I have received some photos from users showing off their TurboCPU+MIDI installations, but don’t have them at hand right now. What I do have is an interesting photo from the old Oberheim DX or DMX that shows yet another way to mount the MIDI jacks. This might be an interesting option for the Sequential Pro One too:
I know it sounds off-topic, or that I have a fetish with all things vintage, but the reality is that a lot of my EPROM data and other files were kept on 5.25″ floppy disks back in the 80′s. Getting at these files has been somewhat painful. But now I have compiled the parts to built my very own USB Floppy drive for 5-1/4″ disks. And it works!
Now I just need an enclosure to make it a bit more transportable. So if anyone in OC-land or LA-ville needs to read a floppy, I can do it!
Or if you have extremely deep pockets, I can make one for you. 
I just ordered a Behringer BCF2000 MIDI Control Surface and will be looking at creating a template that maps all the changeable parameters to the knobs buttons and sliders. Hopefully there are enough controls on this unit. I wanted the BCF for the motorized faders because I thought that would be way cool for programming the new soft LFO (LFO2).
I’m also going to experiment with making LFO2 sync the waveform start to user keypresses. I was playing with the negative ramp wave assigned to pitch control. This is, of course, the way synth drum sounds are often made — falling pitch.
I’m still a couple of weeks out on finishing the “CV” module (DAC and possibly A/D). So much to do … super exciting though.
Today I did some further experiments on the next little improvement to the MTG Turbo CPU for the Sequential Circuits Pro One: MIDI-to-CV. I’ve acquired a quad DAC (D/A or digital-to-analog converter) board that can be very easily hooked up to the CPU module in order to control a few more parameters in the Pro One.
For now I’ve tested controlling three parameters of the Pro One:
Therefore, taking input from MIDI or from within the CPU itself, here are some possible sources of data to control those parameters:
For now I’m thinking it would cost about $25 to add these features to and existing MIDI+CPU setup. And it would be very easy to install. Now coming up with a nice clean way for the end user to control it all — that will be a challenge.
Any other ideas or comments?
What’s with the “turbo” you ask? Well my marketing persona determined that “replacement” CPU was not suitably catchy. I guess that was my engineer persona at work. But turbo actually does mean something here. As in “faster” and “more”. The modern CPU is much faster than the old one, so I have (below) some numbers to back it up. As far as more is concerned there are certainly more features (sequencer modes and memory, arpeggiator modes, MIDI in/out/thru and so on).
The metrics. Here are a couple of measurements that demonstrate the turbo-ness of the upgrade.
So in summary moving to a processor 25 years hence improves the responsiveness considerably. And all this while taking on a bigger workload too (MIDI In/Out).
