Taika-Kim

Well, welcome to the world of music hardware, I believe it's a usual procedure to take your competitors' devices to pieces, copy what good ideas they have, and then change it enough to avoid lawsuit. I would wager that there are people in the community who own Behringer products for example, and they are only the most blatant example. Even if the prototype used Midibox community boards and software, I think we need to wait and actually see the synth to see how much they changed the design. I for one would like a commercial device a lot, I'm not so good with electronics, as long as the price was sensible. My sammichSID has been a lot of trouble until now, nothing like the commercial synths I own. I'm a musician, I want functional tools available. Don't get me wrong, I totally don't appreciate the fact that MM does not give any compensation to the community. Just saying that... OK, they're maybe making profit on the community's work. But, in the end, the community can go on like it has thus far.OK, we're not entitled to the profits, but if the community and the original developers of the Midibox hardware wanted that, they could have headed for it in the beginning. Why complain about lost profits from a nonprofit project? What I'm saying... You do something for free, openly, somebody might take things forward from that point, that's what happens, people copy ideas. You can't stop that from happening by attaching a textfile with a license on your product, if the pirates really want to avoid lawsuits. So... Let's wait until somebody sees the box to make a final judgement...

Ah, it's the cores, not the SIDs, understood. Hmm the manual is not altogether clear on all basic things, information seems to be scattered about a bit... So how do I change the panning of individual SIDs, now they both go to the centre and the L/R-menu option does not do anything? I'd like to have the chips be hard panned in lead mode to different channels, now they both have centre panning... So when I press shift, and the screen shows SID1, it actually means CORE1, handling the stereo pair of 2 chips? Oh, and also I saw a post specifying that the F1-3 buttons can be user defined, on my device they play a patch, maybe starting a sequencer or arpeggiator? Also one button seems to affect the gate somehow?

On my sammichSID, only one of the SIDs seem to be working at a time. On multi patches, the device plays 3 notes, then 3 silent notes. I have tested the device with only one of the chips installed, both work fine alone, also in both slots. The screen always shows 1*** on the SID specification, shouldn't there be also the other chip shown? Or is this a limitation of the sammichSID chip setup? I have 1.9g firmware, haven't updated yet since I have only one MIDI cable and can't seem to use the loader software because it needs to communicate both ways. Also still the encoder jumps often a lot, even to different direction where I am turning it. Does somebody have the part specification to order a new one?

Well, even something to access the basic functions would be useful to be able to more quickly edit patches inside sequencer.. Yes I was thinking that to make an UI for all the modulation etc interfaces would probably take some thinking... I will see about that editor of yours when I get new chips for my device :P Don't want to start even without filters...

Yeah voltages should be right.

Yeah the filters are not working in ASID... But it's strange that the resonance still affects the sound a lot, so the filters must be active somehow? Anyway, the previous owner was so kind as to promise to send me his old 6582s for free, so I hope I'll be soon rocking :) And, oh, I could use a PCR-300 template for the device, I think spread over several programs most of the functions could be fit there... Or is there a place in some WIKI or something for people to exchange control mappings? Since I hate, hate setting them up :P And, also, Waldorf style mod matrix!! I had microQ some years ago, it's still to this day my favourite digital synth to program...

I think it's an original kit from... Where ever you would buy it in Australia, I guess straight from Wilba? Anyway the previous owner, who I trust, said that he had no problems. Is it possible I damaged some IC chip or other sensitive part when I was poking around changing caps, SIDs etc?

I'm using two dumpstered (one from an abandoned house, the other from a scrapyard) 6581s. I have an used sammichSID 2.0 RC3 I did not build myself. It seems both have broken filters, since cutoff seems to be at max on all channels when playing SIDs with asid. No filter action at all, all songs sound really weird. I know enough of them by heart to hear this :D I have also an encoder problem so haven't programmed yet so much, but if I activate filters on some oscillators, the cutoff seems to be somewhere quite low permanently. This is weird, since it's the opposite of what I hear with SID songs. Resonance does change the sound noticeably though. So is this some problem with the caps, or can filters with broken cutoff action still have working resonance? This would sound a bit strange to me since they're just two aspects of the same response... Here's a pic of one of my caps... Also, does the K in the 470K value mean 10% tolerance, like I read somewhere? I specifically explained that the caps will be part of a lowpass filter in a synth, and I need low tolenrance components... That shop has like the weirdest salesperson of them all, half of the time I'm not sure if he understands me at all :P Anyway, they should be 470pF, as 6581 should have? capsi.jpg: Oh, and I think both chips create a very audible constant note all the time too, is this just a quirk of the MIDIbox/SID-chip interaction, or does this also indicate faulty chips?

OK, making a new thread. I have an used sammichSID, running RC3 2.0 operating system. The rotary encoder really is impossible, the values jump to all directions in a very uncontrollable way, sometimes even more than 10 values at a time. The previous owner had no problems with it. So is it possible I have fried some component when I was assembling and disassembling the unit when troubleshooting earlier the other problems? Or might it have been somehow damaged in transit? Altough it seemed to have been packcaged fine. Oh btw just today for the first time took a look at the manual, this really seems like a programmers dream! Shame only, that as I understood it, there can be only one trigger matrix, where several destinations can be triggered by an single source... But for some serious fun, it would be cool to have LFO retrigger ENV1, have that retrigger LFO2, which would retrigger ENV2, which could maybe retrigger LFO1 again... And so on. But this is not possible or planned right now? Well, next going to install that JAVA programmer to examine a bit, now without the rotary encoder, this a bit of a pain to use from the panel...

Ah, good point. I tried to include the information about the original problem to the edited versions too, so some information is retained... But I'll keep this in mind.

So, I see no talk about this, but is a VST editor possible to do? With Synthedit or something? I guess if all actions are created with sysex, this should be no problem?

Some issues solved, in the first post I have now updated state of the unit.

So anybody have any ideas what to look for next?

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/717/sammich06.jpg/ http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/163/sammich01.jpg/ http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/864/sammich02.jpg http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/822/sammich03.jpg/ http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/836/sammich04.jpg/ http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/853/sammich05.jpg/ Hmm, I chose "no resize", but I'm not sure if you can download them at the full res from Imageshack? Or maybe it resizes for your screen always? Well, here's a link to a zip with all the pics. http://www.filehosting.org/file/details/306909/sammich.zip

I removed the soldered shunts and SIDs... The ground connections are fine, 5V is 4,97, 9V is 9.03 and 12V is 10.81... The output of the transformer is 12.24V. It says in the manual, 10.5V should be enough for the 6581s. Anyway, without the shunts the device powers up, and also if J20 is set to 12V the 12V rating stays at 10.81, but as soon as I shut one of JPB jumpers, the 12V drops to about 2.5V, and with both shut 12V is around -0.47V... So something wrong with the power. I am now using normal jumpers. So, what to check next. The device is before used on 6582s, so I think the previous builder never even probably checked the 12V operation...

Yeah, I wanted to use proper jumper caps too, but the ones I got were loose and I was impatient :D And my solder gun is totally unsuitable for electronics (way too big, I used it for tiffany glasswork...), so it was hard to make a good solder. So the jumpers are not the same size than what computers use? Because that's what I asked from the shop... Are they some standard size though? I'll go today back to the shop, but I didn't want to lug the device around with me, and I couldn't get an accurate measurement about the width etc of the pins at home...

Hah, editing this like the 5th time today. Earlier power issue with 12V close to zero on board: fixed. The PSU for some reason failed to give correct voltage on load, altough at 9V it worked fine. I bought a new one, a regulated switchmode supply, I hope it's ok that it's a switching one? I don't remember now about all the earlier posts about PSUs for the Sammich. Rotary encoder acting all crazy: partially solved. I changed the head of the PSU connector to a more tight one, this made the encoder perform much, much better. Originally it was acting mostly randomly, now almost fine, still sometimes jumps a value or few. Strange that before the unit otherwise worked, only sometimes booted when I was moving this around, this prompted me to change the tip of the PSU. Now it's almost fine otherwise, but I need to troubleshoot my chips. They are dumpstered 6581s, and the filters are weird. First I thought they are broken, but I noticed that the resonance very noticeably changes the sound, only it's that the cutoff value seems to do nothing mostly. There is maybe a VERY slight effect, but I'm not even sure about that... Here's a pic of the caps I'm using with 6581s: capsi.jpg:

Do they only affect the cutoff action, or is it possible also to steepen the resonance of my 6581s? I read that the 6581 has weaker resonance than later models... Today finally got the parts, but don't have time to test yet. Yaiii, waiting for tomorrow now wildly :D

So I go for low tolerance, low temp coefficient styroflex? Well, they seem easy enough to change, now I just want to get this working, and get what they'll have at the shop...

Yeah 6581 uses 470pf, but what I am now wondering is the difference between different types of caps? I don't really know that much about electronics, made a few PCBs and projects, but that was just following instructions so don't really get the facts behind the numbers...

But with topics like this: It seems it's possible to change the sound with the caps, and it's not dangerous to try different ones? (how much can the values deviate from the ideal 470pf?) And also, there are ceramic condensators, styroflex, and some others? What is the best to use?

Hey, I bought an used Sammich without chips. The previous owner had a pair of 6852s, whereas I have dumpstered(!) 6581s. So do the filter caps need to be changed? I tried searching the forum and the net, but didn't find really anything concrete... I'm aware though of the jumper change to accommodate for the different power requirements of the filters. Do the same instructions about the caps apply than for the usual Midibox SID?