Wednesday, September 6, 2006
Vee don’t know zis maschine you speek of
A big news item in the last weeks has been the Austrian girl who was kidnapped at the age of 10 and held in secret custody for over eight years. BoingBoing points to a story in the Gurardian that outlines the difficulties the Austrian investigators seem to have with the kidnapper’s Commodore 64:
However, Major General Gerhard Lang of the Federal Criminal Investigations Bureau, told reporters the computer would complicate investigators’ efforts to transfer files for closer examination.
There are emulators available which can make a modern PC capable of running Commodore 64 programmes but Maj Gen Lang said it would be difficult to transmit the data from Priklopil’s machine to a modern computer “without loss”.
Well, duh. Star Commander, a software that allows to connect a 1541 (the C64 floppy disk drive) to a PC has been around for ages. The necessary cables can be bought on ebay all the time if you are unable to solder them yourself. All the knowledge neccessary is on the internet, for free. And you could always ask one of the 151 Austrian C64 scene members if in doubt. The C64 must be the most-hacked, transparent and easiest to access piece of antique computer hardware by now.
Tuesday, September 5, 2006
Lots of pots
After some weeks away from the workbench I continued working on the keytar. I finished the white “pickguard” area. Now it features three faders on the existing plastic “pickup” dummys and five pots, four of them regular and the fifth one with an additional on/off-switch for the whole setup:
Also, there are in total 18 LEDs in the small holes next to the pickups. The holes already existed and have a diameter of 3mm which made fitting 3mm LEDs quite easy. Apart from that, it somehow takes ages to build all that when you try to make it look good. There are lots of small plastic pieces in the way of the new electronics and so my workspace is completely covered in small plastic debris from sawing, drilling and filing the toy guitar. Cutting the straight slits for the sliders was a special pain in the ass. They ended up almost straight.
Next: Installing the blue LCD in the guitar body and wiring up everything.
Keytar Project:
Part 6: Guitar neck keyboard
Part 8: soon
