One in every of our favourite musical hackers, [Look Mum No Computer] is getting dangerously as regards to development a pc. His quest was once to create a novel drum device, impressed by means of a Soviet auto-dialer that used rope core reminiscence for quantity garage. Rope reminiscence is the read-only sibling to magnetic core reminiscence, the reminiscence generation used to construct some cherished computer systems again within the 60s and early 70s. Rope core isn’t programmed by means of magnetizing the ceramic donuts, however by means of weaving a twine thru them. And when [Look Mum] noticed the auto-dialer the use of the generation for a user-programmable interface, naturally, he simply needed to construct a synth sequencer.
The fundamental generation is to watch the ferrite ring the use of a number one winding attached to a comparator. Then run the sign twine thru probably the most rings, and use a 555 to ship an oscillating sign thru it. The person bits, AKA ferrite rings, select up the sign and cause the comparator. (The use of transformers as bits, what a laugh!) So for a running sequencer, each and every ferrite ring controls an device. Ring 1 is a kick drum, ring 2 is a snare, and so on. Then each and every twine is a special step, and so they get powered sequentially. Cord the bit outputs in your tools, after which weave your beats. It’s already probably the most distinctive sequencer we’ve ever noticed, however there’s extra.
Since he used in point of fact large ferrite cores, there was once quite a lot of room to take beat submissions from his neighborhood, so there’s 8 other beats “programmed” into this sequencer. And to modify between them? Looks as if [Look Mum] is the use of a step by step module from the outdated telephone machine. Dial-a-beat!
