Hey Bob Stek,
Thanks for the wonderful update.
--- On Sun, 4/26/09, Bob Stek <stekster at gmail.com> wrote:
From: Bob Stek <stekster at gmail.com>
Subject: RE: Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar
To: cctech at
classiccmp.org
Date: Sunday, April 26, 2009, 11:05 AM
From: Vernon Wright <vern4wright at
yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar
I've built a number of Steve's projects. In my
workshop a few days ago I
saw his EEG project >waiting to be revived.
I was the prime instigator in the HAL-4 project. When I
lived in CT I was a
member of the CT Computer Club with Steve. He was always
looking for ideas
for his monthly column. Being a psychologist (but almost
EE major) I had
worked with biofeedback and thought a low cost EEG unit
would be cool. I
wrote the specs for the hardware and software and the
non-technical parts of
the article while 2 other club members did the hardware and
software
respectively, and Steve Many hundreds of these kits were
sold over the
years - I know because I enjoyed a $3/unit royalty on each
one :-)
I'm glad you got my $3. I hope you invested wisely in good beer! :)
Never-before-revealed-fact: I spec'd the design to
have
two switches which
the operator could use to signal awareness of up to 3
internal states to see
if they could be correlated with the brainwave pattern. In
fact, I was
inspired by Tim Leary's 'experiential
typewriter' which he speculated could
be used similarly when he first started experimenting with
LSD.
So tell me more. I haven't looked at this for so many years....
Brainwave feedback and analysis have progressed
greatly in
the past 20+
years and there's no reason why the PC software
couldn't be re-written,
though not many people have a serial port to which to
connect HAL. I
suppose an inline serial USB converter could be used.
I still have serial ports on most of my pc's. I don't keep up with the latest and
greatest from Fry's. I might have a go at the software, when I have a spare
miniute/hour/day/month.
I believe there is still open source hardware specs
and
description
available on the web.
Hint? Found the bios and a fft in basic.
But the San Diego Computer Society is, I think, the longest-running personal computer
group. It began in 1975 and is still in existence, though only as a shell of its
once-vibrant self.
Vern Wright