My DIY Audio Scope so far (will update)

[bob.stek]

I'm glad it's easy for someone! My last real programming was for MS-DOS in BASIC, dBASE II, and a very little C ! My suggestion takes away nothing from Wurly1's project. If it were a completed commercial unit, I'd probably buy one. But I suspect that few people here either have the ability to duplicate it or even make it from a kit. But I suspect that many more may have a previous gen PC and LCD screen hanging around. And I, for one, would drop $100 on the software to do the job.

(BTW, I have been a color organ fanatic since I built a 3-channel 15wpc color organ from a PopElec article in the late '60's. I even made some high level design suggestions for a 5 channel unit that is still available. But I'm still waiting for some software guru to implement what I have in mind.)

 

[Soundfield]

I'm glad it's easy for someone! My last real programming was for MS-DOS in BASIC, dBASE II, and a very little C !

I was only joking - it wouldn't be easy for me either (I only ever really used FORTRAN!!). Software is clearly the work of the Devil and if something can't be done in God's own hardware it really shouldn't be done!

 

[Wurly1]

I was only joking - it wouldn't be easy for me either (I only ever really used FORTRAN!!). Software is clearly the work of the Devil and if something can't be done in God's own hardware it really shouldn't be done!

AH ! FORTRAN! I have a bitter memory at the university from 1985, i had to learn programming in FORTRAN. They said it was the language of engineers (My Foot!) At that time i used to be very good with Commodore Basic and later Amiga Basic. The exam program was simple: Like in a chess game, we had to enter the position of a Bishop and the position of a Knight and then indicate with X and Y which squares are controlled by either and if one can hit the other with another symbol.
The teacher had already written the part of the program that displayed the board. (a crude table with all the squares identical... He said that it was not the point...)
The teacher also said if someone come with something special then his (her) name will be on the celebrity wall ! So i was stimulated but there was only 10 MS-DOS IBM PC available so i had to go at night the use one and stayed up until 8 AM.
I was the only one who made a program which was actually playable. Once the pieces where on the board it was possible to continue the game and move the Bishop and the Knight only on the squares that chess rules permit until one catch the other. This program count for 30% of the global evaluation. My score was 9/30 because of a small error i made in my Bishop position counter so when the Bishop was in one corner, it indicate it could go all the way diagonally except the last square!
I lost 70% of the points because of that!
The fact my game was playable made my program more complicated and used more ram so i lost points because of that too! And finally the teacher told me he never asked for a playable game.

The student that had her name on the board was because she went to the teacher's office and he showed her a new command he havent teaches us yet that made the whole program a lot simpler.

That's when i dropped off FORTRAN forever!
And lived happily ever after!

 

[Wurly1]

I have an update for my cabinets, i may have some ready on may 7th.
Mine is a small order that will be manufactured last...
Tomorrow i will go to a company to have the back and front panels printed in a simili brushed aluminium finish. The design is all done all it need is a good substrate to print it on. Can't wait to see and show it to you!

 

[doity]

I have an update for my cabinets, i may have some ready on may 7th.
Mine is a small order that will be manufactured last...
Tomorrow i will go to a company to have the back and front panels printed in a simili brushed aluminium finish. The design is all done all it need is a good substrate to print it on. Can't wait to see and show it to you!

 

[gene_stl]

I took my first Fortran course using the IBM 1130. The disk drive was actually a large spinning drum and more or less looked like a washing machine.
You wrote your code on punched cards which was also true in later programming courses I took into the seventies. I took one course in about 73 wherein there were IBM Selectric typewriter terminals. You would type your log in and the mainframe would send you a ? as if to say "What can I do for you?"
At the time it seemed extremely kewl.

At my first job we had Digital PDP series. One had a floating point unit consisting of three 19 inch rack units about 70 inches tall. The "Winchester" drive had a cartridge with an LP sized disk in it. The LINC Laboratory Instrumentation computer. They had a language similar to BASIC called FOCAL.
Dear Dead Days.

 

[DuncanS]

AH ! FORTRAN! I have a bitter memory at the university from 1985, i had to learn programming in FORTRAN. They said it was the language of engineers (My Foot!) At that time i used to be very good with Commodore Basic and later Amiga Basic. The exam program was simple: Like in a chess game, we had to enter the position of a Bishop and the position of a Knight and then indicate with X and Y which squares are controlled by either and if one can hit the other with another symbol.
The teacher had already written the part of the program that displayed the board. (a crude table with all the squares identical... He said that it was not the point...)
The teacher also said if someone come with something special then his (her) name will be on the celebrity wall ! So i was stimulated but there was only 10 MS-DOS IBM PC available so i had to go at night the use one and stayed up until 8 AM.
I was the only one who made a program which was actually playable. Once the pieces where on the board it was possible to continue the game and move the Bishop and the Knight only on the squares that chess rules permit until one catch the other. This program count for 30% of the global evaluation. My score was 9/30 because of a small error i made in my Bishop position counter so when the Bishop was in one corner, it indicate it could go all the way diagonally except the last square!
I lost 70% of the points because of that!
The fact my game was playable made my program more complicated and used more ram so i lost points because of that too! And finally the teacher told me he never asked for a playable game.

The student that had her name on the board was because she went to the teacher's office and he showed her a new command he havent teaches us yet that made the whole program a lot simpler.

That's when i dropped off FORTRAN forever!
And lived happily ever after!

The first language I learnt was BASIC when I did my A levels, but you're lucky. When I went to Uni in '76 to study Electronics we were taught ALGOL as it was 'going to be the most useful language in the future'!! All programming was done via Punch Cards and batch processing, it was a very pernickety language and would throw out pages of errors for simple mistakes, which had one very big plus - if you needed any rough paper to work stuff out on you only had to put the punch cards into the in-tray and wait a few hours for a lot of paper (remember those green and white lined sheets!). It wasn't until 10 years later I used FORTRAN and the NAG libraries when I did my PhD - I did manage to cause a bit of 'bother' as I hadn't realised FORTRAN didn't check things that well, and I wrote outside some NAG matrix and caused a main frame 'hiccup'!

 

[AYanguas]

I took my first Fortran course using the IBM 1130. The disk drive was actually a large spinning drum and more or less looked like a washing machine.
You wrote your code on punched cards which was also true in later programming courses I took into the seventies. I took one course in about 73 wherein there were IBM Selectric typewriter terminals. You would type your log in and the mainframe would send you a ? as if to say "What can I do for you?"
At the time it seemed extremely kewl.

OMG what memories!

I started with Basic with the Commodore 64 at home, but then at the University I learned Fortran writing code with the punched cards and waiting for the next day to only discover compiling errors.
Then during the final degree project, I had the opportunity to enter the laboratory and have access to a text screen monitor to edit the Fortran code and compile and run it by myself. It was a great privilege.
Then I finished the project about comparing algorithm simulations for numeric adaptive control, all in Fortran.

At my first job we had Digital PDP series. One had a floating point unit consisting of three 19 inch rack units about 70 inches tall. The "Winchester" drive had a cartridge with an LP sized disk in it. The LINC Laboratory Instrumentation computer. They had a language similar to BASIC called FOCAL.
Dear Dead Days.

Oh! My second job was at Digital Equipment Corporation. My old colleague was with the PDP, but I enter directly with the VAX and mounted the first VAX-Cluster for the company's internal informatics.

Then, until my retirement I never left the company but the company was changing from Digital to Compaq to HP to HP services and beyond...

Now, my daughter works with Web Client services for a Bank and uses some kind of methodology and programming frameworks that are a complete mistery for me.

Yes, Dear Dead Days.

 

[Wurly1]

I took my first Fortran course using the IBM 1130. The disk drive was actually a large spinning drum and more or less looked like a washing machine.
You wrote your code on punched cards which was also true in later programming courses I took into the seventies. I took one course in about 73 wherein there were IBM Selectric typewriter terminals. You would type your log in and the mainframe would send you a ? as if to say "What can I do for you?"
At the time it seemed extremely kewl.

At my first job we had Digital PDP series. One had a floating point unit consisting of three 19 inch rack units about 70 inches tall. The "Winchester" drive had a cartridge with an LP sized disk in it. The LINC Laboratory Instrumentation computer. They had a language similar to BASIC called FOCAL.
Dear Dead Days.

At Sherbrooke university we also had access to paper terminals and green screen terminals to log on to the CRAY super computer on the campus using a system called "MUSIC". I do not remember the meaning of the acronym but boy it was a burden to use as those terminals already had years of use...
I remember seeing a washing-machine size hard drive at the training center of Mtl subway in 87, it was only 64k dating from early 70's and the technician tried to star the system but de hard-drive didn't worked... It had a handle on top to swap the cylinders. Very noisy it even had little brushes that swept de disks before engaging the heads.

 

[Wurly1]

I'm back with the printings of the front and back panels,
Here's a little preview!

 

[bevergerner]

hey, that look great
Can't wait to see it live

 

[Sonik Wiz]

I'm back with the printings of the front and back panels,
Here's a little preview!

Looks slick but I was hoping you would label it the Wurlyscope.

Are you using Front Panel Express for the front and back?

 

[Wurly1]

Looks slick but I was hoping you would label it the Wurlyscope.

Are you using Front Panel Express for the front and back?

Yes i know but it would be relevant only for those on this site.
But! i wrote something on the back panel you should like.
No i'm not using Front Panel Express.
I used photoshop with many layers and effect layers and i used a real picture of brushed stainless to simulate the aluminium finish plus many hours of design for the Quad, X-Stereo and Differential pictograms and buttons.

 

[doity]

Wurly, just wondering if you have reached out to Involve Audio or vice-versa regarding your scope to see if there was interest? This would be a great accessory for their SM.......or better yet a single box that contains the decoder and the scope. I know that would involve (no pun intended) giving up control of your baby but think of the $$.

Either way.....I am on the waiting list for mine so why should I care?

 

[Wurly1]

Hi all i'm really sorry for the delays, still waiting for the cabinets...

In the mean time i was able to make some tweak to the circuits and also
increased the gain of the preamplifier to suit different systems.
Line outputs is said to be a standard 450mv but in reality it varies a lot depending on the music and also the connected system. For example i have a CD-4 system which the output never go over 350mv while one of my CD player can output as much as 1 volt.

i'm working on it
Hang on!

 

[Wurly1]

Good news!
The front panels are being cut and soon the back and wood panels will be done too.
Note: A little manual filing will be necessary to finish the square holes.
Here some pictures so far...

 

[Wurly1]

little update...
Cabinet parts at the paint shop before final trimming.
I don't despair!

 

[Sonik Wiz]

little update...
Cabinet parts at the paint shop before final trimming.
I don't despair!

It's not just a project... it's a Mega-Project!
I appreciate the updates and respect all the effort you're putting into this. Very interesting! And something you would never do another 10 of, I'm sure.

 

[Wurly1]

Good news!
Today i received the final parts for the cabinet, here's a sneak peek of the high quality black finish. I hope to have all units ready to ship by the end of the week.

 

[doity]

Good news!
Today i received the final parts for the cabinet, here's a sneak peek of the high quality black finish. I hope to have all units ready to ship by the end of the week.

Wurly, are the scopes going to be engraved with wording something like “Limited Edition?” Will they be numbered? I know that is a lot to ask considering the time and labor you have involved already. But it would make them even more special as they make their way out into the world. As in “I have one of only 10 made of these”..........just to elicit envy from others. Not that I would necessarily do that of course .