LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))

On Wed, 20 Jul 2016, ethan at 757.org wrote: I'm not a keyboard guru like some on the list, but I've owned a Roland FP-9 and Alesis DG8. Now I use a Yamaha Clavinova. I miss the DG8, but I traded it off once it's internal amp started fritzing out. I had a friend with an Atari 800XL and I was very impressed with it. I remember a few demos (one with a metallic rendered robot walking toward you, I remember was most impressive). I was surprised that it was just an 8bit machine. At first I thought it might have been 16 bit! The only ones worth using that I'm aware of are Scream Tracker and Impulse Tracker and neither was around in the 16 bit ISA days pre-386, IIRC. I doubt Scream Tracker would be able to function on a 286 anyhow. It puts a 486DX2/66 at about 50% CPU load, from my recollection. The Amiga trackers were more efficient, but you got fewer channels, too. OctaMED was 8-channel and that seemed massive until it wasn't. Yes! I almost forgot about Composer, that was another good one. Several made it there over the years. I can't remember which ones, but I do remember one day I was listening to Nectarine Radio and heard one of my own Protracker MODs. That was awesome. He was just showing proper street cred. +1 Deadmou5 It took some extra hard Googling to find anything about it. The only time I'd even heard about it was when I was actually in Vegas working as a Def Con goon. Ahhh, those air-car-mounted-on-hydraulics "ride" thingys? Huh. Laser disc was always a cool thing, too. Remember "Time Traveler" ? That "holographic" (it wasn't really but it looked damn cool) game were the characters appeared in front of some kind of curved mirror volumetric display uhm, thingamabob? It used a Laserdisc too. Of course I loved Space Ace and Dragons Lair along with every other self-respecting geek, too. Also, my favorite was called "Thayer's Quest" in which you were a wizard's apprentice. Most commercial real estate weasels think you are the next "sucker" coming through the door. They seem to believe that some old crufty warehouse that's been empty for a decade is actually worth the ridiculous rents they charge. You'd think it'd be better to have the buildings occupied and someone giving you a bit or two to cover the property taxes, but they still don't seem to see their clients as anything more than walking cash registers. It's definitely a hard slog to find a screaming deal on space. All the hacker-spaces here in big-D have lots of folks pitching in to make ends meet. The first one here with an Ethan-style laser arcade will definitely get my membership dues. Then there is the problem that nobody but old dudes remember how fun/cool arcades could be, back in a time when they looked a lot more like nightclubs. I remember them so crowded you had to go out for some fresh air. Flynn's Arcade may never live again, but it's still a paradigm of cool in my mind. Then again, I'm probably too old now to adjudicate "cool" for anyone. If you do open an laser-illuminated LED-walled arcade, let us all know so we can put you on the cctalk road-trip map. We'll rent a bus in Seattle, and drive to your place (or visa versa). I nominate Fred to run the logistics. I'll drive. :-P -Swift