MR-808 is a mechanical version of the most famous drum machine

Anyone who has listened to any music from the 80s has heard the percussive effects of the infamous TR-808 drum machine. To the modern ear, it sounds like an antique. Being the most popular drum machine of all time means it must have some redeeming qualities, right?

[Moritz Simon Geist] decided he wanted nothing to do with the wimpy computer-based … Read the rest

7400 drum machine is a delight

[74hc595] just finished his entry in the 7400 logic contest. It’s a drum machine built entirely from 7400-series logic chips. He hasn’t quite reached full completion of the project yet. The hardware works just fine, and he’s built a foam core face plate with many more controls than you see here but much of the circuit is still on … Read the rest

Adding MIDI to a very old drum machine

Long before drum machines played samples from an SD card or EPROM, drum sounds were analog – just filtered waveforms and noise. To the modern eye, these are very primitive machines, but for [Andrew], they’re the inspiration for this brilliant hack.

[Andrew] took a Roland CR-68 drum machine from 1978 and added MIDI input with the help of a … Read the rest

Javascript drum machine

js-909

[Cameron Adams] recently appeared on a panel about JavaScript libraries. He represented the hard working coder that still wrote everything from scratch. He wanted to make something mindblowing for the audience. He ended up creating the JS-909 drum machine entirely in javascript without relying on libraries or flash. While he makes no claims of compatibility, it certainly is a nice … Read the rest

Game boy drum machine


[Jowan] sent in this excellent gameboy cartridge hack. The cartridge contains 1MB of flash and an 8 bit serial I/O interface. He’s using it to play percussion with some solenoids and a custom rom. If you guys like it, he might be convinced to put together a how-to on hacking the cartridge.… Read the rest