After Science
Another former Oberheim engineer, Anne Graham, started her own consulting company, After Science. I joined her after I left Fast Forward Designs, and helped with several projects.
Power Glove (1988)
After Science,
A.G.E.,
Mattel, Inc.
Contributions: Firmware design, hardware enhancements.
Power Glove technology: National Semiconductor COPS888CL microprocessor, ultrasonic echo-location, finger flex sensors, gesture recognition logic.
Miracle Piano Keyboard (1989)
After Science, (The Software Toolworks)
Contributions: Electronic system design, gate array design, PC board layout
Miracle technology:
80C31 microprocessor, Thomson SGS J004 wave table synthesis chip. Two custom AMI gate arrays
handle velocity keyboard scanning, sound chip to ROM register file indexing, bidirectional
Nintendo game controller interface, and PWM output for sound volume VCA control.
Download a schematic for a Miracle-to-PC cable here (7k, Adobe Acrobat format).
More resources on the Miracle Piano Teaching System may be found here.
GZ-1000 MIDI Control System (1987)
After Science, Keyboard Technologies, Inc.
Contributions: Electronic design, microprocessor firmware.
Co-inventor status on patents
5,115,705 and
5,003,859.
GZ-1000 Technology:
Motorola 68B09 microprocessor, four 68B50 UARTs for quad channel simultaneous MIDI output,
floppy disk drive, LCD, backlit flexible circuit switches, 88 key wooden keyboard with
adjustable action, MIDI velocity and polyphonic key pressure with a single sensor per
key. Extremely versatile and complete MIDI implementation.
Download the GZ-1000 User Manual here.
3,370,516 bytes, pdf.
Schematics for the GZ-1000 are available here.
Other After Science projects: