AndyBantam Posted September 23, 2017 Share Posted September 23, 2017 Hello everyone, I work as a technician for a lighting company and I would like to furnish my workbench with something retro, but practical. I was going to go down the retro computer route but I'd really like it to send/control DMX. Is anyone aware of any product for the Amiga/Atari ST/Commodore 64/Spectrum et al that will enable me to do this? Thanks in advance Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IRW Posted September 23, 2017 Share Posted September 23, 2017 I was about to suggest building a Manolator parallel port driven DMX dongle might be the way to go, but it appears the website has bitten the dust :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xllx Posted September 23, 2017 Share Posted September 23, 2017 How about a Pulsar Intelligent Interface and a BBC micro? Link here Output 0-10v I think, but you could easily turn that into DMX... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pscandrett Posted September 23, 2017 Share Posted September 23, 2017 ISTR that there was something by Sweetlight that interfaced with the Amiga to generate DMX... that might be worth investigating. Failing that, the 'simplest' way forward might be to get an RS232 to DMX box (which exist, but aren't too common) and just get the Amiga (or whatever retro computer you use) to chuck serial signals out of the back. You can also get a TCP/IP stack on many Amigas - I've got an A600 which will take a PCMCIA network card - and although I suspect it can't chuck out Artnet natively, it'll certainly be able to communicate using standard network protocols to another device that can actually generate your DMX. Look at modern projects that are designed to interface with things like RaspberryPis and Arduinos, perhaps, too. It sounds like an interesting project. I get my Amiga out once in a blue moon to fiddle with it; it's actually an A600HD - with a 20 megabyte(!) hard drive! The early Amigas have the same main processor as the early Avolites Pearls, I believe - the Motorola 68000... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyBantam Posted September 23, 2017 Author Share Posted September 23, 2017 Thanks for your help, guys! I'm searching for a solution online. Hoping for a solution without having to commit too much time to the build. I just thought that it'd be good to have something that the occasional visiting client might find interesting or novel to look at. A computer soak testing a mover isn't that interesting, but an old computer that might just appeal to some happy childhood nostalgia might be pretty cool. Just for the sake of it, really. We're all geeks at heart :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pscandrett Posted September 23, 2017 Share Posted September 23, 2017 Just another thought - Chamsys has a linux version. It seems unlikely for the age of things you're talking about, but they provide 32 bit packages - so if you've got an old 32 bit machine you might be able to get it installed on something unexpected (perhaps a 32 bit console?) with a bit of dependency manglement. The other thing, along these lines, is the the Chamsys developers themselves might have an interest in helping you compile it up for a 16 bit platform somehow - partly for the geek factor but also they might get a bit of publicity out of it. It might be worth dropping them a line. (I haven't compiled anything on linux for /years/ so I have no idea how feasible this is!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Remo Posted September 23, 2017 Share Posted September 23, 2017 How about a raspberry pi inside an old spectrum (or similar) casing? The loook of the old with the brain of the new inside? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Owain Posted September 24, 2017 Share Posted September 24, 2017 http://users.skynet.be/kristofnys/ or try http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.freedmx.com but that's blocked by my network so I can't see what's there Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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