I want a eureka

[rdfreak]

OK I've been playing around extensively with the music composer of the eureka, and I know pretty much how to work it all now; it's sooo much damn fun! I played ecosaes and mannaged to save it to disc. first it wouldn't work but then I reformatted the disc using the option and it seemed to like that! I am now playing eligro (all from me old zizuki days! :) it's cool because I know how to do repeats and rests. and I also know how to change the tempo and key sig! it's just awesome! yeah for the chatty manual!
I decided I want one. Originally I was going to buy SE's from him for 500 but was rightly told it was way too expensive, so I will aim to see what happens. I might see if RB wants to get rid of his (since the only thing he uses it for is the time at our work now - that's how i knew he had one :) I'll think of something. I mean who knows, chances are I'll get it, play with it for a few weeks then forget about it but then, the music composer is quite unique and I like it just for that!
I had a bit of trouble with it though as i went into mode and can no longer get it to echo letters. I finally fixed it but it still won't echo when it's set on grade 2 braille, only grade one or 0, so who knows!
and the speech is a real bitch to understand! I can't for the life of me work a lot of things out! thank god speech synths have gotten better!
anyway I was planning to record my ecosaes masterpeace but I guess I'll do it later when I unplug it from power!
the batery is a bit dead though! hardly have it unplugged for long and it complains it needs charging.
anyway this is just soo cool! it sounds so awesome when I play the chords and everything! And I just simply arrow up and down the notes; I don't have to varify with speech what note I'm on cos of my pitch!
man I love it!
it's labour day! and I get paid for being home! yeah
Had a bit of a talk to a few of the Brits on ventrilo before; only my damn mic was too loud! can never win! I use to be way too quiet when I had those dodgy sound cards, now too loud. it works well on skype still though.
til next time, rdFreak

Comments

[orionflight.livejournal.com]

You're really amazing Rachel... like you're a computer pro, music maker, and you know how to do certain stuff that the sighted can't even manage to do [including me].. that's some talent you have there girlie!
[I once tried downloading some electronic music-making thing, and I can't even begin to understand it! haha.. i'm proud of you! *hugs*

[rdfreak.livejournal.com]

well thanks ya! but it's all what I learnt with piano when I was little. *hugs* back! :)

[loscha.livejournal.com]

I finally found pictures of the Eureka!
I've seen them before. Steve Wonder had a few of them laying around his studio in a big photo article I saw once about his equipment. In the 80s, he had an assistant come in one day a week just to label all his synthesizer stuff in Braille - he was always getting new stuff, so, he had to keep him working. It was a really good article, because I learnt some of his tech secrets.

I look forward to hearing the music you make with the eureka.

The battery inside of it has probably worn out, cause it will be an older one with memory effect. But, that's ok, if you buy the thing, I can probably fix it for you.

[rdfreak.livejournal.com]

yeh thanks for that :) Lol
yeh not sure if they have a web site now so couldn't link it.

eureka a4

[khoath.livejournal.com]

The problem with the eureka is that getting parts to fix them for example the flexistrip for the keyboard and other internal connectors is the problem. Of course it is the flexistrip on the keyboard that wears out every time you open the thing to replace the battery or do other work. Also the rubber membrane keys fill up with crap and you end up having to soak the keyboard in bicarb once every 6 months to get all the dots to function again. Eureka music composer is childs play to use, however sonar and the like is even faster to edit with; simply play your tune into the computer on a cheap midi keyboard and tidy up the quantization. If the Eureka is a Professional and has a good keyboard it is worth $500 however getting data on and off the thing is a right pain you either have to use a serial connection or a slow pc with 22-disk to read the double density disks. Serial cable has to be custom wired however, need to tie dsr dtr and cd together. 2 to 3 3 to 2 7 straight through 6 to 4 4 to 6 tie 8 and 20 together. I'm sure a copy of sonar can be organized; that way you generate mids that will work on your computer; phone and most other things. I have a Eureka here in a box; clock chip has locked up and it just isn't worth fixing.

Re: eureka a4

[rdfreak.livejournal.com]

oh OK, so everything else works OK? I know that friend of yours use to fix them, not sure if he's still doing it.

Re: eureka a4

[khoath.livejournal.com]

he fixes them yes but it is getting harder and harder to find parts and source them; in 2007 it is hard to justify repairs on a 20 year old technology. Hard to believe 1987 was 20 years ago. Still composer is nice; if you want sonar lmk off lj and we'll see what we can do.

Re: eureka a4

[loscha.livejournal.com]

So, you can answer my question then, what sound chip is in the Eureka?

From the few little things I found online, it's an embedded 386 core? running a customized old version of DOS?

My assumption, based on that, and from what rdfreak has said about the speech synthesis being crappy, is that it has a YM3812 or similar old FM Synthesis chip in it?

Re: eureka a4

[khoath.livejournal.com]

almost wrong on all counts. smile. The eureka is a Hitachi 64180 running at 6mhz; a Zilog z80 clone with extentions. The professional eureka can access a meg of memory by bank switching it into 8k windows in the 64-k address space. The operating system on the Eureka is a modified cp/m 2.2. The speech runs in software with results sent out the dacs. The machine has a 3.5 inch double density floppy drive for storage, the format is 10 sectors of 512-bytes on 80 cylinders 2 sides. file system is cp/m 2.2 including support for 15 user areas. Disks can be read on pc with pc-alien if you have a really old pc, or 22-disk on things up to about a p100.
The music chip is an fm synthesizer yes, exact part number escapes me but it is something like a ymf3812 20 operators including fm drumkit support on the professional. The eureka is made by Robotron who are still in business; not sure of their website although it contains little of use these days. I have the tech manuals for the eureka, the compilers and system utilities for what they are worth.

Re: eureka a4

[loscha.livejournal.com]

Thanks for those details! That's all good to know.

I've had experience dealing with alternate formatted floppy disks. A friend got a Cat Weasle driving board for disk drives so he could read Amiga, Atari S T, Microbee, Commodore 64 and other more esoteric disks on his machine.

After reading all that stuff, the Eureka is closest to a Microbee than anything else. They are CP/M for the disk access. With the advent of modern disk drives, it would be harder and harder to do a program that strips the data from a disk. Stupid XP protecting people from raping their system and making it hard to get to the bare metal of all the functions.

Robotron had a brief mention on their page about the Eureka A4, but, it was misleading.

with regards to FM synthesis. I am a moderate impact collector of old sound cards, and a 4th Level Grand Wizard at FM synthesis. It's somewhat of a passion of mine. I have a collection of many different FM synthesizers, from the ridiculous to the sublime, as they say.

[leaffan.livejournal.com]

Eureka!!!!! I loved that thing. That was my first ever notetaker way back in 1990 or so. I loved it. The speech was even good, although by today's standards it was lacking, admittedly. But the music composer, nothing cooler has come along in the assistive tech world since that. So how did you get your hands on one?

[rdfreak.livejournal.com]

yep, agree with you. a work coleague owns it and I asked if I could lend it.