I've always found logics to be interesting, as well as systems and technology.
When young, I found very little of that kind to play around with, but on the
other hand, I've had the privilege of growing up side-by-side with the computer
electronics. One of my most vivid memories from childhood is when me, my parents
and my siblings were watching the TV-news they said that Russia had launched a
satellite named Sputnik 1, and that it was right now passing over Stockholm. We
all went out in the starry evening, and there, right above our house, one tiny
little dot of light was cruising among the stars. I saw it on its first orbit!
So mouch has happened since then. People has landed on the moon, aided by a
computer laughtable little computer. The astronauts however, didn't laugh at
it. It was a little wonder by the standards of the time. But it was still no
more powerful than my first homebuilt computer, which of course came later.
I needed a computer for development of microprocessor-controlled equipment, and
it also needed to be able to create the EPROM for the final product. It of course
also had to contain its own software - in EPROM. That's when I encountered the problem
of the hen and the egg.
I've used that computer in meny projects, of wich I will mention some in these pages.
However, before we continue with the computers I've 'dated' I'd like to introduce
my first programmable unit; the HP67. I bought it when i first started my studies
at Lund Institute of Technology. If you don't know what an
HP67 is, it was the flagship of Hewlett-Packards by
the time; a programmable calculator. I used it for more han the studies:
a simple database for transistors including calculations for amplifiers and included
components values. I naturally also created som games.
By the end of the 70:ies home computers started to show up. I bought a UK-101 as a kit.
One of the Basic-ROM:s was not correctly programmed, so I had to go through it all,
hardware and software, before I could isolate the problem and order a new ROM from London.
Before it even started in Basic mode I knew almost all about the computer. The moral is:
If you want to learn something about a piece of equipment, by a broken one and try to fix it.
I created many games for that computer, the first one I called
Anti-Robot and it immediately became popular with the kids
living in the neighburhood. My greatest benefit came from the creative process of writing
the program.
Later on, the UK-101 became the central part of my MIDI system. It all happened like this:
I bought a synthesizer, a Roland Juno-106. When I asked the salesman about the three
connectors marked 'MIDI-IN/OUT/THRU' he said that it was something new, and he only knew
that it was for interconnecting synthesizers. The first thing I did when I came home with it,
was to hook it up with my oscilloscope. I analyzed the signals, and found a current-loop
working at the odd speed of 31,25 kiloBaud. I made an interface for the UK-101, analyzed
the protocol, and started creating software for recording, composing and autocomposing
music. It wasn't until many years later I heard of a sequensor-program (Pro-24).
The other part of my system was a Texas Instuments minicomputer worth about $50.000.
Of course i didn't have that kind of money, but by that time I worked as a service
engineer at TI Sweden. A very nice man, Kevin Wheatland, was responsible for spareparts,
and whenever he had something to throw away, the thu it into a box and send it to me.
In the end I only had to by a few used items, and I had my minicomputer (and a lot of
repair work to do). The TI-990 and the UK-101 communicated, and it was possible to
edit my own kind of musical source code on the TI. That code was compiled into musical
object code, and dumped to the UK. The UK could not only play it, it could listen to
what I played and create musical object code for the TI to recomple to source, which
again coud be edited. The UK coud even record sounds from a common microphone, convert
it to MIDI codes and send it to the synthesizers. This way I could play the flute, and
even whistle or sing in the mike. It all came out in whatever voice choosen on the synth.
The TI also came to play a central roll in future projects, mostly software development.
I created numerous of assemblers for other microprocessors and wrote the software for
them on the TI, e.g. the later versions of the soft in the UK-101, which was 6502-based.
Mu creations as an amateur musician was copied with diligence, and many years later
I recognize sequences from my recordings in so called 'New age'-recordings. That feels good.
Later on I created a stagelight-computer. It was a prototype based on a Z8. (So, I had to
write a new assembler again.) The human interface was supposed to reside in a PC, but it
all ended befor that. The prototyp worked fine, and my TI-990 had a test program as the
human interface. Unfortunally we had to close the theatre, and I scratched the project.
The TI-990 finally was too old and way too big, so I replaced it with an Amiga 500 whitch
I bought from my good friend Bo Holm. I created a new EPROM-programmer whitch fitted the
expansion port of the Amiga, and started writing new assemblers again. It all kept rolling.
