Citadel of Salah Ed-Din - Syria

The Citadel of Salah Ed-Din (Arabic: قلعة صلاح الدين‎, Qal'at Salah al-Din) are the remains of a castle in Syria. I visited the site in 2000. It's inaccessible now due to the current war
I wonder what it looks like now? Probably still a ruin.

 This lonely pillar was carved out of the surrounding bedrock in the 11th century.

It's the support for the drawbridge.

I visited it from the city of Latakia, (30 km east).

It's a crusader castle ruin. In 1188 it fell to the forces of Saladin after a three-day siege.
What's left are these ruins.

The site is beautiful. Situated in a deep ravine, it's surrounded by forest.
Built on a ridge some 700 metres (2,300 ft) long between two deep gorges.^[2] It guarded the route between Latakia and the city of Antioch

In 2006, the castles of Qal'at Salah El-Din and Krak des Chevaliers was recognised as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

The spur on which the castle is built is connected to a plateau in the east.

It was part of the Principality of Antioch, one of the four states founded by the Crusaders after the First Crusade captured Jerusalem in 1099.

 My taxi driver & his trusty Peugot. 

The car is parked in the man made trench build by the crusaders which surrounds the site.

The internal ruins.

On 27 July 1188 Saladin and his son, Az-Zahir Ghazi, arrived at Saône with an army and laid siege to the castle. The Muslim forces adopted two positions outside the castle: 

 

Saladin was positioned on the plateau opposite the castle's east side.  His son faced the north of the castle's lower enclosure.

It is told that the seige engines hurled stones weighing between 50 and 300 kilograms (110 and 660 lb) This onslaught lasted two days, causing significant damage. 

The stone "needle" is 28 metres tall

The 28 m deep ditch, cut into the living rock

..

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For more travel postcards click here

 

ARP 2500 - Envelope Generators

A bit of experimentation with the 1046 Module - The Quad Envelope Generator.

This is a 1046 which is basically a 1003 + 1033.
Used to produce repeatable CVs of  0 to +10V & 0 to -10V.


ARP 2500 EGs have both Gate & Trig inputs (G & T).
The G & T inputs can be found at both the top & bottom of the module.
The Gate is an on/off signal with duration.
The Trigger is more of an sharp impulse with no duration.

This is a really cool feature. If you apply another trigger signal while the gate is still present the cycle
will restart. ..a good way for creating multi-peak envelopes.

There are 4 main adjustable parameters : Attack Time, Initial Decay, Sustain, Final Decay (Release).
and  two Delay time pots that are used when in multiple mode (arranged in four vertical rows
of 4 pots, 5 pots, 4 pots, 5 pots).
The Delay time feature permits the user to delay the attack of an envelope (3 milliseconds to 3 seconds).

When the Trigger Mode switch is in the Multiple setting you need both gates & triggers to activate an envelope. In the single mode, only a gate is required (T not needed).

If  the gate is suddenly removed in the middle of a cycle the voltage returns to 0V

patch pic 1

patch pic 2

 1047 Multimode filter & 1006 FiltAmp Module

The VCOs : 1004-T & 1023

Roland mixer - power supply replacement (Part2)

This is part two of the search for a replacement power supply for my old  Roland M-240 mixer.
It's morphed into a discussion about the nature of power supplies with one of my good friends who is also a excellent synthesizer technician.

By chance  I have another Roland mixer (Boss BX-16) that also uses a DC +/- 21.5V psu. It's however 300ma .... not the 500ma that the M240 needs.

I opened it up yesterday:

So simple. The PSU is made up of a stepdown transformer, 4 diodes & two capacitors.

The caps are 2200uf, 35V

How simple !!!!!

The incoming AC power is first stepped down by the transformer (120 - 21.5V). 
Then it's converted from AC to DC by the 4 bridge rectifying diodes & finally filtered with the capacitors. (There don't appear to be any voltage regulators in this PSU).

This circuit uses a centre-tapped transformer.
Most of the circuits like this seem to use 4004 diodes. (I only have 4001s handy).

It's highly likely that the PSU for the 240 mixer uses a similar circuit.

I'll breadboard this when the correct diodes arrive.

If you wish to be really safe add some regulators.

 

iProgram Card for the Buchla Music Easel

Successful installation of the ipad app for the Easel.

And the ipad and app do talk :-)
I'm running iOS 7

I gather there are probs with iOS 8 so don't upgrade your operating system
if you'd like to run this app.

I'm running a fairly old ipad (I think it's a ipad 2).
We will see how this goes.

The manual says it's also possible to communicate to the easel via USB (using the camera connector).
.... in situations where WiFi isn't available.

Muffs has a good post care of Todd B

Easel iProgram Card -- Programming in Both mode

The Devilfish & the Elektron (MachineDrum & Octatrack)

A bit of 303 acid meets an Elektron Machine Drum & Octatrack

The Herodium - "Herod's Tomb"

It's still a mystery today.
Where is King Herod buried?
These are picks I took of the Herodium (just outside Bethlehem).

The approach from Bethlehem.

In the distance that mountain with the flat top is the Herodian.  It's told that Herod forced his slaves to make two hills into this one huge mountain in order to display his power over God’s.

Herod the Great, the king of Judea ruled around the time of Jesus. He was the Jewish proxy ruler of the Holy Land under imperial Roman occupation from 37 B.C.  Credited in history for the "massacre of the innocents".

He lived from 74 BC to 4 BC building lavish building projects including the fortress of Masada and the second temple. He did so by burdening his people with heavy taxes. 

The Herodian

The Roman Jewish historian Josephus describes it thus:

"This fortress, which is some sixty stadia^[6] distant from Jerusalem, is naturally strong and very suitable for such a structure, for reasonably nearby is a hill, raised to a (greater) height by the hand of man and rounded off in the shape of a breast. At intervals it has round towers, and it has a steep ascent formed of two hundred steps of hewn stone. Within it are costly royal apartments made for security and for ornament at the same time. At the base of the hill there are pleasure grounds built in such a way as to be worth seeing, among other things because of the way in which water, which is lacking in that place, is brought in from a distance and at great expense. The surrounding plain was built up as a city second to none, with the hill serving as an acropolis for the other dwellings." 

(The Wars of the Jews I, 21, 10; Antiquities of the Jews XIV, chapter 13.9).

Looking into the Herodian from the outer wall

 

 

Part of the underground water storage system.

 Here are some very large boulders apparently used by rebel Jews.

The Herodium was conquered and destroyed by the Romans in 71 CE. At the beginning of the Bar Kokhba revolt sixty years later, Simon bar Kokhba declared Herodium as his secondary headquarters.

 

Herodion excavations

Herod was considered one of the greatest builders of his time. The largest of the four towers was built on a stone base 18 meters in diameter.

Ampitheatre - part of the outer wall

Wiki info

For more travel links click here:
http://djjondent.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/travel-postcards-index-my-travel.html

ARP 2500 - Patch 3

This is a variation on patch 2. with a bit more emphasis on the sequencer.
Many thanks to Benge for his awesome ARP 2500 videos. In particular this one on the ARP Mix Sequencer module (the 1050).
http://youtu.be/UZeHU4IPItY

Here is a pic of the 1050 module.

Today this module should be pretty easy to build. This was however designed before CMOS logic & LEDs I think it's amazing considering when it was made. A credit to Pearlman. He was really pushing technology back in the 60's.


It's basically a 8 channel mixer. The channels can be divided into 2x4, 1x8, 1x7,1x6,etc
The cool thing is that they are gated to the sequencer so can be triggered on cue to the rhythm.
There are some eurorack modules (sort of like this) out there, but at the moment nothing as expressive (in my opinion). So there is a challenge to you budding analog engineers out there.

I'd like to thank Mini & all the staff from ToneTweakers in NYC
who lovingly restored this grand lady. Great job guys
http://www.tonetweakers.com