Akai DL1500

  • Thread starter Thread starter frederic
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Hey frederic, you are unbelievable. Where did you learn all your electronics skills?
Wish I knew 1/10 of what you know. Maybe some time in the attic would help, huh?:D
fitz :)
 
RICK FITZPATRICK said:
Hey frederic, you are unbelievable. Where did you learn all your electronics skills?
Wish I knew 1/10 of what you know. Maybe some time in the attic would help, huh?:D
fitz :)

I started early. At age three I defied my father by sticking a key into an outlet, blowing fuses. I was fascinated by the sparks, and the burn on my fingers.

Do you want a summary of my resume? :D

For some reason, I have amazing aptitude for electrical and mechanical understanding. I absorb it like a dried spong.

I am severely crippled in other ways, which provides balance. Like this morning, I put water in the coffe pot, ground up the coffee and put it in a filter, put the filter in the machine, and put the pot in the machine, flipped it on.

All was well until I came back 30 minutes later expecting coffee, only to realize the water was in the pot, not the heater part of the coffee machine.

Seems I forgot a step :D
 
Good Morning frederic, thanks for the reply. Your resume' will be suffecient:D

Frederic, are you familiar with or heard of a new device from Stienberg called System Link or something? Links multi computer setups togeather for sharing audio/midi etc.
Recording magazine says it works fantastic. quote ..."allows one central computer to seamlessly control multiple computers." Hmmmmm....think I'll check into this. Sounds interesting. Since I'm thinking Nuendo anyway. It goes on to say that the use of multiple computers has brought about a need for noise control of computers. OK. Thats it. I have another question.

How can I lengthen the distance from my computer monitor/keyboard/mouse/ about 25'? I have heard of extenders but damn from what I see they are expensive and resolution is a consideration. But I'm no techy so maybe theres something else I can do? I want to house my rackmount computers/servers or whatever in a soundproof enclosure at the back wall of the controlroom but its so far away from the console, I don't know if this can be done.
Anyway, thanks frederic.
fitz
 
Good Morning frederic, thanks for the reply. Your resume' will be suffecient:D

Fair enough. The electrical socket thing at 3 I already shared :)

from pre-teens to mid teens, I enjoyed electronic kits, ranging from simple things that blink LED's with 555 timers, all the way to assembing my own Timex Sinclair 1000, you know, Z80, 1K of ram, membrane keyboard. Then a Hero 1. Christmas every year was full of electronic gizmos, usually unassembled. Around the age 10, i got into model trains, and while my layout was simple, by mid-teens my Commodore 64 controlled most aspects of the layout. Train speeds, multiple trains, RR crossing gates with little servos, house and building lighting (I'd turn them on at night when the "sun" went down), and even made a homemade high frequency AC power supply to inject on top of the variable DC track voltage, so the trains could run anywhere from slow to fast, and the lighting inside the passenger cars would stay on full bright.

When I got my first electric bass at age 14 or so, it didn't work electronically. I soldered, modified the very simple electronics, and after a lot of experimenting I had a nice sound from this used cheap thing. My first "amp" was a 12" speaker out of one of those massive wooden record players that are a piece of furniture, and a 20W tube amp with a small tube pre-amp I made. It was good at the time, but not impressive. Eventually I saved for a Peavey TKO65. Took a while, I was poor.

I worked at radioshack for 4 years, 2 in HS and 2 in college. The last year I managed a store.

I've done an awful lot of car wiring, three trucks bumper to bumper, six cars I restored, two kit cars, and one homemade car, though the latter was the absolute bare minimum. Lights, ignition, gauges, thats it. Race only.

After 2 years of college, I started an electrical contracting business, and when the unions came to town I got out of it quickly, and ended up at a Microage Computer Store in outside sales, mostly servers, netware. These were the days of IBM Microchannel and Compaq EISA and they weren't friendly. After a few years of blowing quota out the door, I got bored with it and moved into consulting, thanks to a customer of mine who wanted to place me at a client to make "network security recommendations". So, I got paid money, to sit in meetings, and tell them they are clueless wonders, then make recommendations on how to fix it. I didn't actually have to "do" anything per se. That was my entrance into the corporate world.

From there I got into wall street, managing staff, data centers, equipment and all the hassles contained within, from smaller shops of 10-12 IT folks all the way to 300 people with three geographically diverse data centers. Moved out of there into a NYC hospital, designed their wide area campus network (4gb between buildings, redundant 10/100 switches to each floor of each building, 100mb to the desktop). When my 1 year contract ended, I got renewed for 6 months to design a way of running hospital applications which required NT4.0, using whatever they had as desktops. Sadly, anything from 286 to pentium 120's. Definately not NT4.0 compatible. So, we built an experimental Citrix server, ran NT4.0 look and feel on that, and converted a few test workstations to be citrix clients. Amazingly, it worked. Turned out that it was significantly cheaper to build 20 massive Citrix servers, than to convert something like 6000 pentium 120 or worse desktops. All this rolled back into their Netware database servers, and Citrix/NT4.0 authenticated to the Netware NDS security tree. We were the first to do this, according to Netware and Citrix.

Citrix is essentially what became Microsoft Terminal, due to licensing and lawsuit settlement.

After some additional bouncing around, I'm now at a very large telephone company managing pre-sales engineers that design hosting, collocation, managed network and Mobility systems for larger clients. Its fun to be on this side of the desk again, rather than the operations, 80hr workweek, constant ulcer side of said desk.

Somewhere between all of the above, I owned two pro recording studios, one alone and one with a partner, both never turned out to fulfill my dreams. I believe its because I built and owned them, and didn't manage them full time. I was an absentee owner most of the time due to everything else I had going on.

Also raced funny cars on and off for a 8-9 year spread, mostly with random sponsers.

And people ask my why, at age 36, I'm dead friggen tired all the time. :D

Now I've taken all these things, and boxed them up carefully. No longer racing, but very slowly building my second "from scratch" car, still in the parts collection phase, which parallels the engine building phase. Going slow, spreading the costs out, yada yada.

Recording I have scaled way back, and simply remodeling my home studio. I was going to have commercial space if you recall before you moved, I was having trouble with building titles. Believe it or not thats still unresolved. But eventually it will be and I'll either get my money back via the title company's insurance, or I'll own the building officially. Then, once I psychologically recover from this torture, I'll have Sayers come out, draw some neat plans, and project manage the thing until its done. I'm going to let him stress out over perfection, and I'll just stop in once a week and smile :) If this works out, I'm quitting my current job, retiring, and going to be a full time recording studio owner. If it doesn't work out, I'll find another building down the road and try it again, not a big deal.

Anyway, electricity, electronics, computers and cars are my interests. Anything else I'm an absolute dunce. Doesn't mean I don't try, just means I have a larger opportunity of screwing it up or getting injured. For example, I cannot make a birdhouse (out of wood) if my life depended on it. Out of aluminum, absolutely :)

I should start a business making aluminum high-tech birdhouses with LED lighting. Anyone want to invest, inquire within. No guarrentees for ROI. :D

think I'll check into this. Sounds interesting. Since I'm thinking Nuendo anyway. It goes on to say that the use of multiple computers has brought about a need for noise control of computers. OK. Thats it. I have another question.

Please do, I've not heard of this device yet. I've been behind on my random internet surfing for "presents".

How can I lengthen the distance from my computer monitor/keyboard/mouse/ about 25'? I have heard of extenders but damn from what I see they are expensive and resolution is a consideration. But I'm no techy so maybe theres something else I can do? I want to house my rackmount computers/servers or

There are two ways. YOu can use blackbox.com devices so you can extend mouse, keyboard and video over cat 5 cabling. THis works, but the higher the resolution, the more it looks terrible.

What *I* do is install PCanywhere (for windows) or "RealVnc" for linux, and remotely manage the server from where ever I am. Trust me, I don't walk into the basement much to do anything to my servers. I even reboot them remotely.

if you want to get super fancy, and you've purchased Compaq or Dell, both companies make "Remote Insight" boards, which has a cat5 ethernet connection and a battery. When you power off the server, the board stays live. This means, using your browser, hit the IP address of this fancy board, and you can see what's on the monitor screen, move the mouse, etc. As if you are there. In fact, this works so well, you can watch the memory counting in the bios through your browser :D

Since you probably don't want to buy fancy boards for your compaq or dell servers (or choose another brand of server where the boards won't work), PCanywhere is a great option for windows, and VNC is a good option for linux. Gives you an X console no matter what version of linux you're running, and no matter what you are running on the desktop thats remotely viewing. Windows, Linux, OS/2, whatever. Works well.

controlroom but its so far away from the console, I don't know if this can be done.
Anyway, thanks frederic.
fitz [/B]

Put the servers somewhere else so you don't have to listen to them. My little server farm in the basement makes a huge racket. I'm very pleased its far away from my studio.
 
:eek: :eek: :eek:
HOLY COW, am I actually talking to a "genious"!! Frederic, have you ever heard of smell the roses? Ha! And thanks for the resume'. I was just kidden with you, but that is very interesting.
Actually, my brother and sister-in-law are network and operations supervisers for the department of reclamation. I hear their problems with networks everytime I pick their brains. What a mindfuck.
Ok, well, I still get confused by the concept of remotely controlling your servers. Don't you need a pc to do that? One close to the keboard, mouse, and monitor? Or am I one of those "clueless morons"? :D My whole point is my console. The design is such that there is space under it for the computers etc, which I had a belly cabinet suspended from above. I don't want this now. Just a clean console with not a cable visible, and no noise from multiple computers, which according to the article is actually the way most pro studios are set up. Maybe they are connected to a network or something, but still, multiple dedicated computers. And then, how do you control multiple computers from one keyboard/mouse, and how would you assign which monitor to which computer? I guess that System Link thing does this, but haven't had time to investigate it.
Hmmm
Being a dunce can be awfully frustrating at times:rolleyes:

Well thanks again, its always nice to talk with you frederic. You are very generous with your knowledge. I'll be back with more questions. But this is the Building forum and I don't want to bore people with digital nonsence when they could be reading how to use 703, which I found a TON of 1" in a wood butchers shed out back. The previous owner must have been like me. I found black and white melamine cutoff, square head recess screw, hardwoods and tons of hardware. He left everything. Wow, Inoticed that the local woodworking and lumber places carry bulk square head in a dozen configurations. Even round head 1/4" lag bolts with a #3 square recess head up to 8" long. Cool.
fitz:D
 
have you ever heard of smell the roses?

I'm a smoker, I can't smell anything.

a mindfuck.

The only mindfuck are from customers, who don't seem to understand, if they are breathing on your shoulders, yelling at the top of their lungs, they are annoying and distracting, thus preventing quality work. :D

Ok, well, I still get confused by the concept of remotely controlling your servers. Don't you need a pc to do that? One close to the keboard, mouse, and monitor? Or am I one of

Yes, I'm talking about virtual remote management, so yes you would need a PC in your studio to remotely manage other PC's. However, there are many quiet options. You can put your servers (and your studio PC's) in a seperate room.... but why bother, too much work and you lose space that could be packed with gear or beer.

Put the servers in the house, run a network between the house and your studio, and have all the fan noise in the house, and your studio has only one PC to deal with. THAT PC you can put inside a noise reducing enclosure, or double up the quantity of fans that are in it, and run them at half speed by putting two 1N4001 diodes in series iwth the power leads. Some fans require three diodes for a good voltage drop. .6V per diode, string away.

A fan spinning slightly slower moves slightly less air and makes a hell of a lot less noise. Two fans at 2/3 speed cool as good as one fan screaming at max RPM, and I bet you can't hear them, even if its not in a special sound filtering enclosure. I did that with my HP Pavalion, and its been working really good.

I can hear the hard drive from across the room... dunk dunk dunk dunk dunk buuuuuzuzzzzzz dunk dunk dunk. Thats how quiet the fans are. its never overheated once, even when the room was over 90 degrees.

Being a dunce can be awfully frustrating at times:rolleyes:

Yes, especially when you're testing your mechanical engineering expertise (or lack there of) after mounting license plates :)

I'll be back with more questions.

Feel free, thats entirely cool. If you want to take it offline, thats cool too, frederic@midimonkey.dyndns.org. I'm away on business tomorrow through early next week, so don't worry about the silence. I have a 300gb mailbox so its not like it will fill up anytime soon :)

in a dozen configurations. Even round head 1/4" lag bolts with a #3 square recess head up to 8" long. Cool.
fitz:D [/B]

Awesome. The prior owner only left me duct tape and chaulk on every plumbing joint in the house.

heh-heh
 
have you ever heard of smell the roses?

I'm a smoker, I can't smell anything.

a mindfuck.

The only mindfuck are from customers, who don't seem to understand, if they are breathing on your shoulders, yelling at the top of their lungs, they are annoying and distracting, thus preventing quality work. :D

Ok, well, I still get confused by the concept of remotely controlling your servers. Don't you need a pc to do that? One close to the keboard, mouse, and monitor? Or am I one of

Yes, I'm talking about virtual remote management, so yes you would need a PC in your studio to remotely manage other PC's. However, there are many quiet options. You can put your servers (and your studio PC's) in a seperate room.... but why bother, too much work and you lose space that could be packed with gear or beer.

Put the servers in the house, run a network between the house and your studio, and have all the fan noise in the house, and your studio has only one PC to deal with. THAT PC you can put inside a noise reducing enclosure, or double up the quantity of fans that are in it, and run them at half speed by putting two 1N4001 diodes in series iwth the power leads. Some fans require three diodes for a good voltage drop. .6V per diode, string away.

A fan spinning slightly slower moves slightly less air and makes a hell of a lot less noise. Two fans at 2/3 speed cool as good as one fan screaming at max RPM, and I bet you can't hear them, even if its not in a special sound filtering enclosure. I did that with my HP Pavalion, and its been working really good.

I can hear the hard drive from across the room... dunk dunk dunk dunk dunk buuuuuzuzzzzzz dunk dunk dunk. Thats how quiet the fans are. its never overheated once, even when the room was over 90 degrees.

Being a dunce can be awfully frustrating at times:rolleyes:

Yes, especially when you're testing your mechanical engineering expertise (or lack there of) after mounting license plates :)

I'll be back with more questions.

Feel free, thats entirely cool. If you want to take it offline, thats cool too, frederic@midimonkey.dyndns.org. I'm away on business tomorrow through early next week, so don't worry about the silence. I have a 300gb mailbox so its not like it will fill up anytime soon :)

in a dozen configurations. Even round head 1/4" lag bolts with a #3 square recess head up to 8" long. Cool.
fitz:D [/B]

Awesome. The prior owner only left me duct tape and chaulk on every plumbing joint in the house.

heh-heh
 
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