the Macs are back! ...and then some
Last week I got the Mac SE/30 visualizers back. They’ve been on tour with my favourite rockstar Krause! *^_^*
the Macs in their blue carrying bags
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Now, even though she’s a proper rockstar with expected behaviour (*^_^*), she also managed to keep the Macs in one piece! (luckily) and so they’re back at my place now.
Krause performing
click to go to the corresponding pic on flickr
...that funny coloured iBook also came from here.
At one point, it was very nice to see that VJs who performed on some of the same venues Krause did, integrated the Macs into their visuals.
Anyway, even though the Macs were still in one piece, they still needed some work (ah well, I’m a perfectionist sometimes)... One of the tubes had a little flaw in it, something which I did to it myself but I already decided up front I would switch the CRTs with the innards of yet another Compact Mac I had laying around, once the Macs would arrive back at my place and so I did…
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The black&red cable you see in the picture is my ‘CRT-discharge-cable’, no joke… I made that one earlier, I didn’t trust any of the wallsockets for ground and so I made a cable which runs back to were the fuses of my house are located… I use it to discharge CRT-tubes before I do anything else to them…
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On the left the two tubes (I’m not sure which one went in and which one came out of the visualizer…) and on the right you can see ‘em in action!
Now in the months Krause has been using these, every now and then something would go wrong with a supplied amplifier (that had nothing to do with the Macs though ^_^)... The first two have been blown beyond repair and last night I thought I should have a look at the third one, which has been acting funny on it’s own but wasn’t blown… It seemed that it was old age it suffered from. It’s a Sony and it seems the amplifiers from, let’s say, ten years ago, suffer from bad soldering… Even though I hadn’t located the exact spot where it did go wrong, I decided to run past all the soldering inside…
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And guess what? It worked! The symptom was that it would give an enormous loud noise out of one of the speakers, not controllable with the volumeknob or anything… And now it’s gone, better yet, I’ve been playing on this amp a while and it actually is a rather nice little amplifier… (for those who want to know, it’s a Sony TA-AX2)
So, the ‘Krause setup’ has been repaired, fixed, whatever and I could make plans on how to integrate these into my livingroom.
But, last week I’ve also been getting an Atari 2600, which needed some work on its own… And so I’ve been taking that one apart also, cleaning it, running it through its paces etcetera…
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a nekkid Atari 2600! OMG, where’s the age-verification? (if you know what it is, you’re old enough to see it in this state…)
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details on the atari…
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And so… one and one is two… Yesterday I, all of a sudden, had a plan to visualize the game-sound of the Atari on the Macs… *^_^*
Believe it or not, but in the end, this took the best part of my weekend, but I had a lot of fun fixing everything and making some sort of ultimate retro setup (well, imho that is of course)...
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To top it off, I made a little video (well, it’s 6+ minutes)
I’m sorry for the sound though, I’m gonna look into that for a next video. I tried to find some noise-reduction-filters but to no avail yet.
earlier on this site
hinv, geektechnique’s hardware inventory
a(nother) rockstar in my hometown! ^_^
How to make Mac SE/30 audio visualizers
giving my iBook a nice colour
Big Pimpin’ TV (80s style)
...calibrating my Sony Video Projection system
sets on flickr
unterwegs mit Krause
Clash 06
Krause at Mediamatic MuseumN8
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next: hush hush unfinished madness
Cool tools you have here… :)