A friend and I recently uncovered a 1992-ish PC, boasting 4MB of RAM, a nearly 500MB hard disk (aftermarket, we believe), and a dual 5.25/3.5″ floppy drive! Stymied by the lack of a compatible mouse (as this was well before the era of USB devices), we could boot from it, but not operate it. So after wondering for a bit what we could possibly do with it, we decided to take out the floppy and try to adapt it for a modern computer.
Fact: Weber Music Hall has a MIDI pedalboard. If memory serves it might be the Roland PK-6. Or maybe not.
Fact: It’s awesome.
Fact: I want one.
Fact: I don’t have the many many hundreds of dollars it would cost to spend on things like MIDI pedalboards. However, I do have several junked organs’ worth of components and a seeming excess of free time.
Therefore: A midi pedalboard! Building it was surprisingly simple and straightforward (that is, after a two hour diversion of several circuit rebuilds necessitated by the assumption that the circuit was not being built around a faulty shift register. Spoiler alert: it was!).
