Hi Johnnie.C

It certainly is not my intention to alienate any of the "GUROS". Indeed, since they are members of this forum I was including them in my reference to our future need for support and the benefits of having such good people on this forum.

My apologies if in was taken in any other way in both threads.

Have a Great Day
Heather

Hi Alec,

I certainly do understand this statement.

My first PC was a TRS-80 Model I in 1979. As part of a conference I attended, a person from MIT attended and using 24 eight inch disks and a Model II with 2 drives he proceed to demonstate how music could be sampled and put on to a disk. Each disk held 2 minutes of music and as the song played he swapped disks in the two drives.

Little did we know that we were watching the beginning of a new generation of music (and video) and it hasn't stopped yet.

Thanks you for sharing some of what we may have to look forward to.

Heather

Hi Everyone

Could someone please tell me the source of this very bad news? And when it was announced? It seems that a lot of local dealers, and even our distributors, are not aware of this. Did the news come directly from Japan? My local keyboard technician, who travels to Japan regularly for training, also has not heard the news. Can it be confirmed that the matter is not a hoax? Please, someone, fill me in.

Thanks

Neil Bennett

Hi Neil,

Alec Pagida made the announcement in the following post: http://www.synthzone.com/ubbs/Forum25/HTML/002319.html

Chuck

my information comes direct from the top in Japan, obviously your contact is not in any position to know. Your distributors around the world will just not have received their official notification yet. UK dealers have already received their notification of cessation of contracts.

Hi All,

Rikki, you say you have always been an electronic gadget nutter. You have lots of company in every country around the world. Electronics is constantly evolving not only in terms of hardware (smaller, faster etc.) but also in terms of application. New ways of applying electronics to make our lives more comfortable or enjoyable are being pursued daily by the research and development departments of small and large corporations. So you will have lots of gadgets to choose from - all designed to make your pocketbook a little lighter!

There are many fields of electronics, each with its own unique application of the technology. I had a career in aviation electronics, Bill Norrie had a career in the design and engineering of instruments (industrial electronics) if I am correct, and Alec Pagida is involved in consumer electronics. All three of us (and maybe more of our forum members who have had careers in electronics) have seen a quantum leap in the minitiarization and sophistication of components/circuits over the past 30 - 40 years. Our keyboards are outstanding examples of the advances in consumer electronics. And Alec is working with new technologies that will likely revolutionize our lives still further. Yes Rikki, more gadgets are on the way!

Heather, you mentioned the TRS-80 Model 1 desktop. It was my first exposure to desktop computers, too. I cut my Basic language programming teeth on that machine. It did the work I asked of it and did it well. Now look what we have in front of us today compared to that early desktop. No comparison. Yet another example of the evolution of electronics.

I was reading the news yesterday and saw an announcement released in Japan saying that two electronic engineers have designed a one square inch hard drive! It will store 2 GB's of information. They want to make it a little smaller so it will fit inside a watch! Where will it end?

Someone on our forum said (I believe) that he/she hoped someone would buy the Technics technology and incorporate it in future keyboards. I share that hope. It has been done before.

Just felt like talking tonight for some reason. Hope I didn't bore anyone. Thanks for listening. All of you take care.

Chuck

Hi Mark,
nope, I managed to get off the computer before he spotted me again ( haahaa)

best wishes
Rikki

Hi Chuck,
never find it boring when it's to do with technology.

I tried to learn "Basic" for my first Dick Smith Computer , must have been the early 90's, unfortunately I couldn't make sense of it.
Then my Vic 20 ( Commodore computer?) arrived, it played music, albeit , it only beeped in tune ( which was better than I could do ) that was the beginning of my addiction to music computers & synths. Fun times.

best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Chuck Piper:
[B]Hi All,

Hi Chuck, the microdrive has been around for some time, I've had a 1GB one in my miniature mp3 player for a few years now which holds around 330 cd quality songs. I used to use it in the camera where you could shoot 700 full resolution images or 2500 high quality jpegs before replacing it with the equivalent compact flash cards when prices came down. Now it's used for music in the car since only slightly bigger players with laptop drives have 80Gb of storage and can store and play 100 two hour movies. IBM developed microdrives, then sold the business to Hitachi who are just bringing out 2GB and 4GB versions. Toshiba have just announced their 0.8 inch version to be released soon. Next year we will see the 1GB SD card

Hi,
I rang my dealer yesterday ( here in Sydney) he was already aware. I think he'd been notified on Monday. I think Aust. may somehow be tied up to the U.K.

best wishes
Rikki