4 Jan
2006
4 Jan
'06
1:27 p.m.
On Sun, 1 Jan 2006, Jim Battle wrote:
Steven N. Hirsch wrote:
Yes, that's it! XPL was, IIRC, a high-level assembly language optimized
for music synthesis. It was quite an amazing gadget in its day and really
pushed the envelope for memory and attached storage. A typical system had
32MB of DRAM, which in 1986 was some serious address space. The memory
cards were so static-sensitive that performers typically ran a large
ultrasonic humidifier behind the CPU rack to head off any crashes during
live performances.
They had an option called Direct-to-Disk, which used an array of 16 of the
largest 5-1/4" RLL drives available (maybe a few hundred MB?); one for
each track. There was a QIC tape drive mounted underneath each drive for
making permanent copies. With all that, I think it was limited to about
20-minutes of full-bandwidth recording. Hard to believe how far things
have come since then.
Steve
On Fri, 30 Dec 2005, Richard wrote:
...
Google says: http://www.500sound.com/SyncII/sync2intro.htm
This says the CPU was called "ABLE", and it was programmed in "Scientific
XPL". Besides the Lilith Modula-2 workstation, what
other computers were
made from the AMD 29xx bit-slice architecture?
I believe the late, lamented New England Digital Corp. built the
Synclavier music system (quarter-million buck digital synthesizer and
audio workstation) CPU from AMD 29xx pieces. Early on, they produced a
bit-slice mini (late 70s?) for commercial applications and propagated the
same ISA to the Synclavier in the early-to-mid 80s. I'm drawing a total
blank on the name of the mini, but recall seeing terminal sessions all
over their engineering department.