One in all our favourite musical hackers, [Look Mum No Computer] is getting dangerously just about development a pc. His quest was once to create a singular drum device, impressed by way 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 era used to construct some cherished computer systems again within the 60s and early 70s. Rope core isn’t programmed by way of magnetizing the ceramic donuts, however by way of weaving a twine thru them. And when [Look Mum] noticed the auto-dialer the usage of the era for a user-programmable interface, naturally, he simply needed to construct a synth sequencer.
The elemental era is to observe the ferrite ring the usage of a number one winding attached to a comparator. Then run the sign twine thru one of the vital rings, and use a 555 to ship an oscillating sign thru it. The person bits, AKA ferrite rings, pick out up the sign and cause the comparator. (The use of transformers as bits, what a laugh!) So for a operating sequencer, each and every ferrite ring controls an software. Ring 1 is a kick drum, ring 2 is a snare, and many others. Then each and every twine is a unique step, they usually get powered sequentially. Twine the bit outputs on your tools, after which weave your beats. It’s already probably the most distinctive sequencer we’ve ever observed, however there’s extra.
Since he used actually giant ferrite cores, there was once a lot of room to take beat submissions from his group, so there’s 8 other beats “programmed” into this sequencer. And to modify between them? Looks as if [Look Mum] is the usage of a step by step module from the previous telephone machine. Dial-a-beat!