TashRecorder: a Farallon MacRecorder compatible clone

[demik]

Now your old Mac can hear you scream!

Introducing... TashRecorder!

Elevator Pitch

This a compatible clone of the Farallon MacRecorder , but as far as the software is concerned, it's the real deal!

Both @tashtari and myself (since 2021!) had this project on our own, one of us having a working digital part and the other one some sort of analog part. Project merging happened and TashRecorder was born

The digital part is made as a PIC12F1501 firmware, the rest is made as a 4 layer PCB and, as usual, panels to make it fit neatly into the same case as Quack, TashPad and TashTwenty

Project Status
Project is stable. As the real MacRecorder, Mac compatibility is host dependant. Development was done on a Quadra 650, but we will test it on other Macs to double check compatibility

Code and PCB

GitHub - lampmerchant/tashrecorder: Clone of the Farallon MacRecorder and Apple MIDI Interface.

Clone of the Farallon MacRecorder and Apple MIDI Interface. - lampmerchant/tashrecorder

github.com

As usual, it's OpenSource. PIC firmware is already there, we will upload everything else later after a little bit of cleaning

Technical details
This clone, like the other ones, includes an internal microphone and mono line input. We tried to simplify the design as much as possible, to allow it to be built more easily. The design is all through hole components, using only available components

While the PIC is acting as a serial transceiver, ADC and clock generator, it also oversample audio and watch input levels, driving a LED mimicking if the input levels are too high (or you are screaming too much)

The analog part is built around a much more modern CMOS Burr-Brown amp, which act as a microphone amplifier, band pass (microphone) or low pass filter (line in), and is optimised for battery and low power devices.

Kind reminder that the MacRecorder is only powered by the serial port, no external power is needed! TashRecorder includes its own power regulator circuit

thanks @Hollie for the MacRecorder hardware donation

 

[dramirez]

Your skills and love for the vintage Macs are simply amazing! @tashtari

 

[Tashtari]

Your skills and love for the vintage Macs are simply amazing! @tashtari

Thanks. =D I think @demik deserves most of the credit for this one, though. The firmware was an interesting challenge in some ways, but his work on the analog side of this project was considerably more complicated...

 

[joshc]

Neat!

 

[Mu0n]

I tried my hand at building my own unit thanks to the great documentation from the github page.

Happy to report: success.

 

[Tashtari]

I tried my hand at building my own unit thanks to the great documentation from the github page.

Happy to report: success.

Nice! Hopefully that recording is after some effects were applied...

 

[Mu0n]

Nice! Hopefully that recording is after some effects were applied...

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[LaPorta]

Can one purchase these?

 

[Tashtari]

Can one purchase these?

@demik did an EU group buy but I think it's done now. If there's sufficient interest, I can do something similar. In the absence of that, if anyone wants to do a build on their own, I can provide programmed PIC12F1501s, at least.

 

[Mu0n]

Can one purchase these?

Let's do a napkin economic analysis about this particular project.
First of all, despite it being well known in the late 80's, it concerns mostly 68000 macs since other solutions started appearing around the time of the powerbooks, making it relatively niche.
While the PCBs are cheap (around $6 for 5x), shipping can either be fast and expensive ($30) and annoying ($23 duties for Canada) or cheap and slow ($2.50 no duties).

By far, the most involved part is programing the PIC12 controller. If you don't already have this tool, you must equip yourself with a pic kit, I got a cheap clone one on aliexpress, another $27 for a tool I might never use again. The company that makes the microcontrollers can sell you preprogrammed ones if you send it the code, but orders are at 100x units minimum.

Then the Bom list is moderately expensive because of the various uncommon connectors and it's another $60ish per unit.

I assembled it last night and took my time to avoid any mistakes and that was a 3 hour spent on it casually.

So from that pov of a reseller, what do you do? Acquire a small stock of 5x? 10x in order to reduce the impact of the programmer and shipping? Buy its associated $300 of parts with a high chance on sitting on unclaimed units? that doesn't look very good. I did ask in my favorite Mac discord and was able to sell 3 bare PCB boards out of my 5 away (and programmed pic12 chips) to very enthusiastic late 80's Mac heads, but the fact of the matter is that the majority of Mac aficionados' average peak of the curve is later in the 90's and see less nostalgic value for this.

 

[demik]

I tried my hand at building my own unit thanks to the great documentation from the github page.

Happy to report: success.

Nice, well done ! What model of Mac are you using it with ?

Can one purchase these?

Maybe @Mu0n has a board left

@demik did an EU group buy but I think it's done now. If there's sufficient interest, I can do something similar. In the absence of that, if anyone wants to do a build on their own, I can provide programmed PIC12F1501s, at least.

Nah sorry I'm only doing TashPad for now. Every board from the prototype run has already been claimed

I wil agree that it's difficult to sell. I'm eating the cost and selling at a loss most of the time myself. This one was about $250 in parts to get it to the released version (3 previous iterations, two with almost no common components, had to benchmark a few opamps, microphones, etc)

I just do it for my personal enjoyment but as @Mu0n said it's a hard to sell that kind of stuff without loosing too much money. Only doing it for the community Shipping and duties are what's killing it for me

 

[Mu0n]

I'm happy to sell:
1x bare main PCB
1x front case plate PCB
1x back case plate PCB
1x pre-programmed pic12F1501 chip, which you'd then be able to remove from the Bom list you'd buy yourself.

Keep in mind I'm in Canada and sending even a small box to the US is now salty.

 

[Mu0n]

Nice, well done ! What model of Mac are you using it with ?

Attempts made

Mac Plus:
SoundEdit 1.0 crashes if I open it from my bluescsi system 6.0.8, but runs if I let it boot from these diskettes (finder 4.2), then you're left with 60kb free on disk unless I whip out a FloppyEMU or external disk drive

SoundEdit 2.0.5 runs under System 6.0.8 no problem and it's what I used to record the example above.

I'm gonna try SoundEdit Pro on the SE/30 when I get a chance.

 

[aladds]

I’m in the UK and would be happy to program PICs for people at cost. (Or you send me your PIC and I can program it for you for free)

 

[demik]

Attempts made

Mac Plus:
SoundEdit 1.0 crashes if I open it from my bluescsi system 6.0.8, but runs if I let it boot from these diskettes (finder 4.2), then you're left with 60kb free on disk unless I whip out a FloppyEMU or external disk drive

SoundEdit 2.0.5 runs under System 6.0.8 no problem and it's what I used to record the example above.

I'm gonna try SoundEdit Pro on the SE/30 when I get a chance.

Intresting, SoundEdit 1 crashed on my Quadra as well. I think there is some line in the ReadMe file addressing that.

 

[Mu0n]

I made a 23 minute video on building it and messing with it (mostly for Studio Session)

 

[demik]

@Mu0n Nice video. This is a nice contribution to this project.

I liked the historical and Studio Session parts, as my first Mac already had 8 bit mono input and I was more messing with Player Pro.
Didn't know that king of work was possible on a Plus

 

[Mu0n]

Thank you! If you think it can help the readme section of the project's GitHub page, I'd be happy to have my video linked from it as a sort of complementary guide to using and building the unit.

I tried checking my Super Studio manual, as well as the still running madcapps website that hosts extra Super Studio session instrument disk images (to this day!), but there's no guide on how to prep the sound clips when you're making some with a MacRecorder. There is, however, a section on the base instrument, where you can see which are meant for sustained use, which not range you should use them with. These details point to some lost know-how of best practices. Ed Bogas productions tell us they used a professional sound studio to get the best acoustic conditions back then and sold us their 800k instrument disks at $20 a pop, haha!

 

[Burgertrench]

This is fantastic! I have a music studio which is full of old Macs, this would be very useful to get my SE/30 and Mac Plus in to the loop.

 

[Hollie]

@demik kindly sent me one of his creations, so tested it out using my SE/40 with an old iPod Shuffle as the input source.

https://imgur.com/jLrsbpn