This evening I managed to setup both complete GDS systems together in the workshop for the first time following restoration - all hooked up to the test PA just begging for someone to perform a duet on these two monsters!! Here is the complete KS GDS system including the original ADDS serial terminal...

I guess you're getting the info from Bell Labs patents? Would you be so kind as to post some links? That would be awesome. I had the honor of Hal personally sending me copies of the patents he filed at Bell Labs and been very fortunate to have had the kind assistance of most of the surviving member...

Would be amazing to see that brought back to life. Does it have exactly the same functionality as the GDS? Its more the other way round.. the GDS and Synergy were a subset of the Alles Machine in many ways. The Alles Machine was significantly ahead of its time and had a completely open control arch...

madtheory wrote:Woah. That's beautiful. Richard D James?

That's D one..

Richard James kindly sent me a picture recently taken by a friend of his of The Bell Labs Synthesizer aka Alles Machine aka The Blue Monster as it stands now. Sadly it doesn't appear to be complete internally (I like the blue wire trying to escape from under the computer keyboard!) but still its nic...

@Brian - Its truly been an honour to have had the opportunity to work on two out of the three only known operational examples of this amazing instrument and to have done my bit to immortalise the ground breaking software that ran on it in a modern format. I have made extremely good progress rebuildi...

The cabinet maker turned up today with the restored KS GDS Keyboard Console cabinet. Where as it was decided to retain the original finish on Brian's GDS, the KS GDS console on the other hand was very badly damaged. What made the final decision to refinish the cabinet was that it turned out one end ...

Another big win!.... http://i57.tinypic.com/2whphew.jpg After much research and experimentation I ordered some cloned replacement foam and foil key contact pads on eBay which were designed to fit the keys on the old Apple Lisa computer which also featured a much later series of the "solid state capa...

A sample of the first rapid prototyped key contact actuator spigot turned up today. The part was printed on a Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) machine in ABS plastic. Placing the FDM part along side one of the plethora of broken originals a good match was observed. http://i59.tinypic.com/120rw21.jpg...

Total success! Its absolutely fabulous now! Wow! I ordered a new display from your link hideaway and installed it. I only had to replace the shorter m3 screws with longer ones to reach the stand offs on my version. It fit flawlessly and used 5v from the floppy. Awesome awesome upgrade hack. SOOOOOO...

http://i57.tinypic.com/155pjqr.jpg I have a Baldwin Ultrasonic Spring Reverb aka "Panoramic Tone Convertor" which I rescued and rehoused with a custom HT PSU a few years back.. It is one heck of a bizarre piece of vintage technology but very clever (see US Patent 3136853) - it uses 1960s all tube t...

What are you going to do with this beast when you've finished restoring it? Sell it for $100,000? D'oh!.. it is actually extremely difficult to determine what something like this is worth. I don't own either of these beasts - I'm just the crazy guy who is working on them. Both of which are now over...

I'd suggest flipping the HxC mounting panel and the HxC over so that the bits you work with are at the top of the panel, and not the bottom. The screen on JB's HxC Fairlight adaptor is in the top half of that panel. I have my Fairlight Mainframe on a stand with the Fairlight Keyboard and Monitor si...

I spent the last couple of days cleaning and recapping the PSU chassis and the front panel board in the keyboard console in Brian's GDS. After replacing all of the tantalums and the PSU reservoir capacitors this part of the restoration is now complete. http://i57.tinypic.com/2cropzs.jpg That's 95 ca...

SUCCESS... GDS runs under an HxC disk emulator for the first time... ever!... After two particularly intense days not only have I managed to hook up the HxC disk emulator as a second disk drive to the KS GDS but I’ve successfully created a suitable blank disk image from scratch and format the first...