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Thread: CYGN-B

  1. #21
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    Ron, re: "I doubt that ANYONE would do a console like ours at Laserium. Nowadays, it's done with far more flexible CPU's, GPU's, DSP's and ASIC's."

    What you say is true, but the same statement could have applied to guitars, pianos, etc. if their development had been stepped on as quickly by modern technology. The advantage of a console is the laserists can develop muscle memory and even an individual style that they bring to each performance - even to live music. I'm not against using computers/etc., but when the designer/programmer of the higher tech systems limit my ability to interact to a time line rather than real time - I'm not up for 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

  2. #22
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    Default Laserock II program

    Quote Originally Posted by Greg View Post
    Thank you for the reply Ron. (insert appropriate word of superlative gleeful stupefaction here) Great photo! I thought I'd never see that. Any chance of seeing the other side?

    I understand about the schematics, but I'm glad to know they exist. Thank you for your preservation efforts.

    I certainly am interested in Laserium photos, especially examples of imagery generated using this board, and / or shows < 1983 but especially anything to do with Starship or LaserockII.

    If anyone is interested in an emulator of the CYGN-B that one can operate in real time by turning knobs (on the screen) and record into .ild files, I have one. It is an image synthesizer building platform called cyc on which a patch of the CYGN-B along with 3D transforms and a bunch of LFOs has been built.
    Greg,

    Unfortunately you are interested in very early shows where there was very little documentation. I have enclosed below the Laserock II program (which also includes Laserium Starship). Beyond that, I find nothing. Not even our performance notes. Just too early in our history.

    Yes, I would be very interested in seeing and playing with your emulator of the cycloid generator. How do I go about doing that?

    Ron
    Attached Files Attached Files

  3. #23
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    Default I agree with you

    Quote Originally Posted by laserist View Post
    Ron, re: "I doubt that ANYONE would do a console like ours at Laserium. Nowadays, it's done with far more flexible CPU's, GPU's, DSP's and ASIC's."

    What you say is true, but the same statement could have applied to guitars, pianos, etc. if their development had been stepped on as quickly by modern technology. The advantage of a console is the laserists can develop muscle memory and even an individual style that they bring to each performance - even to live music. I'm not against using computers/etc., but when the designer/programmer of the higher tech systems limit my ability to interact to a time line rather than real time - I'm not up for that...
    Brian,

    I'm not saying that people wouldn't do a CONSOLE (look at Radiator and Z5Plus), I'm just saying that doing it in the WAY we did it with all that analog stuff is probably harder (and less adaptable) than using digital electronics. I'm in complete agreement with you about the utility, individuality, and show progression one gets with a manual console (backed with an over-ridable digital control track). To this day I have yet to see a show with the subtle complexity and breadth of Laserium's productions - not to mention the thought that was put into properly PACING the show so you didn't leave feeling like you had been hit in the face with a brick for an hour! Much of this, I believe, derives from the fact that we had a real live Laserist behind that physical console. Today's crop of timeline-based software, while very capable, does not reproduce what Laserium did.

    Ron

  4. #24
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    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by ronhip View Post
    Greg,

    I don't think I'm giving away anything highly proprietary by posting the 352 data format below. We used to have a "bit box" that could generate static 352 data frames for show setup and debugging. I may have one somewhere in my Laserium boxes in the basement somewhere... It was a real pain to use since you had to set ALL the bits manually in each byte! But better than nothing.

    Ron
    Is the bit box you speak of the "midiana" board? recently got one working from the data track off a laserium tape.
    leading in trailing technology

  5. #25
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    Laserist: In Ron's photo I see the johnson counter for each channel is one MM74C164 8-Bit Parallel-Out Serial Shift Register and two MM74C175 Quad D-Type Flip-Flops. This makes sense for a 32 step counter. Any comment regarding the use of two Quad D-Type Flip-Flops instead of one more 8-Bit Parallel-Out Serial Shift Register? Anything to do with extracting a quadrature signal?

    Ron: Thanks for another super interesting release (The data format). More on that later. I have one of those iconic handout programs, but yours is in better condition.

    Ok, glad someone's interested in my abstracts generator. I'll post a couple of screen shots here, and try to get a youtube video up this week about how to use it. Then I can send it. Do you have a JDK installed that you can put the file cyc.java in and compile from the command line with javac cyc.java?

    Meanwhile, if interested, I have a few re-created (using this software) numbers from Starship, which can be found by searching for pinkicecreamland on youtube. Obviously I didn't have the spinning diffraction grating wheels for the beginning of Lunar Sea so that part is more impression than reproduction.

  6. #26
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    I have 18 of the earlier shows - a few on ADAT the rest on Maxell 1/4 inch tape. Unfortunately most of the early shows were recorded on Scotch and developed a terminal case of squeeky shed syndrome. I don't have Starship or Laserock II, but I did perform them back in the day...
    "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

  7. #27
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    I do remember seeing the bit box back in the early '80s. Looked a bit like those corded TV channel changers that were around at the time.

  8. #28
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    The 74c175 inverted Q outputs were used with the shift register outputs to generate the cosine output.

    The whole design is really impressive, and crammed into that form factor too..
    Last edited by laserist; 09-01-2019 at 10:44.
    "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

  9. #29
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    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by polishedball View Post
    Is the bit box you speak of the "midiana" board? recently got one working from the data track off a laserium tape.
    No, the MIDIANA board was a later innovation for our "CS" projectors that was used to control analog things (motors and solenoids) from MIDI data. Rather than the 4 faders we had originally, we added a Peavey MIDI controller that gave us banks of 16 faders and buttons to control a variety of hardware. Excuse my vagueness - it's been almost 2 decades since I used that hardware!

    Ron

  10. #30
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    Default Archived shows

    Quote Originally Posted by laserist View Post
    I have 18 of the earlier shows - a few on ADAT the rest on Maxell 1/4 inch tape. Unfortunately most of the early shows were recorded on Scotch and developed a terminal case of squeeky shed syndrome. I don't have Starship or Laserock II, but I did perform them back in the day...
    I have the audio tracks, but not the 352 data, on CD's and on the computer, for all but a couple Laserium shows. I think I'm missing L.A.ser Olympiad and Laserium '79 if you have those soundtracks.

    I believe that Lumalaser has digitized all the tapes available to them (I've sent them a few) including the 352 data and the CSX XYRGB tracks where available. I don't know if they are willing to share. Tim has said that the files are ginormous. I still have a fair collection of ADAT tapes and BetaMax tapes. I gave Jon all my 1/4" tapes, so I assume that Lumalaser has them now.

    Ron

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