bosone

i have almost finished all the moduels, and this evening i will try to power up everything... before soldering the components, since i have to mount all them on the front panel of my rack, i'd like to test if all works correctly. so i plan to mount the LCD display (only one, but i have two), one encoder, one led and one pushbotton. is this enought for a test? i mean... i hope to see something on the display and to be able to control it with the encoder/button! :-)

do you mean the power supply of the C64?

Hi! i have just began working on the sequencer and my second SID module. since the sequencer and the 2 Sids will be mounted in the same rack, i was thinking about the possibility to build a single "power supply" module for all of them. so i will build a single PCB in which i will mount a transformer, the diode rectifier, the 2200uF elcap, the 330nF, the 7809 (for the 2 SIDs), the 7805 (for the 2 cores), the 10uF elcap and finally the 100nF. now the question: on the single core and module, can i avoid to mount all the caps and the 780x IC?? i will just take the 5V or 9V from my power supply module and connect this to the J2 jumper of the core and to the appropriate pins of the Sid.

circuit (ZZZOOOTTT!!!)

my local electronic component dealer don't have the 6n138 optocoupler. instead, he has some similar chip named 4n35, 4n32, 4n25 will they work??? thanks!

even in italy you cannot (in theory) take things away from the local dump. i used (only once!) this trick: i entered in the dump with my car with some electronic junk and ask where to trash it. then, when i throw away my things, i looked around and see what might be interesting. i found a C64 (with working SID!) in this way and transferred (unseen!) it on my car!

another hint: the cable of this keyboard can be recycled as a half MIDI cable. just cut and add another MIDI connector at the cutted-side! :-)

is it OK to buy this oscillator for our PIC? http://www.voti.nl/shop/p/X-10M.html "This is an HC49U (low profile) crystal and two load capacitors for a PICmicro 18Fxxx at 10 MHz external (40 MHz internal using the PLL)."

argh! now i have to build also one of these after the sequencer!! :-D

did anyone tried this? i sent the string to sid with midiox and received these strings in response: sent: F0 00 00 7E 40 00 0D 01 00 60 20 00 0E 00 0E 00 00 00 00 F7 received: F0 00 00 7E 40 00 0F 00 0A 00 0E 00 00 00 00 F7 F0 00 00 7E 40 00 0F 18 F7 F0 00 00 7E 40 00 0F 18 F7 F0 00 00 7E 40 00 0F 18 F7 F0 00 00 7E 40 00 0F 18 F7 F0 00 00 7E 40 00 0F 18 F7 F0 00 00 7E 40 00 0F 18 F7 F0 00 00 7E 40 00 0F 18 F7 F0 00 00 7E 40 00 0F 18 F7 F0 00 00 7E 40 00 0F 18 F7 F0 00 00 7E 40 00 0F 18 F7 F0 00 00 7E 40 00 0F 18 F7 F0 00 00 7E 40 00 0F 18 F7 F0 00 00 7E 40 00 0F 18 F7 F0 00 00 7E 40 00 0F 18 F7 F0 00 00 7E 40 00 0F 18 F7 the problem is that the method for editing don't seem to work. i edit the patch, change the preset, return back to the previous (should-be-edited patch) and it has returned like the original one. did i miss somethig? how should this work?

i'm about to build the sequencer and another sid. i wonder if someone who has already placed an order to VOTI (holland) has a list of purchased components to pass to me. i will take the encoders, which costs a lot less that from other shops, but what else has a very low price?

great! :-)

thanks thorsten!! just one question: when do you go to sleelp?? ;D

i had a mail exchange with thosten regarding this matter: "editing and saving sounds in sid without the control surface". yes, there is jsynth, which lets you edit the wavetables and do other wonderful things. the problem is this one: if you edit the sound with a midicontroller (midibox) or with a control surface in sonar/logic, you will not be able to save your sound creation. thorsten said that a solution would be just to add the button "edit" with the respective led to the core: when you press the "edit" button (if i understood well), the modifications to the sound are immediately stored in the patch (correct?) my suggestion: it would be interesting to add a sysex command to the sid that enables the "edit" without having the physical button. in this way you can control the sid with the midibox, for example, and store the sound in realtime. since this was just a single request of mine, i'm asking if someone thinks that this idea is good and if it would provide some enhancement to the sid design (if it is implementable!!)

if you need flat cables, look for old EIDE, SCSI, COM, parallel cables found inside old computers. i went to my local dump yesterday (the place where people trash old computer - ask for it to your city officies) and found a commodore64 with a working sid and tons of flat cables and connectors! :-)

i will begin the construction of the sequencer soon. but i have a doubt (or a dumb question..) ... i dig into the site but i didn find the answer... how are the two 2x40 LCD connected to the core? the core pinnings is for one LDC...

regrading this picture on www.ucapps.de i wonder if the differend cores can load different MIOS applications. for example, i plan to put the sequencer (with all his control surface...) and 2 SIDs in the same rack case. is it possible to chain the three cores and control both the sids and the sequencer with same control surface?? how are the different menu handled? should i customize the MIOS code?

i cannot tell you what kind of keyboard was. it had the old large connector, and not the nowadays ps-2 (?) i used it with my old 486... and fortunately i never trashed it! :-)

if you need a lot of push buttons, search for an old PC keyboard!!

try to connect the midi in/out to midi-OX the hot voltage regulatror could be due to a wrong pinning of the display ( i had such a problem...)

this is for now just an idea, not yet imlpemented topic: how to save space and money with the SID unit and the Sequencer unit. the basic is the following: how can sid and sequencer "share" one LCD and the pots/rotary needed for the control surface step A or B (not C!)? the sid control surface step B need one DIN module, one DOUT module and one LCD. the sequncer much more, but you can use the modules built for the sequencer also for the sid. and you can put the sid the sid and the seq. PCBs in the same rack case. now, imagine to wire the outputs of the LCD (10), of the DIN modue (5) and of the DOUT module (5) to a 20 pole connector (female) on the back of the rack. now, wire one female 20 pole connector to the SID and to the sequencer PCBs in the places where you normally would connect the lcd, DIN and DOUT. now, with an external 20 pole male cable (and probably with the units switched off), you can connect the LCD the pots, the leds and the rotary to the sid or to the sequencer, accoding to your needs. you have saved: space: only one rack is needed for both the sid and the sequencer money: you buy only one lcd, one rotary, one DIN, one DOUT... the additional fee is to connect all the wirings in the right place!

results: i changed the caps with no improvement. tried the "siplayer" but the unit only ouputs "electrical transients". the solution: i switched back to sid 6581 and everything now is ok... the two 8580 are going to an holiday on thorsten house to see if they are working or not!!!

thanks for the help, althought i think i double / triple checked everything... i particular, i checked all the connections between core and sid by checking the connectrion directly from the PIC pins to the SID/ICs pins. the worst thing is that when i mounted, in the past, the 6581, all was good. but when i switched to 8580 things went bad: first i had problems with the note playd, then after some time no more note was produced. i have 2 8580, and none of them works. since the core modules responds to the SYSEX correcly, can i assume it is fully working? a little test i did: if i remove the clock input (which comes from the core module) and i turn on the SID, i only hear the electrical transient of the power on. if i connect the clock, i hear two transient, the first of the power up and the second, that should be the "initialisation note" produced by the SID. how can i check if the SID is working? where can i find sidplay? the page http://www.d.kth.se/~d93-alo/c64/spw/sidplayw.html doesn seem to works i think that i will try to return to the 6581... or perhaps, if you agree, i will send you my modules... a little addendum: can the capacitor type on the SID filter affect the output? i don't know which kind of caps i mounted (they are NOT electrolytic caps, anyway! :-) ) but i know there are a lot of caps shapes...

THE RESULTS: the test with the MIOS interconnection test script worked, altought there is something strange, which i don't know if it's OK or not: when CC1 shifts from 15 to 14 the pin A0 read 5 volts (and remains at 5), but when i switch from 13 to 14 nothing happenes similar, when CC1 shifts from 13 to 14, pin D7 reads 5V the other readings are OK, and no pin shows 5V when the corresponding CC is not selected. then, i measured all the voltages on the SID during "normal" operation, with SID 1.5c: Cap1a 5 cap1b 5 cap2a 5 cap2b 5 res# 5 clk 2 rw# 0 cs# 5 a0 0 a1 0 a2 0 a3 5 a4 5 vss ground d0 5 d1 5 d2 5 d3 5 d4 5 d5 0 d6 0 d7 0 poty 0 potx 0 vcc 5 in 3 (about) out 4 (about) vdd 5

Im trying to resuscitate my sid synth, which time ago worked, but that after the mios update and the change from 6581 to 8581 it doesn emit any sound. the mios seems to work: the ping works, the sid application is loaded, and if i request a sid patch by sysex i receive the right message. the problem is that, when i turn on the unit, i only listen to two electrical transient - one at the power up and one after (in midox), i see that some program change message is coming. i have checked the sid voltages, and they seem OK, both on the sid and on the other two IC. i remember i changed the caps for the sid filter, now i read 682Z on them, but sincerely i cannot remember their precise values, and i'm perhaps not able to interpret correcly their value.... are they correct? what kind of checks should i do??? i even tried to use jsynth to edit some patch, but with no results, and to substitute the 8580 with another one...... thank you very much!!