This is the next post in a series featuring the Synthorama synthesizer museum in Luterbach Switzerland. See the Synthorama label below for prior posts.
The museum is organized into different themed rooms organized by manufacturer and/or region such as Russian synths. This will become more apparent as I begin to put up the themed flickr sets followed by the walk through videos of the museum.
For now you, click here to see a flickr set of what awaits you when you walk through the entrance of the museum.As you enter, the Airböurne Synthesizer is directly across from you and to the right. Throughout the room are some synths waiting to be repaired and or on display. In one section of the room are a number of theremins. This is actually the theremin section of the museum.
There is an EMS Spectre Colour Video Synthesizer [pictured], a PPG Commander, PPG 380 Event Generator, Digilab [pictured], and more.
Through a window you can see the ARP room, all just a glimpse of what's about to follow.
Does anyone know what the Digilab is or where to find more info on it? I did a quick google search and wasn't able to turn up any info. Perhaps I should search google.de... if only I spoke German.
ReplyDeleteThe Digilab is definitely a logic lab. It's used to train students about basic *digital* logic, in other words the fundamental building blocks or (digital) computer theory. You can see mine on matrixsynth - http://matrixsynth.blogspot.com/2006/11/tektron-logic-lab.html
ReplyDeleteYou can do many things with gate signals and or square waves with one. Many modular builders offer some kind of Logic module with a just couple of these logic circuits. Though for the much higher cost and a fraction of the inputs, synth modules may provide schmidt triggering and or normalizing unused sockets.
It's definitely not an analog computer, classic ones use op amps, not logic gates. Instead of doing AND, OR, XOR, etc. binary operations that this Digilab does, a "classic" analog computer tends to solve differential equations in hardware. So you can fix or vary multiple input voltages and read the solved value(s) of the result in realtime. Though you might have some other kinds of devices falling under the description of an analog computer.
Cool! Thanks for the info. Much appreciated. I was confused by the "analog computer" moniker being placed on it which is why I was interested in learning more. It looked like it was for doing binary logic functions with voltage signals. It looks pretty cool. What about the old rotary phone dial! That is awesome! I am guessing it is used to generate gate/trigger/pulse signals (just like a rotary phone.)
ReplyDeleteYeah, that was my mistake. Sorry about that. I removed that bit from the post.
ReplyDelete