The Ware for October 2023 is a Seiko DS-250 keyboard synthesizer.

Nobody guessed the exact make and model of the keyboard, but it was really entertaining to see the comment thread puzzle through the design. The dual 8049’s caught my attention too, as well as the lack of obvious DACs. I have some partial photos of the associated I/O board, and it also lacks an obvious DAC — mostly just generic mixer/amp/analog switch components on there, so I’d agree with the idea that the DAC could be integrated into one of the big Toshiba chips (or perhaps they are doing something with PWM).

I’ll give the prize to Cary Roberts for being the first to guess the general class of ware (congrats and email me for your prize!). Lots of attention to detail to what I had accidentally left in the background after the crop, I didn’t even notice the rollover diodes in the background until someone pointed it out!

Thanks again to JeffreyO for contributing these photos!

The Ware for October 2023 is shown below.

Thanks to JeffreyO for contributing this ware!

The Ware from September 2023 is a Honeywell HPMA115S0-XXX PM2.5 sensor. Although Ben guessed the general category of the ware first, David was the first to give the exact model. Usually I award the prize to the first person to give an exact, correct model number and fall back to category-of-ware only if no correct model number was named. So, congrats to David for nailing the exact make and model of the ware. email me for your prize!

The Ware for September 2023 is shown below.

Thanks to FETguy for contributing this ware!

The Ware for August 2023 is a viewfinder from a JVC Super VHS Camcorder, model number GR-SXM915U. I’ll give the prize to Jin because of the correct identification of the SOIC as the BA7149F. Congrats, email me for your prize! The exact model number of the originating camera should be harder to pin down, because a similar viewfinder was probably used across several models for some years.

The viewfinder featured as this Ware has found a new life as part of a pretty neat project by the Ware’s contributor, Adrian: it displays a composite IR + visible light image, which is generated by glitching a live analog video stream from a visible light camera with an analog signal derived from a Pi Pico using an R2R DAC (i.e., the Pi Pico generates an analog signal almost directly off its digital GPIO via a resistor network — no DAC chip required). The Pico reads the H/V sync pulses encoded within the analog video stream, and overlays the digital readout of a 2D IR sensor by injecting well-timed pulses into the analog video signal (if I’m understanding the project correctly). More details and video at Adrian’s Mastodon post!