I acquired a Sansui VX-99 (NTSC) video mixer a while back. It didn’t seem to be fully working when I got it. Which is fine, it was in an “as-is” pile. I was just hoping to be able to use it to add some extra static and noise to live footage for visuals if nothing else. After opening it up to fix a broken fader with some hot glue, I still couldn’t get both channels of video to display at the same time. I eventually figured out that in order to mix the two video sources, you have to press the “gen-lock mix” button. After doing this, the mixer mostly works. I still have yet to figure out how to get the thing to display any changes when you press on the RGB color buttons. I’m assuming that these allow you to fade to a color instead of black, which I wouldn’t usually want, but could be interesting if you were doing some sort of video feedback.

Old video equipment is very frustrating. It causes all sorts of video glitches (can be good), which breaks the sync (bad) and causes your nice image to be indecipherable or, worse yet, blue screen. I wish the default was black.

I’m having fun playing with this thing. It has tons of adjustments inside using little trimmer dials. The VX-99 is a very capable video device when you include the possibilities of all of these dials, although since it is very hard to get back to a normal, well colored picture after playing with all of the dials, I can definitely understand why they left these out of reach. I am going to find some dials that I can mount on the outside of the case to replace the ones inside. I don’t like to destroy old things, but this one is much more valuable if I can use all of these settings without having the case lying open. I’ll make sure I put on markers for a “normal” setting once I figure them out again.

Oh, one weird thing about opening this case is that you need to undo the silver screw which ends up being the ground connection between the bottom and top of the case. Also the power switch held the case on, so you have to lift the case by the power button until it lifts off.

Since a large number of the tiny dials inside of this video mixer do interesting things that don’t exist in the original controls, I am adding more controls to the outside of the case. The hardest thing about this is finding dials with similar values to the ones originally in the mixer as well as hopefully looking somewhat natural on a very 80s looking device.

The varieties of dials and their markings are:
(most likely only helpful for myself)

black
103
222
223
224
471
472
473
blue (smaller)
721C 471
721C 472
612d 333
5398 683
722C 104
609d 223

650A 332
710C 222
706C 103
silver tall box with dial inside
1x - 4835 0000 760
2x - 4835 0100 760
short black box with yellow top
1x - no markings that I can see

It’s turning out to be harder to find a bunch of these than I thought. I’ll be playing with this more to figure out what I would actually use. I’ve found it to be fairly hard to get back to anything resembling stock settings, so I would definitely have to mark an approximate “normal” setting on the case. More later.

Toy laptop with a view.

I have been creating visuals for various dj, band, and electronic music gigs since late 2003. I always bring various different video, data, and USB devices to play with and interact with the software. But I tend to have a few regulars. One very useful device is a video preview monitor. You can plug this in to your video mixer to see either the final product if you can’t see the screen easily from where you are located, or you can preview the different feeds before you mix them in with or from whatever is currently playing.

Another thing I bring with me is a MIDI controller with a bunch of dials on it. I use this to control the software that I use. I can use it to change the hue and saturation of the clips, I can use it to mix between the different effects that I currently have available to me. I find more uses for this thing all of the time. This plugs in either via MIDI or through USB.

Another thing that most visual programs can do is take triggers from either music keyboards or standard computer keyboards. Laptop keyboards, and even normal desktop keyboards have pretty small keys to randomly tap on to trigger a clip. It would be nice to have a bigger key to hit.

So I think what I need is a custom device that includes these features and others down the road. And I just happened to have a little kids laptop sitting around waiting to be circuit bent that would be the perfect donor vehicle. I could create something and fit it into a plain metal box, but what would the fun be in that? And besides, it would be somewhat difficult to create my own keyboard, or take a while to find some large buttons to mount on the box in some useful and logical way.

Ingredients:
Apple USB Keyboard (just the circuit board and USB cable)
PSOne LCD Monitor (out of casing)
VTech Little Smart Letter Fun (already partially converted)

Directions:

1) Take all electronics out of the original toy laptop, making sure to remember where all the screws went. Doh! Maybe next time.

2) Figure out where all of the various wires lead to inside of the toy. Do this also for the USB keyboard. Below are also a chart and a visual representation of where all these leads need to connect to for my specific devices.

3) Realize that instead of just being able to connect points together, what you are really going to have to do is create your own board like in figure 2, but instead, match the wires to what the USB keyboard is expecting. Oy!

4) Finish the LCD monitor part as this is easy compared to the rest and you can at least have something useful while you work on the new circuit board.

Related Links:
Sayako LCD Hacking
PSone LCD - VDR Wiki
A step by step of modding a PSone display at tidder.rudyatek.com

bit-tech Forums - PSONE Mod

Links Related to the Related Links:
Babelfish will be useful in reading the VDR Wiki above, it’s an amazing translation site.