CYGN-B

[Greg]

Scholarly jokes welcome here. Other humor, other threads please. Great history and discussion, thank you contributors. Update coming soon.

[cfavreau]

A blue laser Hertz 1.42 times as much as a red laser.

[swamidog]

A blue laser Hertz 1.42 times as much as a red laser.

someone on instagram with that tagline just started following me....

[laserist]

Hey dude, if you like it or not you're family...

[Greg]

For the next act, here's a railway spike and a roofing tine in Lambda Walks Away From Pi.

[Greg]

Here's the four channels of the system that should soon begin to look a lot like Laserium. Four projectors, four ILDA output ports, four belas, and also the two joysticks. I used to perform Tank, though not for an audience. If I remember correctly, a technique used heavily in this number is that one hand would keep the joystick performing a sustained stable orbit against the circular mask, and the other hand would ride the joystick gain knob. I haven't seen the circular mask deal on any other analog non centering joystick. Things like the TRS-80 analog joysticks, the sticks from, say, a Panasonic WJ-MX50 NTSC effects board, and also the new ones in the photo go so wide an unconstrained arc that you can feel the pots, which is no good.

I was able to use some connector brackets found among Brian's gifts to get a good solid feel of the circular mask on two sticks. You bet I'm excited about getting the four beams going on the sticks again like in the old days .

The tedious part to all of this is building the bela to ilda interfaces. Perhaps I'm not the first ever to feel foolish for not knowing about wire wrap for so long. One can see the New Old Spaghetti Factory (Canadian regional history joke) on a vintage royal blue and gold Vector board. I have looked at how to make a PC board and it certainly is easier than I thought, and time learning that would be time well spent. But I'm part way into the wire wrap thing, and it is fun and part of a long and interesting tradition. Speaking of which, That pretty little caddy of cable looks like it should have some backstory. I remember Brian posted a photo of it when we discussed Pastoleum Tomato and Basil Spray On Epoxy Sauce. Not sure if I remember seeing a shot of that same caddy in the Gods Of Light video.

As far as the betamax tape format, Brian is correct but I don't remember how we fit 4 tracks (music-left, music-right, 352-data, and digital-scan tracks) onto the tape. It may be that we used the "normal" stereo tracks for the music, the "high-fidelity" track (video PCM out) for 352 data and the video track for the scan data.

Ron: Thank you for posting the ADAT info. That is a newer version of a document I got from the Zeiss key, which by the way, many of those files are corrupt, so I don't have a reliable full archive of the documentation packages at this time.

I looked at pictures of the Sony Super Betamax Hi-Fi Model SL-HF350 and others, but I can't see any that have stereo audio out, and then extra audio outs for the Hi-Fi. What does your deck have on the back? Would you recognize the sound of 351 data if you played a tape and some came out?

[lasermaster1977]

Making great progress, Greg and it is looking good.

Are you or have you thought of using selectable degrees of RC damping on the joystick XY axes? I always preferred and only ever used non-centering joysticks with switch selectable degrees of damping from none to a lot, but I never thought of using a circular mask. What a neat idea!

Wire wrapping those blue Vector boards is a right of passage in and of itself. I done too many to count.

[ronhip]

There were damping circuits added to each joystick, adjustable with a pot on the top of the joystick box. VERY useful! You can see those on the panel diagram below (don't know who did this great diagram, but I can't take credit. Maybe Brian?)

Ron

Great suggestion. A little dampening would smooth the beams' paths, instead of following every muscular twitch. On the other hand, too much dampening would cause an undesirable delayed response, perhaps rounding off corners of movement.
I was always annoyed by the glitches that were caused when the pots passed through the 'dead' center point of their range, while making circular movements around the mask. Pretty sure that your RC suggestion would eliminate that.
David Cooper added an variable RC pot to our beam torquer, so that he could create a nice smooth fadeout at the end of songs, instead of manually using the beam torquer's pot.

[ronhip]

Greg,

Here's a photo of the back of the deck. Maybe either the 352 data was recorded on the HiFi video track or on the other audio track you see. I have some vague memory of both standard and HiFi audio being available, but will need the manual for this deck to figure that out.

The manual I downloaded does not seem to match the output back-panel. Note the video-out RCA plug is labeled "Video/PCV". I still can't figure out how we got all those channels squeezed in there!

Ron

Here's the four channels of the system that should soon begin to look a lot like Laserium. Four projectors, four ILDA output ports, four belas, and also the two joysticks. I used to perform Tank, though not for an audience. If I remember correctly, a technique used heavily in this number is that one hand would keep the joystick performing a sustained stable orbit against the circular mask, and the other hand would ride the joystick gain knob. I haven't seen the circular mask deal on any other analog non centering joystick. Things like the TRS-80 analog joysticks, the sticks from, say, a Panasonic WJ-MX50 NTSC effects board, and also the new ones in the photo go so wide an unconstrained arc that you can feel the pots, which is no good.

I was able to use some connector brackets found among Brian's gifts to get a good solid feel of the circular mask on two sticks. You bet I'm excited about getting the four beams going on the sticks again like in the old days .

The tedious part to all of this is building the bela to ilda interfaces. Perhaps I'm not the first ever to feel foolish for not knowing about wire wrap for so long. One can see the New Old Spaghetti Factory (Canadian regional history joke) on a vintage royal blue and gold Vector board. I have looked at how to make a PC board and it certainly is easier than I thought, and time learning that would be time well spent. But I'm part way into the wire wrap thing, and it is fun and part of a long and interesting tradition. Speaking of which, That pretty little caddy of cable looks like it should have some backstory. I remember Brian posted a photo of it when we discussed Pastoleum Tomato and Basil Spray On Epoxy Sauce. Not sure if I remember seeing a shot of that same caddy in the Gods Of Light video.



Ron: Thank you for posting the ADAT info. That is a newer version of a document I got from the Zeiss key, which by the way, many of those files are corrupt, so I don't have a reliable full archive of the documentation packages at this time.

I looked at pictures of the Sony Super Betamax Hi-Fi Model SL-HF350 and others, but I can't see any that have stereo audio out, and then extra audio outs for the Hi-Fi. What does your deck have on the back? Would you recognize the sound of 351 data if you played a tape and some came out?

[Greg]

I still can't figure out how we got all those channels squeezed in there!

Yeah, really! I wonder if the audio in jacks have been internally rewired to serve as a second pair of audio outs, and that's why there is a label stating exactly what the deck is.