CYGN-A

[Greg]

Colormod I was just a 555 timer based Voltage to Frequency Oscillator (VFO) that drove a counter that generated a course "sine wave" output. As in the CYGN-B the VFO allowed for frequency modulation of the Color Mod I signal. The first three buttons left to right summed the CYGN-A outputs to the Color Mod II outputs. Two of the next three enabled the Color Mod II signal to AM or FM the Color Mod I signal. The last button simply enabled the Color Mod II signal to sum to the Color Mod scan amp. The Beam Torquer, CM1, & CM2 had different looks - but all were produced by the same scanner.

That's really cool! Another Johnson counter circuit? Was it a different number of steps than the CYGN-B? Definitely on the lookout for a schematic of that. By the way, some of the buttons on the 6b panel are push on / push off, and some are momentary. Wondering if this was the design, or just what was available.

[laserist]

The EAO switches on the 1U panel at the bottom were to start and stop the 4 channel Teac open real tape decks that we typically used in the field were momentary. The aux panel to control an Argon system had a number of momentary EAO switches. I can't think of an EAO Switch on the main panel that was intended to be momentary.

The CM1 osc used a CD4017 decade counter / divider and 5 resistors to generate the "sine wave". I have no idea why they just used a 5 count for the "sine wave". 51K, 75K, 150K, 150K, & 75K - so it's basically 1, 0, -1, -1, 0, & reset with an offset to adjust zero. The summing amp had a feedback resistor of 270K - so it was slamming Into negative rail for one clock, going to ground for one clock, slamming into the positive rail for two clocks, going to ground for one clock, and resetting to rinse and repeat on the fifth clock. It wasn't elegant and I guess whoever designed the circuit didn't realize it wasn't symetrical. (Positive rail for two clocks but the negative rail was only one clock. It worked good enough in the day. Perhaps they tweeked the design when they upgraded to G-120PDs, but that was after my time and it's not reflected on the scans I have of the documentation.

[laserist]

And sorry, looking at the documentation there wasn't an AM for Color Mod 1. The sixth switch was spiral ramp...

[Greg]

Chopper effect using a quad and gate. Four faders upstream of the summing amps. That business with the comparators was genius. Thanks again, Brian!

[laserist]

Hey Greg, thanks for doing all the work!

[laserist]

Brian, The pinout format page of the SPGN documentation suggests the module exposes an interesting variety of input and output signals, which I may request your help deciphering in a couple of months when all the components arrive and the build begins. Do you have any sharable recollections for this thread regarding Carl Hannigan? Other than your earlier comments and seeing his name as the engineer of the SPGN, I don't know how and when he fit into the history of Laser Images Inc., but I guess he was an impressive person.

I'm sorry - I missed the above. Carl was the original main Laserist in St. Louis in 1975. He went from there to be main Laserist in Kyoto, Japan a year later. Funny aside - the guy who did the premiere in St. Louis ended up Carl's backup in Kyoto. After Kyoto I never heard that guy's name again. And I was totally okay with that... When Carl came back from Japan he became Director of Production. Carl was a good guy. A really good guy. He went south of Sam McGee who was the president of Laser Images for a while. Sam could talk. I'll give him that. He was the reason I quit Laser Images. Sam stayed on 3 whole months after I quit.

And that was the beginning of end of Laserium's Golden Era. And by that I mean firing Carl.

Oh and they strip returns too, so your sig line can get in the way of the point

[ronhip]

I have very few photos of Carl in the archive. Here's one below. Carl is the center person in the rear with red hair. His brother Mike Hannigan also worked for LII - another really nice guy. I think the front-left person was Phil (don't remember his last name). Please identify others... This must have been a "shirt premier".

Ron

I'm sorry - I missed the above. Carl was the original main Laserist in St. Louis in 1975. He went from there to be main Laserist in Kyoto, Japan a year later. Funny aside - the guy who did the premiere in St. Louis ended up Carl's backup in Kyoto. After Kyoto I never heard that guy's name again. And I was totally okay with that... When Carl came back from Japan he became Director of Production. Carl was a good guy. A really good guy. He went south of Sam McGee who was the president of Laser Images for a while. Sam could talk. I'll give him that. He was the reason I quit Laser Images. Sam stayed on 3 whole months after I quit.

And that was the beginning of end of Laserium's Golden Era. And by that I mean firing Carl.

Oh and they strip returns too, so your sig line can get in the way of the point

[laserist]

Phil Guskin - Marine, UCLA football player, another really good guy.

[Greg]

Brian, I think you explained this before, but I can't locate the comment. Is it correct that the fixed rotational intervals between beams could be either 45 degrees or 90 degrees, and that depended on leverlite switches, not on the data? And wasn't there something about a certain setting would produce wrong looking sizes and rotations?

Update regarding building the ADAT shows with all the correct image sources: I'm glad I left the ADAT stuff until last. I might have otherwise been too distracted by the mesmerizing content to do all the transfers and build the playback system properly. Everything is in a 75Gb folder, and those tapes will never need to be played again.

I'm seeing for the for the first time, an era of sophisticated laser show production previously unknown to me. As well, I'm finally seeing what the projectors I have been using for testing this dev work can actually do, meaning producing complex graphic images. At times I can't believe my eyes. I'm watching my own equipment and saying to myself I never knew you could do THAT with lasers. The 3D stuff actually looks receding into space through the projection surface.

It may be related to the representation of yellow in an rgb system, but here's a part where the viewer's eyes are tricked into perceiving an amazing vamp of green, yellow, and brown.

[laserist]

The z axis rotation was originally 45 degrees or all at zero, but later 90 degrees was added. What I think you're referring to is the manual rotation (red on the leverlite switches) was out of phase with the 351 image path and when in yellow on the leverlite switches would pump up the gain on one color reduce the gain on another and the other two would do a lissajous thing at 45 and 135 degrees as the 351 gain increased...