YouTube via 2uptech
"Demo of Coulbourn Instruments modular rack gear. Designed for animal behavioral experiments, not music. Makes noise."
Note these are currently up for sale on Craigslist. images saved here
Details:
"This is some really strange modular gear. It was made by Coulbourn Instruments in the early '80s. I have one full 4U rack with an enclosure and power supply, and another rack with no enclosure or power. When I got the gear it had no power supply---I added a +-12v switching supply [this one]from All Electronics.
The modules are 2 units high and fit into the frame by clipping onto a series of rails. You can see this and hear some demos of the system doing weird things to audio at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MytMxgCn7PM The system has the following modules:
Noise - 1x
Sine / Square VCO - 1x
Lowpass / Highpass VCF - 2x
Switch module - 3x
RS/T Flip Flop - 1x
Gate - 2x
Precision Time Base - 1x
Predetermining Counter - 4x
Analog/Digital Converter - 1x
Digital/Analog Converter - 2x
Switch Input - 1x
Attenuator - 4x
And Gate - 1x
Audio Mixer/Amplifier - 1x
A weird mix of analog and digital stuff.
The system has two kinds of connectors: 1/8" phono jacks for audio, and some really weird stackable plugs like micro-banana cables for digital signals. I have about 20 of these esoteric cables and will of course include them.Please note that these devices are designed for laboratory experiments, not music. So, the VCOs are not 1v/octave, the VCFs are not resonant, etc. However, if you already have some Doepfer modules or something and want to make some strange new noises, these will definitely do that."
This reminds me of something I found at a surplus store while in college. As far as I could tell it was used by the psychology department. It had some regular oscillators, LFSRs, counters with the thumbwheels, AND/OR/XORs, shift registers, multipliers, A/D, D/As. I think it did have a filter, but labeled as integrators i believe. It looked like it also had some mechanism for sensors, where you could hook up the sensors to someone's head then count events to a match value then trigger something else. It also used mini-bananna jacks. Wish I would have picked it up, but I was a pretty poor college student at the time and didn't need any fixer-up projects.
ReplyDeleteI should have read it more carefully. I'm sure its the same thing if it uses the micro-bannanas.
ReplyDelete