XK-System (community project) > Software Development
SSL Computer Software - Development Documentation
jimlfixit:
Hi all. I wasn't involved with any software at all whilst at SSL (1980-87) but I do know that Paul Bamborough was the main person involved with developing the infamous SSL computer mix system.
I have memories of him working very late into the night, upstairs in their new building in Stonesfield in the early 80's. He was an eccentric but friendly character and had a new Porsche in the car park! I think Paul left when SSL merged with another company and then they were taken over by Charlton Communications. I think Paul now works with Dreamworks and when he left SSL, he got paid a royalty (apparently 1%) for each SSL computer system sold after that but I may be wrong.
Bear in mind that all this was done in the days when an SE Classic Mac was considered to be a ground breaking computer although all I saw of Paul's work was him working on an old PC type computer (presumably with Dos or whatever it was called!). Colin Sanders always liked Macs but they couldn't do the mix software task at the time.
After Paul left, Phil Cork took over software design and he eventually left to join up with Sean Fernback at Motionworks providing synchroniser based bolt on products for the SSL computer system.
Jim Smith was involved mostly with computer hardware and designed the 11u rack, 2u floppy drive unit, Real Time, Events and 3u synchroniser controllers. Graham Hinton was also a design engineer (683 programmable equaliser for instance) and may have access to the SSL computer coding system. He now has his own company, Hinton Instruments.
I have not been in contact with any of these people for many years but, if you type their names into search engines, maybe something will turn up. I doubt whether SSL would be interested in providing information as they seem to think that anything given out relating to their older consoles would affect their current sales!
Dramastic provided hope earlier this year by potentially offering a new alternative computer system but that seems to have gone quiet now? Maybe they would be willing to work with interested parties to get something sorted as the SSL computer system, as we all know it, is some 30 years old.
At this rate, and without a modern day computer system to match, SSL consoles may just be used for tracking purposes and not with the ground breaking mix software which made them famous very quickly within a few years resulting in 1 console every 6 weeks in 1980 rising to 13 each month by December 1983!
Hope this helps a bit and regards from
Jim Lassen (www.profcon.co.uk). Also on FACEBOOK
Artur D'Assumpção:
Hi Jim,
Thanks so much for the useful info. As always your posts are always filled with comprehensive background that we enjoy so much. ;)
I think in this situation it would be in the interest of SSL to provide this info, since it does not reveal any critical technology details of their current offer and it would help greatly their clients and users to maintain and keep these beautiful consoles working, keeping alive the SSL legacy. Also the cost of this would be none, since giving back the info to the community would be the same as giving the service manuals in past.
I can try to reach some of the names you gave me, but I can imagine that they would be bound to some kind of NDA and can't reveal that info. Anyways I will search, contact these people soon and try my luck.
I can also try the painful way... which is to try to reverse engineer the format. But this will take much more time.
By the way, since i don't have currently access to an SSL in the couple months, can anyone provide me with two floppy images taken out with the "dd" command line app, present in OS X and Linux OSs? That would be a good starting point:
- Formatted floppy with no projects
- Formatted floppy with projects
Just out of curiosity, and thinking more ahead, have you guys ever thought of a floppy replacement, such as this:
http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/index.html#SDCARDFloppyemulator
It seems interesting and worth the try?! :D
Cheers,
Artur
marcmozart:
The geek in my just got very excited! I still got most of my parted out G+ mix-computer sitting here. Floppydrives sold, no CPU and memory. I wonder if it's ever gonna be in action again?
Artur D'Assumpção:
We should, as a community write a letter/mail to SSL to ask them to donate us the detailed documentation so we could support these desks in the future, within the community.
For now, my personal goal is to make this software manager for the SSL disks. But the crucial part is to be able to read the filesystem first. This can be accomplished in 3 ways:
1- I have access to the Filesystem specification and I will easily make a kernel or userspace driver to mount it.
2- I pull my hair and spend months trying to reverse engineer it
3- By a lucky shot SSL was smart and implemented an already sudo-standard filesystem of the time, which I doubt...
Either way, I would need those raw copies I mentioned on the previous post. If any one of you gentlemen could provide me that would be awesome! :)
Cheers,
Artur
marcmozart:
You bring up something really important, Artur!
We are doing great work her to keep up SSL's heritage. Just like somebody who drives a classic Mercedes.
Daimler-Benz is more clever though. They know that the value of the brand has SO MUCH to do with that heritage. Thats why there is a Mercedes-Benz Classic Car Center.
Anyway, my point is that we should build a relationship with SSL. They are not supporting our consoles any longer - thats fine with me. But they can only gain from giving us access to documentation, etc.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version