I'm Building a Fairlight CMI: Episode 11

Cris Blyth is a brave man. He has a dream of taking a Fairlight MFX and upgrading it to a Fairlight CMI Series III. In this episode, Cris works hard (too hard!) to solve a mouse problem, has an adventure mounting a SCSI2SD card, and gets a USB port installed.
Get all your synthesizers and synth parts - new and vintage - at Syntaur.com!
And if you'd like to support our video production endeavors, please visit:
/ synthwizards
Check out our merch!
syntaur.com/apparel.php
Instagram: @syntaursynths
Facebook: Syntaur
Twitter: @syntaursynths
Tik Tok: @syntaur
Linktree: Syntaur

[@LasseDamgaard]

40 minutes mostly about getting a mouse to work. I love it. 😂

[@Daphoid]

Just a guy tinkering in his basement til 4AM on bleep bloops. The dream indeed.

[@bnjmnwst]

I'm going to get a t-shirt made. It will say, "That was a horrible experience... Let's do it again."

[@FasaFeu]

hahaha

[@quantumsingularitystudios1772]

Those video shots on the bike are always mint, you're a master craftsman.

[@johnvcougar]

I think this is what Tracy Kidder meant when he used the title “The Soul Of A New Machine.” Big effort, mate!

[@DonSolaris]

Damn!!! I know I've seen this man before!!! It was something Hollywood related stored in my memory. A minute later and I remember! It's the guy with Amiga 4000 from the YT video called: "A titanic find on this Apollo 13 computer! Amiga movie magic". A great video to check it out!

[@CrisBlyth]

Oh, that's the evil Cris... I found him, and had to eliminate him..... hehehe

[@russellyoung6498]

Brilliant stuff as usual Chris, never give up!

[@keyscook]

Gads... @ 7 minutes, I'm yelling at my phone, " don't plug in the mouse and keyboard with the power on or you'll need to reboot! Come on, brother! * Certainly hope you're walking on a anti-static mat and grounding yourself because one shock in the wrong spot you're screwed... I would cry... with you. Good luck and cheers from Seattle! 🍻

[@CrisBlyth]

yeah.. my mistake.. As you know on most USB interfaces, they get scanned for anything new appearing on the bus, but with the teensy, I should have known due to the limited CPU power, it wouldn't be scanning all the time..

[@KeirMurphy]

So many projects are like this. You do all the hard stuff, it all goes pretty well. And then the smallest but critical part of the process becomes an utter blocker.

[@FLH3official]

Another great video about the CMI adventure!. Thanks Chris

[@fdschuler7863]

The upgrade was the other way. Series III was upgradeable to the MFX. We did this in the early 90's. And built another 8 voice series III before that.

[@CrisBlyth]

Wonderful ! Wait a minute..Where was KZbin and your good self in the 90's ! I could have used your help... would have been condensed down to one or two episodes ! :)

[@mitfreundlichengrussen1234]

the mouse-passage was really hard to watch - honesty sometimes hurts people. Thanks so much for sharing the wormhole you fell in.

[@CrisBlyth]

I’ve always tried to show everything ‘warts and all’ even though afterwords I’m cringing at my pig headed ness and non logical brain… read the manual, dammit :)

[@dazboot2000]

Hi Chris good to see you back (or have I missed something) getting the mouse working was a joy to watch. I’m a software synth user and I’ve dabbled in a bit of electronic’s construction (nothing like on the scale your working on) so finding your video’s totally fascinating to watch

[@tymiklic6463]

awesome ...awesome ...i am loving your pigheadedness chris ...it is truly inspiring...cant wait to see more...Ty from s.oz

[@ToTheGAMES]

Love it! I need more episodes.

[@johnvcougar]

Watching the whole series a few times helped me! 😅

[@CrisBlyth]

working on EP12 RIGHT NOW !

[@ToTheGAMES]

@@CrisBlyth Awesome! We will see it when its time 😎

[@youbecha64]

Oh, I guess you re-uploaded to fix that stuttering video problem...I guess I will have to rewatch then!

[@craigie13]

Blimey... I'm now 61. I'm sure I was 21 when I watched the first episode.... Lol

[@ScoopDogg]

love the way you leave all the comedy gold moments in the video, some youtubers wouldnt dare bare their soul showing their human faults. love it, sub earned and a like, the usb board, just had a thought go wireless using a dongle in the usb so keyboard and mouse are wireless, socket problem sorted lol

[@CrisBlyth]

Why thank-you ! I decided long ago to leave in all of my mistakes and idiocy.. There's sadly so many ! :) but hey, here we are.

[@marknhopgood]

Filenames include balls, fart and funk. Classic! 😀

[@barcodenosebleed5485]

This is particularly validating as you seem to have the same disorganized, slightly impulsive, wrong-tool insanity approach to building things as I do! Great to see this kind of thing in lieu of the overly produced, workshop-full-of-$100k-equipment that is the norm on the big "maker" channels. You show your mistakes as well, but nonetheless you are having continued success/productivity.

[@kevinhartnell2075]

Excellent, as usual! Where can a person purchase and download the theme? I really like it!

[@CrisBlyth]

you’d like the theme song ?

[@kevinhartnell2075]

@@CrisBlyth Absolutely, if possible. The theme that starts at :30 is so good! I don't mind paying to support the artist as well, so "free" is not expected or assumed.

[@har234908234]

I wish that clock worked

[@ScoopDogg]

would a PS1 socket keyboard & mouse rewired have worked better since it doesnt require the pulse hi detection from a computer like how windows keyboards dont work until they are booted up into windows if using usb, but the ps1 socket works in Dos due to it just working like switches as it doesnt need the 5volt and requires no drivers

[@CrisBlyth]

Exactly.. I need to find the 'right' kind of Microsoft Serial mouse for it to work on the MFX keyboard.. however, we have a solution !

[@Lantertronics]

If someone were to actually go through the profound pain of recreating one of the Fairlight boards, what board would be most useful to recreate?

[@CrisBlyth]

I’d say a cmi31 or cmi331 card. they are getting rarer, have less common components and are usually in dire need !

[@Lantertronics]

@@CrisBlyth I just spent a few minutes looking over the CMI-31 schematics -- it's bonkers. It's a very brute force design.

[@Lantertronics]

@@CrisBlyth I see the CMI-331 has a weird filter module for the antialiasing filter.

[@Lantertronics]

@@CrisBlyth Oh and this is very interesting -- the CMI-331 doesn't seem to use a Curtis or SSM filter chip as far as I can see -- it uses a state variable filter based off the dbx2150 VCA chips. I don't think I've seen that in any commercial synthesizers, except for some of the later Serge modular stuff I think. (You could use the modern equivalents from THAT Corp).

[@kenwhelan7920]

Hi Cris good video for the artwork on the new front cover you could do your artwork yourself and have it printed on vinal which is quit inexpensive and will yeald profesional results just take the artwork on disk to a local sign shop,keep on goings are you going o restore the donar machine????????

[@CrisBlyth]

Oh, there's not enough left on the donor machine to resto........ hmm.... wait a minute. :)

[@CrisBlyth]

also… wait until EP12 … more will be revealed

[@ralpix6240]

The "future me" of this episode is also the "past me" of the next installment, right? Perhaps the two should occasionally talk to each other to pass on what has been learned so far... ;-)

[@mrdali67]

All this is so hit’n miss. Think I have followed this for years now, and only making small progress every now and then. Still fun to watch tho 😊 Question: Is there any of the original CMI Team left out there to even be helpfull in getting all these parts you have used to play nice with each other. This project looks mostly like a carpenter trying to make sense of an old DaVinci machine and get it to run, pun intended 😅

[@CrisBlyth]

Oh, MANY of them have helped SO much, with diagrams, and hardware too , and remember I'm many months 'in the future' as it were. This Episode did show that I did have a bit of a different setup to what the USB2CMI was expecting, but it also showed that I'm simply daft and not reading the manual didn't help.. (Admittedly, I didn't somehow know about the manual until later though)

[@mrdali67]

@@CrisBlyth Don’t get me wrong, I am very impressed in taking on this kind of project to get various salvaged cards from different versions and trying to get it working. And for the age of some of this hardware, some of it actually looks quite modern when you take into account that some of it is 40+ years old. I first learned about the Fairlight in the early 80’es when I read about this wonder machine was installed in “Puk” Sudio in Demark that cost the same as a new House.

[@johnvcougar]

Hey Cris … measure TWICE, cut once! 🤭

[@CrisBlyth]

measure nonce, cut thrice !

[@SkyAvila983]

Or, you can by the vst version from Arturia

[@CrisBlyth]

not quite the same though :) Also, you can buy a picture of Mt Everest

[@compfox]

Sorry, but your video is much to long this time. If I want to see a guy making failure after failure, wrong decisions and working endledssly on a solution, I 'll go to my own workshop.😁

[@CrisBlyth]

As long as you film it and show us :)