8bitcollective

Does it got a hemi?

If Saskrotch were here no doubt he'd do a brkqore remix of Colonel Bogey.

So much awe and wonder.

I mentioned it to dot.AY on the phone the other night, but cTrix : We should approach some people about restoring this. Kickstarter anyone?

Might take care of the costs. There are other hurdles obviously.

If I could somehow be involved in an attempt to restore this to working order it would be something I would tell my grandchildren about one day. It would truly be one of the things that I could say I achieved in my life.

I really want to make this happen.

i can spot; little-scale, cTrix, abrasive and Dennis_Carlen.

This is really interesting. Even not being in full working order, it's still great we can preserve this technology and look back on it.

celsius wrote:

I mentioned it to dot.AY on the phone the other night, but cTrix : We should approach some people about restoring this. Kickstarter anyone?

Might take care of the costs. There are other hurdles obviously.

LOL!  Your enthusiasm is awesome man... I really dig it!  But a CSIRAC restoration-to-working-order is never going to happen.   I've already looked into the rebuild story and there was a solid decision made not to restore the unit, but instead to keep it preserved with as many intact original parts as possible. 

A restore-to-working would cost millions of dollars, replacing many of the components (including transformers, valves and caps) with improvised and obtainable parts.  There is good reason why many of these parts are no longer available and not easily rebuilt (reliability, fiddly and fragile)  Not to mention environmental and safety issues.  Take the memory: 30+ rods filled with mercury?  Probably not the safest operation in the world and would need heavy safe guarding plus major red tape cutting.  The CRT's would also (more than likely) be dead, interface cables missing... list goes on.  You'd probably find the metering would still work - and maybe the mechanical side of things (with a little un-seizing) if lucky.

So it won't happen because you would have to destroy / remove much of what is an original specimen in order to get it working.  It would be far more feasible to rebuild the machine using modern components - or at least obtainable parts - from scratch.  There are already 100's of people who were involved with the recent CSIRAC restoration project.  It was in below average shape when the museum got hold of it and they put a lot of effort into preserving it's original wiring, room layout and design style (repaint, etc). So we are mega-lucky already that we can walk in and "wow" at what it must have been in operation.  And get in close to inspect components - it's one of the most amazing days I've ever spent!

What is feasible (and I talked about with Abrasive) is to rebuild the audio output stage connected to the PC emulator (which I have) so you can still compile and run the original music code and hear it on a 1950's speaker wedged into some kind of similarly shaped cabinet.  If you think about shoving the original programmers in a time machine the day after they wrote their first chiptune (or valve-tune!) test-code and bringing them to now - I'm sure they wouldn't care the math is being calculated on a different platform with a translator / emulator.  Same input / calculations / output after all.  But if the sound (which was a data stream though a 1950's radio speaker) was being produced 2009 style: as pure square at 96khz out of Adam S3A's... they would probably comment it "doesn't sound like it did yesterday".  Closely followed by "do you mind if we take your PC back though the worm hole when you drop us back to 1950?".

Hence, the best thing we can do is research and build enough of the "end-of-the-chain" electronics to try and recreate a faithful sound.  With the tones as they were.  This has already been done to some extent, but actually having something authentic to play the pulses though would be the icing on the cake.  And maybe get our works / hardware exhibited at the museum down the track. 

Then, of course, we'd have to get little-scale to make an interface for it so he can bang out a wikid live set!

Man he's quick!

cTrix wrote:

...Bla bla bla...

Hence, the best thing we can do is research and build enough of the "end-of-the-chain" electronics to try and recreate a faithful sound.  With the tones as they were.

...Bla bla bla...

Yes. Totally agree.

Subway Sonicbeat wrote:

Derris-Kharlan wrote:

Little-scale has already released an album on it

Did he used his midi device for this?

He dun did it.

I once went to a presentation by Doornbusch on the history of computer music. Absolutely fascinating, and he's a great presenter too. (This was at the Australasian Computer Music Conference 2009).

In fact, I'm holding that Paul Doornbusch "The Music of CSIRAC" book in my hand right now. Comes with an audio / data CD!

little-scale wrote:

In fact, I'm holding that Paul Doornbusch "The Music of CSIRAC" book in my hand right now. Comes with an audio / data CD!

Rad.  It's #1 on my Christmas list. I just found it on the net too!  Does the data disk include any of the source code?

C

oh, i'm so jealous of you guys... seriously, if i had the money i'd come to australia just to see this machine.

btw this site has some good info as well as another reconstructed music piece
http://ww2.csse.unimelb.edu.au/dept/about/csirac/music/

just one minor complaint, the csirac is certainly not the only first generation computer that has survived in one piece, because the same is true for the german Z4 (from 1945 btw - please stop believing that Americans invented the computer), Z11 and Z22. just those didn't have music capabilies.

ed: never mind, the museumvictoria site has the other music piece as well.

Last edited by irrlicht project (November 26th 2009 3:03 PM)