Peter Swimm has launched a new blog: True Chip ‘Till Death showcasing the best in chip related news, software, hardware, tutorials and so on. Only a few days old it’s off to a great start. Check it out! I’ve already subscribed!
Archive for the 'hardware' Category
Thanks to a great ebay purchase of 99 cents, I now I have Gameboy Camera!
Using this along with the video output adapater means…. live Gameboy Camera in the mix!
At SxSW I borrowed one of these from Receptors and it turned out to be a great addition to the set - so hoping to do the same again in some upcoming shows.
Yes, that’s me and yes, that’s a Re-Format The Planet movie poster in the background 
When I was in Hawaii, my friend of many years Timothy Hendricks (23 degrees) generously gave me his TR-909 (of course I still consider it a LOAN). Tim and I have done a lot of music together back in the day. Reggae and House. His group 23 Degrees tore up San Francisco in the mid 90’s.
Not only do I love the 909 sounds (think Acid House!) but it is of the time period that it has MIDI plus Roland Sync and…. Trigger Output! I love triggers because I use them to control other analog devices. Although you can sample all the sounds, I find that there’s things that I can do with control voltages and triggers that I would never have come up with in a strictly MIDI set up.
So… as a welcome to my new house guest (the 909), I have set up my gear and will start recording some new tracks soon I hope!
Here’s some pics:
From left to right… Top is a Moog Prodigy, below is a Moog Source. Next is a Korg 770. Behind that is an ARP 2600. In front of the ARP are two Obeheim modules: a SEM and an analog sequencer. In front of these is a Roland 606 drum machine (two triggers out!). Below is a closer pic of these:
Below are some effects, a StudioMaster Mixer and monitors.
Left is an Akai S-950, top of the keyboard stand is a Casio CZ-1000 and below a Yamaha DX11
So maybe I’m the last person on the block to have to figure this out but… if you get a Seagate FreeAgent and use Linux you might have a surprise. Mine was that the file system would periodically become readonly. It turns out that this problem has to do with the fact that the drive spins down after 15 minutes and doesn’t wake up correctly under Linux. There are a number of workarounds and solutions that I’ve seen on the web (including someone who uses a cron job to write to the disk every 13 minutes to keep it awake).
Here’s what worked for me.
First, you’ll need to install sdparm and note where your drive is mounted, for me it was /dev/sdc4 yours will likely be different. Then do the following (again using YOUR /dev path not mine) as root:
# sdparm -al /dev/sdc4
# sdparm –clear STANDBY -6 /dev/sdc4
# sdparm -al /dev/sdc4
NOTE there are TWO dashes before “clear” on the second line.
This worked for me and when I get time, I’ll go over the other things that can be set with sdparm.
