Preliminary bending: Acorn COMPUTER!

kick52 · May 21, 2008, 10:40:48 PM

Oh yes, bitches. I win.

I brought my 1993ish Acorn A3000 computer (looks like a giant keyboard extended out the back) back to life, desperately in search of something to bend. I hit the fucking motherload.
Opening the case, there are tons of chips, mostly non-SMC (woot)
There is a big RAM board which I began to poke around with immediately.
I found lots of visual glitches, and AUDIO glitches as well. The video will glitch along with the buzzy droney output coming from the speakers. Sometimes it crashes (still in a glitchable state), and sometimes it will pop up with loads of error messages on the screen, complaining about RAM addresses which don't even exist.
I also poked around with the CPU chip as well, which can often crash it, or do some really awesome glitches.
Unfortunately, I think I have lost the cable which converts the ancient VGA 9 pin to VGA 15 pin, so at the moment I am viewing it through the shitty black/white RCA output on the TV.
This will be an epic glitch machine.

Some pics: (YouTube, video, sound etc soon)

Gordonjcp · May 21, 2008, 10:48:47 PM

These are a bit fragile, so I'd be careful about bending it. You'd be better off learning how to program it to do weird graphics and sounds - they're really very simple machines!

There was a great tracker program called "Coconizer" IIRC, which was the first tracker I ever used.

nochtanseenspecht · May 21, 2008, 11:52:59 PM

not bad, not bad... might have potention for the great circuitbenders contest

i like the last screenshot a lot . must be real nice in colour (is it a colour machine ?)

kick52 · May 22, 2008, 04:52:03 AM

Quote from: Gordonjcp on May 21, 2008, 10:48:47 PM
These are a bit fragile, so I'd be careful about bending it. You'd be better off learning how to program it to do weird graphics and sounds - they're really very simple machines!

There was a great tracker program called "Coconizer" IIRC, which was the first tracker I ever used.

Don't worry. I'm being super hardcore over-the-top careful with it at the moment as it's such a cool bend.
ATM I'm sticking to areas which go from chip-to-chip, to avoid frying any of them. Theoretically I can't do much harm to it shorting data pins on the RAM.. but I'm still being careful.
The thing I'm most worried about is soldering the things.. I think I will have to do some crazy shit to try and cool the chips down while soldering. Maybe I'll eyedrop some cool water onto it

Quote from: nochtanseenspecht on May 21, 2008, 10:48:47 PM
not bad, not bad... might have potention for the great circuitbenders contest Wink

i like the last screenshot a lot . must be real nice in colour (is it a colour machine ?)

There's lots more where that came from. I like the minimal lines one which changes with the sound. It is colour, but I need to get a VGA 9 pin -> VGA 15 pin converter as the TV output is black/white only.
I've heard about converter cables which convert VGA 15 -> S-Video, but would this work on this machine? Apparently they will only work on machines with video cards that support it.

Anyway I was poking around the video chip, and the chips which "support it" but the video card doesn't do shit, compared to the RAM bends.. no corruption or anything, it just crashes or comes up with a message telling me how my RAM is fucked. There are also some funny bends on the CPU.. they glitch it hardcore etc and will keep it running. I need to try and track them down to chips with easier soldering points.

iqoruvuc · May 22, 2008, 09:34:49 AM

We had loads of these at school - they were used for one thing only - playing a game called 'Dragons Doom'. That was IT in the 80's/90's for you

kick52 · May 22, 2008, 01:20:06 PM

Quote from: iqoruvuc on May 22, 2008, 09:34:49 AM
We had loads of these at school - they were used for one thing only - playing a game called 'Dragons Doom'. That was IT in the 80's/90's for you

I have a load of disks from the Acorn User magazine which I need to find. They have a lot of games etc on them, and the Acorn on its own has NOTHING accept a paint/notepad/drawing app.

Circuitbenders · May 22, 2008, 05:52:59 PM

hmmm, its just occured to me that my BBC micro that i still have from when i was about 12 years old has a speech synth chip installed. Time to dig it out i suspect.

Thanks for reminding me about acorn computers

kick52 · May 22, 2008, 06:37:44 PM

Quote from: Circuitbenders on May 22, 2008, 05:52:59 PM
hmmm, its just occured to me that my BBC micro that i still have from when i was about 12 years old has a speech synth chip installed. Time to dig it out i suspect.

Thanks for reminding me about acorn computers

That's even more old.. remember to mash the RAM to a pulp. It's all good.
Video recording now..

Gordonjcp · May 23, 2008, 07:43:35 PM

Quote from: Circuitbenders on May 22, 2008, 05:52:59 PM
hmmm, its just occured to me that my BBC micro that i still have from when i was about 12 years old has a speech synth chip installed. Time to dig it out i suspect.

Thanks for reminding me about acorn computers

Now if I remember correctly, the Real Genuine Acorn speech board used a TMS5220 synth just like the Speak'n'Spell, but with the LPC10 samples recorded by the BBC newsreader Kenneth Kendall. I look forward to hearing that...

kick52 · May 23, 2008, 09:49:41 PM

VIDEO!

Lots of HARDCORE glitching here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2xFWQ6WmVs

kick52 · June 07, 2008, 09:08:51 PM

It's completed.
I will try and get a video up tomorrow but until then here are some more pics:

This is only a snippet of what it can do.
With the amount of switches and pots, there are infinite possibilities. It also depends on what you have running, and what screen mode you are on. If you crash it before you load up the main OS, you get rich purple/blue/red colours. If you crash it while the OS is running, you get lots of white/green. You can have it on a low res screen mode to get nice 8-bit looking glitches, or you can put it into a high res mode to get smooth rainbow textures.