Kurzweil K150fs - anybody use a ][ for SMP?

[CJ_Miller]

I have been away from the pre-mac Apple world for a long time. My parents bought for me a Franklin Ace (clone) when I was a kid, but they never got me software except for some lame games - and Lode Runner! So I was never able to do much with it, and when it eventually broke, it was discarded or given away. It's funny, my parents thought it would be cool for me to "have" a computer, but were afraid that using it would get me into trouble. I wasn't allowed to go onto networks or BBS. My parents did little to interest me in coding or how computers work. About fifteen years later I became interested on my own.

Anyway - I have a Kurzweil K150fs. They are beautiful old digital additive synths with like 250 oscillators, loopable envelopes, and other features which were very far ahead of their time. Anybody can turn it on and enjoy some decent MIDI piano emulation, but to do actual additive synthesis requires an Apple and the SMP program (either Sound Modeling or Spectral Modeling) running on an Apple ][ with a MIDI interface. Passport interface, if I am not mistaken. So now I am looking at this nice beastie and thinking again about putting together a ][ music setup so I can run SMP.

I wonder about what Apples are compatible. And where the engineer, Hal Chamberlin, has gone. He did have a website with K150 info and one could buy an SMP disk from him. And how do drivers work on an old setup like this? I believe I do have the appropriate MIDI interface already, but I don't know how to set it up. Does anybody out there have any experience with this stuff? Is there other cool software which I can use with the interface? Sorry about the rambling post but I just got out of work and am really tired

 

[Bunsen]

Trivia note: Kurzweil synths were designed, and the company founded, by Ray Kurzweil. Yes, that Ray Kurzweil.

If the software editor controls the synth via MIDI, then it ought to be possible to build an editor in (for example) Emagic SoundDiver or Logic's Environments editor. It may be that someone has already built one. If not, you would need access to the synth's full MIDI specification and manual, and some patience

Sounds like an awesome bit of kit. I'm off to the googles.

/ETA/ the manual can be downloaded.

 

[Bunsen]

{returns from teh googles}

Wow. Just... wow. DO WANT.

http://herbert-janssen.de/k150.html

240 hardware oscillators / sine wave or one of two noise samples. Each oscillator may use its own 256 stage (loopable!) amplitude envelope. The definition of an additive spectrum / via the external SOUNDLAB software that runs on the Apple ][ (be it real or emulated on a Mac). / up to 64 [instruments] in the user RAM. / Each instrument may contain up to 64 partials which / can have any frequency, i.e. the spectrum does not have to be harmonic.

And hey, it's a 68k!

Main CPU is a 10MHz 68000

I found (and lost) one reference that the editor software connects via serial and not MIDI, so a hardware MIDI card is not needed. I note that Wendy Carlos (a huge fan of the 150 it seems) says:

Hal Chamberlin's K150FS voicing software / required an older Apple II style computer to operate within. I used a IIc+ / It's amazing what Hal was able to squeeze into a very small machine, small RAM amount, and such early hardware.

Ain't no room in a IIc for a MIDI card.

 

[CJ_Miller]

Yes, it's *that* Kurzweil. But he sold the company off almost as soon as it started. Dr. K made a big splash in the 1970s with his products for vision-impaired people. I think it was "Reading Edge", or some such thing? Basically they were an appliance which combined a photoscanner, OCR, and speech synthesis. A person could place a printed page on the plate and have it read to them! One of his most famous customers was Stevie Wonder, and they rapped about the possibilities of digital music, and this is - as legend has it - how the synth company started. Early on they were sold to Young Chang piano company, in Korea. The K150, and many of their other early projects, were actually designed by Hal Chamberlin. Hal moved from Waltham Mass to Korea where he worked for nearly ten years. He also wrote a book called "Musical Applications of Microprocessors" which is essential reading for anybody interested in building electronic instruments.

The synth does sound really cool. I especially love weird pitchdown of the piano. Also it uses a lot of current! I don't remember, maybe it's all TTL in there... And the high-frequency cutoff is really low, like just a few kilohertz. Great for experimental basslines though. It is definitely unique. And fairly cheap, too, since nobody can edit theirs! I rarely see them go for more than $200.

What Hal told me years back was that the MIDI interface is used in playback mode for regular MIDI, but in edit mode for regular serial communication. He said that the SMP program was done in 6502 assembly with some funky macros and was neither well-commented, nor easy to reverse-engineer. If I ran the software and monitored the serial data, I am sure I could make an updated editor. Otherwise, probably not. I have used Sounddiver, but never made a module for a new instrument. SD is getting pretty obselete itself, sadly. My Logic XSkey lets me use the last beta Emagic made. More likely I would use Max to help parse the serial, and test out the ideas, and prototype an editor.

Alas, I am too broke now even to buy an old Apple, unless I find one at a tag sale. Maybe in a few months. I should play it again soon!

 

[Bunsen]

The links I found seem to indicate you can run it from inside an emulated Apple, if it can access the serial ports. Maybe a IIe PDS card even?

BTW, you've inspired me to do something with my FPAA.

 

[CJ_Miller]

I don't know if an emulator might work. Hal said he thought it wouldn't wouldn't. A few years back I did try two of the more popular emulators with no success. And I have been told that the mac ][e card does not work for this because it does not emulate expansion slots, which is where SMP is hard coded to expect that Passport interface.

FPAA sounds a lot like the the kind of IC prototyping system which Doug Curtis used back in the day. It'll be breadboard for me, since I have thousands of analog ICs here already anyway.

 

[H3NRY]

A bit of a switch, using the MIDI card as a serial interface. It was common to use a Super Serial card or a //c serial port as a MIDI interface by doing timing in software. I remember one of Hal Chamberlin's demos at the WestCoast Computer Faire where he played a synthesized Bach Toccatta & Fugue from 8" floppy disks, each double sided disk holding about 30 seconds of music. Talk about disk jockeying - he was really busy swapping disks into his two drives. Keep your eye open for swap meets, Craigslist, and second-hand shops. I just bought a //e with disk drives for $20 from Goodwill.

 

[CJ_Miller]

Sounds like quite the demo indeed!

Keep your eye open for swap meets, Craigslist, and second-hand shops. I just bought a //e with disk drives for $20 from Goodwill.

Arg... I can find online, but the shipping is a bit much. I really do miss swap meets and decent second-hand shops - the ones around here aren't very good. When I was in NYC one could find practically anything on the sidewalk. The week I left I found a minty 840AV in Jamaica with accessories for less than $20. Old Nubus and PCI macs were growing on the sidewalk. Not too many 8-bit boxes though. And the MIT swap meet was nerd heaven... Even in my stuffy new town, there is some small hope. Nearly time for the spring-cleaning tag sales!