This is a wiki post feel free to edit this post by pressing the “EDIT” button. Add manuals or pictures for gear that you are using so we can slowly build up a large collection
Vivanco VM5000 is a pretty solid 2-channel mixer in DE -I picked up a 2nd one recently for the manual, hoping there would be some information on the serial port (sadly, not used).
Then the Magic DaVE. I don’t know what to say about this except that it has a very strong aura. Grass Valley seem to have disowned it which adds to the mythology. I would like to start a Cult of Dave, where we utter things like “Dave Can Give You Amazing Powers” and “Dave Is Everything You Need” to one another.
Re. this WIKI - I’m not so sure about having images (makes it hard to navigate), or categorising by type. How would you feel synchronising with Bastian’s repository and using this index @wednesdayayay? Anything posted in this thread can be easily added back into the repo.
the reason I like images is it makes it feel more inviting but the text only does make it easier to get around.
category type at this point isn’t that big of a deal I just like using that feature
I’m not 100% sure what you mean by synchronizing with a repository and using this index but if it means less chance of things coming up missing when someone is searching for the manual they need then I’m all in.
thank you so much for taking some serious time with this wiki! I’m so happy to see things growing
I’ll have to look into that bash script as it would be neat to add all the LZX modules this way too since all their info is already up on github
Haha well there’s so many LZX modules that by the time you’ve listed each one it might as well be an LZX webshop
Preference I think is for equipment manuals that will be hard to come by or gone tomorrow - and keeping them somewhere safe instead of hotlinking.
By synchronising I mean adding to the Github repo, then updating the list of manuals here in the WIKI - but also just posting something here if you don’t want to faff with forks / pull requests.
Really like having images too, what I had in mind with the repo first was similar to a wiki page, with a description of the device, link to manuals,etc…
About contributing, I’m happy to add anyone who wants to add stuff as a contributor to the repo, however if you know of a simpler way to do it, I’m all for easier accessibility/contribution
I like having the images in there too. Sometimes I use the html detail tag to help organize a page with too much info , although not sure if it is useful in this exact case
this Panasonic mixer
image
more detail
etc
For the manuals I think it is good to have them in a git repo as it is already. Even without access anyone can make pull requests into it (if they know how) ,
Still could be nice to host the files here too (incase Microsoft decides it’s not in their interest one day lol ) …one day ima migrate my repos to a gitlab instance anyway , maybe Setting up a code.scanlines.xyz Would be nice… although yah most people are pretty happy with github rn it seems
we can keep trying some different things and see what sticks
I like to use html detail a lot too
I’ll get some pictures back in there and take some of the LZX stuff out since it will end up just being their website and that isn’t really the goal here
Oh yeah another thought , I’m not too fussed either way , but maybe video modules / synthesis and video mixers could be two separate wiki pages ?
There is a lot of modules out there and a lot of old mixers…
We have a wiki for diy hardware projects. Although agree mods are a bit different.
If it was me I would start a separate thread to document a particular mod (eg step by step how to add cv control to your v4 cross fader ) with all the pics / details… and then maybe create a category to group all mods…
Since a mod is a bit more subjective … and more room for discussion maybe ?
For sure - I think this thread started as a way to collect manuals, so maybe we don’t get hung up on the WIKI terminology, as this is just the way by which we maintain the list of PDFs and hyperlinks.
Looking through the Video Synth DIY folder on the GDrive and it’s really thorough, so maybe we can expand that into the existing DIY projects WIKI (ie. resources archive).
wow, thank you all for putting this together ! this will be a great resource. i will check if i can find some other sources to merge in, including a folder of pdfs i have somewhere.
and um, hail DaVE? i have a snell and wilcox printed video standards manual which is quite dry in comparison, i’ve never seen this side of their marketing team. one thing im obsessed with is video stills to illustrate effect options, especially when in color.
I also composed this poster of stills from the Fairlight CVI effects guide (which I will also upload to the manuals list). Some of the scans are kind of messed up but you get the idea
has anyone actually ever played with a magic DaVE? i’m only aware of it thru word of mouth of like older british VJ types who are like ‘its the only decent Sd mixer’. would be down to pick one up sometime but they usually seem to cost around 500usd+ for controller and mainframe. also anyone ever seen/played with an ADO?
seems like in a similar vein of having tons of framebuffer geometry manipulations at yr hands
is a video of don slepian using one of those with various feedbacks during a live show
also interested in finding an ADO someday but honestly with both the DaVE and the ADO its more likely i’ll just end up building something cooler before i find either one for a price i’d be willing to shell out lol.
i’ve played around a bit with doing similar things with the rpi units, the next waaave pool update will essentially transform feedforward mode into a bit of an ADO kind of deal, tho id really like to be working with a crisper ADC solution plus multiple channels for this kind of a project
As one of those (younger) British-VJ-types I’m yet to hear anyone mention the Dave, but I think this only adds to the sense of mystery…
From what I can find online Snell + Wilcox were based in Newbury which is a market-town about halfway to Bristol from the capital (along the canals, nice pubs), and had bunch of ex-Sinclair engineers working for them. Then recent history gets weird - they became SAM (Snell Advanced Media), then Quantel Ltd, then taken over by BELDEN Inc; finally rebranded as Grass Valley products, and last year sold to Black Dragon Capital. With all references of Dave expunged from the internet.
Sometimes calling up the company you have the nice conversations with older employees who might help find an old service manual from the filing cabinet (big up Vivanco, Extron) - but in this instance Grass Valley was call-centre hell - no such product found.
So this is where it gets conspiratorial. Newbury is just a stones throw from Avebury and Glastonbury; The Barge Inn, the long man - sites of crop-circles and megalithic stone structures.
Dave has promised us magic powers and yet now its like he never existed…
I just found out about The Manual Library on the Internet Archive. There’s literally 1 million of manuals!..but -for example- I couldn’t find the Vivanco VM 5000. Anyway, it’s important because
look there if you don’t find a manual here
we “should” share with them anything they don’t have yet
the Internet Archive is probably/imho going to be more reliable long-term than any personal project / forum / github repo etc.
By the way, an upcoming new Google policy about storage makes it even more important to backup manuals and resources (anything really) out of Google.
Jason Scott (an authority about archiving, data rot, rescuing internet content to preserve collective memory etc) puts it this way:
If you see something on Google Drive being shared like it’s a normal, semi-permanent link on a webpage; it is NOT. It is a fleeting storage point; get the item you treasure there mirrored at Internet Archive or another provider.
i just connected the upload function here on discourse to our 1TB wasabi static object storage (which is currently hosting the peertube videos) and increased the max upload size to 70MBs. shouldnt abuse it, but since we currently have 950gb free on this storage, i thought allowing this could also help in some archiving efforts
