d8b Forum

This photo, courtesy Greg Mackie, was taken in Jan.1997 in a hotel room close to the NAMM convention center in Anaheim. That's Peter Watts on the left, the late great Bob Tudor center and me on the right. There were lots of problems with the prototype that needed last minute fixing before the board was wheeled across the street to the convention hall. This included a failed attempt to rip apart the hotel room's TV for parts that we left back in Woodinville. Eventually, Greg ripped open the room's clock radio for the win. Greg's snapped this pic.
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Great photo and the back of that desk looks almost like the current state of donated desk that I have been trying to get working for about the past 8/9 months !!!!!!!

That really must have been an exciting time knowing that you were about to show a desk that would virtually revolutionise the recording industry !!!!!!!

David

I spotted the real problem straight away...how could they have missed it, the fifth yellow wire from the left is plugged into the wrong terminal

WOW...impressive last minute debugging chops !

FrankH wrote:This photo, courtesy Greg Mackie, was taken in Jan.1997 in a hotel room close to the NAMM convention center in Anaheim. That's Peter Watts on the left, the late great Bob Tudor center and me on the right. There were lots of problems with the prototype that needed last minute fixing before the board was wheeled across the street to the convention hall. This included a failed attempt to rip apart the hotel room's TV for parts that we left back in Woodinville. Eventually, Greg ripped open the room's clock radio for the win. Greg's snapped this pic.
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I remember this story. Ah, the good old days from Wood-Red road.

Hahaha, that's a crazy story - and a really fun photo

Did this prototype still have the PC hardware inside the console, that moved to the rack unit, in the release version? Looks like lots more cables in there, and boards I don't recognize, and one area looks like a PC mainboard's memory bank with an Intel chip besides it.

I had heard a story before, that the original plan was to have the PC hardware inside the console, but that it got too hot in there. Is this what this is? (And did it fail before the show, because it got too hot?)

Anyway - thanks for sharing!

Y-my-R wrote:
Did this prototype still have the PC hardware inside the console, that moved to the rack unit, in the release version?

And did it fail before the show, because it got too hot?

Yep, this was the only existing proto and they did build the PC and power suppllies into it. There was even a floppy disk drive built slated to be built into the armrest.

Heat might've been a factor, but there were slew of hardware and software problems preventing a reasonably working demo for the show from happening. We landed at the hotel 2 days before the show and it was pretty much a no sleep 48 hour slog to get the thing passing audio and running an automated demo without crashing. If it wasn't for Bob Tudor running the demo by circumventing all the "gotchas", it would've been a disaster.

You have to understand that this proto unit was built from the ground up 7 weeks prior to the show.

FrankH wrote:There was even a floppy disk drive built slated to be built into the armrest.

I have one of those armrests on my d8b. I can't remember who gave it to me at the mothership... maybe Anita Hurling. Too many years gone by at this point.

Crash wrote:I have one of those armrests on my d8b. I can't remember who gave it to me at the mothership... maybe Anita Hurling. Too many years gone by at this point.

I have one of the first separate power supply/PC pre production rigs (still with the floppy drive armrest) in my garage. Mackie sent it out to NY for me to record the demos for the show on a pair of TASCAM D88's.