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
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