Fairlight Components Arrive!

On Thursday, I received a letter from Parcel’Farce’, a parcel courier here in the UK, informing me that Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs had decided to levy import VAT on a parcel from Australia. One the one hand, I was delighted as this was a major step towards firing up the CMI. On the other hand, I was gutted at being mugged for £50 simply to receive a bunch of 28 year old computer components. Still, this is what you expect when transporting goods halfway around the world.

Anyway, this box contained, pretty much, a CMI Series III without the keyboard and case!

1x Output Mixer card + loom
1x Stereo sampling card
1x Colour VGA card
8x Voice cards
and 4x cards I can’t accurately identify but will update when I have. (It’s late on a Friday evening after a busy week!)

There was also a 3.5″ IDE hard drive and all the Series III manuals on a CD. That’s my holiday reading sorted then!

If I’ve understood correctly, once these components are fitted, we should be able to fire up the CMI and have it running without the music keyboard. Hopefully, we can hook up a MIDI sequencer or external MIDI controller and start playing some sounds out of it. I have to be honest and say that I am more than a tad excited about sequencing the CMI from Reason 7, given that Reason 7 is, IMHO, probably the DAW that relates most closely to the original CMI concept, and that it has only just gained MIDI Out capability. It’ll be like the grandchild taking the grandad for a walk in the park 😉

It’s going to be a few weeks before we get around to fitting and testing these components, but you’ll be able to hear about it first right here.

Here are pictures of the booty I received today…