Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics

Systems Concepts - digital synthesizer

About

The Systems Concepts digital synthesizer (aka the Samson Box) was designed by Peter Samson for the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) in 1977.

the following note is reproduced verbatim from the engineering drawings available from the Bitsavers repository, i don't have any information as to the status of this ownership claim today, nor have I obtained any rights, as no successor company to SC Group has been identified yet.

Proprietary Information

The drawings and specifications herein are property of Systems Concepts, Inc., and shall not be reproduced or copied or used in whole or in part for the manufacture or sale of products, without prior written permission.

Available and Planned Resources

Feature Current Availability Planned / Future Enhancements
Hardware
  • PDP-10 architecture I/O compatible device, unknown how many units were eventually produced
  • Schematics
  • circuit simulation (say, using ngspice (with XSPICE), Qucs-S, KiCad (Eeschema), XCircuit, Inkscape, Python (NumPy/Matplotlib), SoX) (Q1 2027)
  • emulator (for KLH10 or Simh) planned (Q3 2028)
Note however therights ownership claim reproduced above as it supposedly covers software implementations of the device too.
Programming
  • Recreating original documentation (Q4 2025)
    		•
    Software
    Data SoundFont voice library archive (Q4 2028)
    Access Access to or from HECnet, the hobbyists' DECnet Remote playing of submitted MIDI files and capture of audio output via DECnet spooling (Q1 2029)

    Sources