baszor

Well.... that didn't go without any bumps... Just finished the build of the sammichSID. Got the kit in the mail last week, within 2 weeks from wilba. And bought a stabilized powersource from conrad (voltcraft usps-1000) Did the soldering in two parts, 2-3 hours on a wednesday evening and the rest on thursday evening. A total 4-5 hours. Then the trouble started! A little trouble is always nice... It would be no fun when things go as plannend :) Got a high power backlight with the kit an fired it up with the brightness setting at two o'clock. As described in the build pdf. Too bad i did not have the sid's in the pcb drawing current, so the backlight stopped working after 30 seconds :( I should read wilba's mails better in the future! The mail i got with the packages told me not to set the brightness past 6 o'clock. Now there's a new screen underway from china. Hopefully it will arrive soon. Thank god the screens also work on low light, i was able to continue with the broken backlight. Without the sids i started checking the midi communication with mios studio. powering on the sammich got me a upload message in mios studio, but no feedback from the sammich when querying. Nothing at all... First I thought it was the midi compatibility of the Novation SL25 Mk2 i was using as USB-2-midi interface. (Set the correct routing on the onboard setup menu of the sl25, Midi to U1) With the use of the Troubleshooting manual and 2 hours later, I found out that the track on the pcb between the 1.2K resistor and pin6 of the optocoupler ic was broken. Checking the voltages going in and out of the PIC helped a lot. I found out that only 0.5V was entering the rx contact of the PIC. Telling me the optocoupler being broken or the 5v through the 1.2K resistor wasn't flowing. A little extra soldering and a nice repair wire on the backside of the pcb fixed this! Connected again with the laptop and the mios studio, one click and the connection was up! great :) SID software uploaded flawless after trying 2 times with mios studio. Uploaded the presets and the sammich was ready to rumble! Thanks guys for creating such a nice Kit! It sounds great with two 6581 SID's! Even the basic presets sound great and dirty :) I notice some irregularities: The sammich won't power up straight away, after powering off with the switch on the backside. I have to wait and remove all the cables to be able to power up again... Anyone else noticed this? Bastian