Mindlight History

Dan Egolf and I became friends around 1979. Both at GaTech, I invited him to dig up some pot plants I planted next to the Chattahoochee up north, we crawled under some briars and found them. We both had jobs ready in silicon valley graduating in 1982. At gatech, Dan created the first devices we called Mindlights. Big circuit boards with concentric LED circles. The bass treble signals made the dancing patterns the same as Amiga Mindlight software “7” and “m” lucky Mindlight modes. As a number, "7" was one of the Mosaic Modes, take "5", you see sinusoidal waves, those waves are actual bass beat signals like an oscilloscope would show. Dan has a patent on this. Looking at the “Scope” menu mode, you may say it does not look impressive. Scope is a slow quantization whereas the “5” is hundreds of times faster. Drive mouse port with sound controlled oscillators, quantize at any rate just reading hardware counters.

Dan’s idea: Dan and I crash Esalen Institute. We got down to the Pacific Ocean through a cow pasture a few miles south. Cliffs always with large boulders on a narrow beach. The Sun amazingly set and on the other horizon, cliffs flowed straight into the Pacific. We must swim around to a more northern beach. So, we come upon a ladder made of steel pipe drilled into the cliff. Scary was that climb to the top, we are now at the hot springs pool with two naked couples! Someone told us no one has emerged from that ladder in years, the last occurrence was a ship wreck. We had a very fun shower and left with high regards for Esalen Institute!

In San Francisco, Dan developed the C64 Mindlight, mostly having Mosaic modes, then in 1986, we each bought our fist Amiga at Winner’s Circle, Berkeley California.