Over the Ice

In the previous post I installed an SSD into a laptop. There was some music, too:



Performed with Ableton, using a mass of samples and my favourite VST plugin of all time, Korg's Polysix emulation. (edit: Soundcloud's HTML5 widget sounds stuttery on my machine, with Firefox - but after following the instructions in the second post here and disabling SPDY everything is fine.)

The actual Polysix - the physical instrument - was launched in 1981, but it was overshadowed by the Roland Juno. Korg quickly replaced it with the Poly 61, which was overshadowed by the Juno 60, but the next year Yamaha's DX7 overshadowed them all. It blew a cold digital wind over the synthesiser market. The DX7 was powerful and flexible but difficult to edit, and helped introduce a tendency whereby synthesisers were sold as a box of preset sounds (specifically E Piano 1 and Bass 1, in the case of the DX7). The post-analogue, pre-FM, pre-sample based instruments of the early 1980s - DCO-based machines such as the Alpha Juno range, the Korg Poly 800, Casio's CZ-101 - seemed to fall into a pit of obscurity in the 1990s, which was handy if you were a student, 'cause they were cheap on the used market.

And so the Polysix has at least one claim to fame - in the 1990s, Japanese student Hiroyuki Hayashi started off his musical journey with a second-hand Polysix, and ended up naming his band, the Polysics, after it:

Korg's VST Polysix is relatively old and has a tiny interface, and there are cheaper and more powerful choices out there. The real thing was quite basic - a single-oscillator six-voice synth with a chorus/phaser/ensemble and a sub-oscillator to beef up the sound. The VST expands upon this by adding many more oscillators, more polyphony, and expanded modulation routing. It has a neat combination of easy interface with just enough power and flexibility for my needs. In Over the Ice - this is an early version, in mono - it does the Big Bass, which is twelve detuned oscillators in unison (the lead voice, which you can see in the screenshot, is a single square wave with the effects turned off).

My first keyboard synthesiser was a second-hand Roland D-10. I can't very well call myself D-10, that would be silly.

Ten Bands Named After Synthesisers
-
1. Polysics
2. Prodigy
3. Opus III ("It's a Fine Day")
4. (long pause)
5. (longer pause)
6. (fill in later)
7. (fill in later)
8. (fill in later)
9. (fill in later)
10. Odyssey (but were they named after the instrument? -ed)

Look, I can't help it that the two leading synthesiser manufacturers chose to give the vast, vast majority of their instruments alphanumeric code names, such as DX7IIFD and MKS-80 and MC-202 and TX81Z. The American synth companies tended to use names, but who wants to call themselves Pro-Soloist?

One day there will be a band called Axxe. One day.

Installing an SSD into an old ThinkPad X61

A while back I installed a Solid State Drive (SSD) into my old ThinkPad X60, and although the machine was noticeably snappier I wasn't convinced that it made sense. The X60 has a SATA I bus, which hobbles the SSD. Luckily I also have an X61, which is generally faster and has SATA II. After swapping the drive and cloning the X61, here's what it's like:


Music by myself there. The X61 was launched in 2007, and introduced the 64-bit-capable Core II Duo to the ultraportable ThinkPad range. The Core II Duo is one of the classic modern CPUs and overshadowed the short-lived, original, 32-bit-only Core Duo. As of 2013 a Core II Duo machine with sufficient memory and a good graphics card is good enough for almost any purpose, which might be one of the reasons why the PC market is rapidly being overhauled by the tablet market; there's no compelling reason for Mr Joe Average to junk his perfectly-functional five-year-old PC in favour of a new machine that does the same stuff, but fractionally quicker.

Officially the X61 had 150mb/s SATA I only, but on a technical level it was fully compatible with 300mb/s SATA II, it's just that for some reason Lenovo decided to disable it in the BIOS. It can be turned back on, but the procedure isn't for the faint of heart; you have to install a custom BIOS. In theory this is just a matter of downloading the file, clicking on the installer, and waiting, but as with anything involving flashing the BIOS there is the potential for great harm if (say) a nuclear explosion in the upper atmosphere temporarily cuts the power.

Speed-wise Crystal Disk Mark says that the 840 reads at 251mb/s, which at least means that the custom BIOS works. I would really need to run something that involves reading one large chunk of sequential data to truly appreciate the SSD's benefit, but operationally the X61 is (as with the X60) distinctly snappier. It's not so apparent from the video, but there's less jerkiness, fewer pauses. The experience of using the machine feels smoother. Economically the upgrade is still iffy - X61s are limited by their screens, which can't easily be replaced or upgraded.

It has to be said that SSDs do not, on a rational level, make economic sense for the typical consumer or individual, at least as a need rather than a want. They're polish. On a financial level their depreciation is awful, because of their finite lifespan and the possibility that the previous owner used his SSD to feed a 24/7 torrent server. As a consequence I think of an SSD as something that ends up wedded to its host unto death, in which case you might as well marry it to the best machine you can afford.

Still, the X61 meets my needs for the time being and so the SSD can stay inside it. 'twould be interesting to stick it in my Asus 1005HA netbook - netbooks were harbingers of the SSD revolution, before they grew fat - but it still has XP on it, which is trickier to configure for SSDs.

Boxout: Ten Three-Letter Abbrevations that begin with SS
 
1. Super-Sonic Transport (SST)
2. Sigue Sigue Sputnik (SSS)
3. SSS (I'm a snake)
4. SSSSSSSSSS
5. 55555555555
6. S5S5S5S5S5
7. SSF (Soup? So Fine)
8. SSN (Succullent, Silky Nougat)
9. SSK (Stinky Submarine Kid)
10. SSL (Spatula, Spoon, Nife)

For some variety, in the next post I will try installing an SSD into (a) an old pair of boots (b) some hot cross buns (c) former head of the UN Kofi Annan (d) Europa, mysterious and possibly life-harbouring moon of Jupiter. Attempt no landings there.