalite

[telmnstr]

This is an odd one.

There used to be a company called Laser Illusions that made what was the only real affordable laser control hardware/software combos. There was some hackery going on with sound cards, and there was Pangolin LSD1000 on the Amiga 500/2000.

I bought this from Rick. It worked fine on a Windows ME PC I had at my office. 100% fine. I threw away the computer.

I broke it out again at some point and the output was mostly a noisy / line. I don't think the computer was talking to it correctly, but I'm not sure. I pinged Rick but never really got much of a resolve.

The unit was picky about the parallel port, not being compatible with the standard crusty PC port, of the high speed fancy port, but only working in the middle mode. (ECP I think? Not EPP and not standard.)

So, I'm offering it as a historical piece. I think most of the parts are pretty common, so if there is an electronics issue I guess it should be easy to fix. I had it running a pair of Accel 128's amps (I think that is what they were called) feeding G120 galvos or something that were non-PD. Never had a PCAOM or working AOM. Was using it with an ALC 60x and then a Spectra Physics 6 watt system that I sold on here.

I tried getting the unit to work recently before an event, but had very little time. I was trying to run it under Windows XP using Allowio to grant it permission to use the address space for the parallel port (which does work IIRC.) It didn't work but I couldn't spend much time on it. I didn't get far with it, maybe the line again.

So anyways, it's offered up here as a conversation piece, a potential for repair, or to the person collecting every known piece of laser show hardware ever.

There was a million versions of software for it, and I downloaded a good chunk of versions which I'll put online. It was somewhat confusing, it never had all the features that it was supposed to have, but at the time for the money it was what there was.

Included:
The Alphalite XC or something (the name kept changing) unit in original plastic box it came in.
The original Jameco AC power supply
The original CD-R disc with printed label of the software
Pointer to every copy of the software I could get through Archive.org.

Fifty bucks!? Maybe trade it for an unused 445nm blue diode?

Here are some pictures of it running back in the day:



Some other random pics from those days in here: http://users.757.org/~ethan/pics/lasers/

[absolom7691]

Those look like Intellibeams on your truss there... You got any of those for sale???

[telmnstr]

Those look like Intellibeams on your truss there... You got any of those for sale???

No, I got rid of them a while ago. They were Intellabeam 400s. Lasers/lighting is just a hobby. It's kind of odd, all of that is in something of a server room I had with co-located computers of friends and some business stuff. Access to 3 phase power was a bonus for the laser. The lights are hanging from a bar suspended from the ceiling.

Right before a hurricane, best shot of ibeams:
http://users.757.org/~ethan/pics/gee...t/IMG_1128.JPG


At some point I hope to play with some trackspots. I always loved HES products and trackspots seem to be lightweight and cheap to run. Currently I own four Roboscan 1220s and two Mad Lighting PowerScan 150s.The Roboscans are neat and pretty nicely engineered, but very heavy and pretty power hungry. I looked into trying to move to electronic ballasts to shed the transformers for the MSR-1200s but it was too expensive for something that I really only use to bring to a couple of events I help with (unpaid.) With my love for HES stuff, I secretly wish I could trade two of the Roboscans for Cyberlights. In time.

The Intellabeam 700s were more powerful. The 400s were the earlier ones. I never had issues running DMX-512 but people complained about it. I had the LED controller at first, then later an LCD controller. In addition to running DMX512 from a LPR2DMX dongle.

Good times.

[Yag]

*heheh* I'm rapidly becoming the person with every known piece of laser hardware ever, but I already have two working ones of these unfortunately!

I'll have to see what software versions I've got stored!

[kecked]

do you have a working svs scanner system!

[absolom7691]

I have the the galvo motors, amp board and cpu strobe/clock speed circuit, but I never did get the damn thing working.

[kecked]

I did get two of them working. The hard part was glueing the flag on the plastic shafts and adjusting the high and low damping.

[Displaser]

Wow...the SVS kit.

Definitely "back of the magazine" stuff. Had one, partially built, put away and went to a friend many years ago. Never saw one working.

[absolom7691]

Wow...the SVS kit.

Definitely "back of the magazine" stuff. Had one, partially built, put away and went to a friend many years ago. Never saw one working.

That was exactly where I got with mine. Got the boards mostly finished but not all the way and then I lost the energy to do it. That and MWK was selling G-124s for $200 ea and I got a sweet discount for working there. Even running open loop, G-124s were capable of 6~8K (at the time, 8K was sweet for only a few hundred bucks). The SVS kit went in the closet after I bought those and my Laser Illusions PC-Lite

[Displaser]

That was exactly where I got with mine. Got the boards mostly finished but not all the way and then I lost the energy to do it. That and MWK was selling G-124s for $200 ea and I got a sweet discount for working there. Even running open loop, G-124s were capable of 6~8K (at the time, 8K was sweet for only a few hundred bucks). The SVS kit went in the closet after I bought those and my Laser Illusions PC-Lite

How this for sychronicity? I did the the exact same thing, right down to the new/surplus G-124's from MWK and Graphic Workstation from Rick (GWS). Got the mirrors, mounts and accel 124 amps from Greg at LSDI... yep, sweetest deal out there at the time for a hobbiest.