"There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun." Pablo Picasso
That's great, thanks Brian! I should have enough info to build the DigiMAX (attached images) but multiple options are a plus.
One thing I would ask is, at what ever time you are ready to send the control panel, please check with me before shipping, as I will be out of province for a few weeks soon, and not being here to receive such an important item is a situation I'd like to avoid.
"There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun." Pablo Picasso
I'm in awe. Thank you again for your generosity. This will complement an exciting and related hardware project I will post updates on when I return from travel in a few weeks. That really looks great. An icon and legend of all synthdom. Is there a standard supply voltage for the illuminated controls? I found this photo (attached) of part of this.
It appears now safe to relabel the MYSTRY routine to DOGLOID. I changed the seed value globally applied to the temporary storage ram prior to cycling the routine, and this time something was revealed (photo attached). This is an exciting result. The routine is working, and what seems to have been recovered is not "the dogloids", but a dogloid engine, the function of whose control registers should be possible to discover.
The other photo shows a view of the temporary storage ram as the routine is running.
The EAO switch bulbs were 24 volt. The Lever Lite III bulbs were 28 volt. I think we ran them all at 17 volts in my day. Later someone made them adjustable - nice touch that...
"There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun." Pablo Picasso
attached photos
The DOGLOID routine is a digital lissajous generator producing one sinusoid per axis. Like the CYGN-B, the DOGN produces some of its effects by exploiting low resolution digital artifacts.
I notice that part of the dogloid code access two tables of data, aside from the sinusoid look up table. This code is only accessed when I force a branch, and there is evidence it is parameters that get installed in the frequency control regsiters of the lissajous generator. Nulling this data doesn't interfere with production of the output. This is being investigated. At least one of the dogloids in a previously posted image looks to me like it is using ramp waveforms, which doesn't seem possible with this code, but we'll find out when the output reaches the oscilloscope.
The DigiMAX stereo DAC is available, and I have an order placed. Aside from the fact that who wants a stupid RF emitting C64 near their signal path, the DOGN output, as Brian mentioned, will do some quite spectacular beam effects.
I set up the software to use the "paddle" inputs, meaning two potentiometers, and an interface I wrote in 1987 to control up to 16 registers with them. Impractical application or no, this setup permits really great live control options. I have added a speed register, and one that selects between the different DOGN routines. With one dial in each hand, for example a dogloid axis frequency, and the master speed control, one easily falls into the groove of playing the laser like a live instrument. Another good control combination is master speed, and the routine select dial, as the XY positions are retained during transitions, so the dots can burst from the center, then slow down, start ping ponging, then start brownianing around, etc. Outputs can be switched by key press during runtime. Outputs include the C64 movable objects, bit map, and DAC.
This just keeps getting better. I was about to give up prior to Brian's observation that the dogloids came with Crystal Odyssey. Then the discoveries began pouring out. There are in fact 24 4 byte presets for the dogloids routine, and they are confirmed to be various and interesting patches.
But somehow I overlooked another entire routine that I thought was part of the dogloids routine. This one must be the one Ron mentioned way back in this thread, that produces slow lissajous like motion paths. It also uses the sine table. I'll label this routine FLY. Losing this genius library of dynamic offset generation algorithms, and the dogloids, would be like forgetting the electric guitar and having it drop out use in rock and roll, or at least the high hat. These are very entertaining effects, especially with all four outputs displayed. I'm sure glad you guys had those eproms. What was the device they were ultimately read on?
I was kind of wondering, how was that data spec 2 document that Ron posted with the 351 codes for the DOG stuff actually of use in the field? Is it that one would use the bit box to access the DOGN functions for troubleshooting?
The bit box was an alignment/trouble shooting tool. Some used it for simple programing, but LI² would send out an encoder if there was a real need. I had an encoder set up beside the 6B control panel in my attempted reboot in 2013. The few times I ran both at the same time was a little stressful...
It's dimly present in the low right in this photo:
"There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun." Pablo Picasso