Jidis

Napierzaza, From the Core parts list page: I guess that should be valid for the burner as well. Guessing here, but I think the ICs will be the MM74HC14N (Mouser# 512-MM74HC14N), but there will probably be a few that will work. Just make sure you get regular dual in line (DIP/PDIP) style chips, not any of the weird surface mount crap. Package style will show over in the right side column on the mouser results. Take Care, George PS-- I never did get my burner working here, but I'm in no rush.

In the states, I've had really good dealings with this guy, but again, I just get regular diffused style lights right now: http://stores.ebay.com/West-Florida-Components He ships worldwide and is really helpful. There was a good assortment I got from him on green, yellow, red 3mm's a while back and I recently got a bag of 100 more reds. Indeed that eBay arrangement with the 100% item cost shipping is a PITA. They need to either get someone on there who sells assortments or who does a genuine "combined" shipping charge for a few different items. I'd guess that for lights, 3 or 4 different orders in one envelope or box probably wouldn't even change the real shipping cost, but they tend to give you a "price break" on multiples which comes out to crap. George

Man, I hear you. I finally got around to putting together a massive order I'd been holding off on a couple weeks ago for that very reason. The simplest parts were some of the hardest ones to pick because of the huge selection. I ended up having to call and get a tech to point me to exact recommendations for a bunch of it, and later regretted it as he seemed to direct me to some of the more expensive variants. I got over a hundred dollars worth of small junk. Some of the basic plastic headers and IDC stuff came in at several dollars, where it probably should have been in the twenty-five cent range if I knew what to get. Also, IIRC their search box takes some getting used to. Seemed like it didn't work with wildcards and stuff, so for instance, on the 74xx parts you sometimes have to chop off prefixes and stuff to get it to look for them correctly. George PS- Reichelt must be like MCM. I miss making those orders. They had like *one* version of everything. You just had to pick your value or number of pins. :)

You may want to check that viewing angle with some people here (+/- 10degrees). Seems tight to me, but I'm usually going with diffused LEDs. I guess it depends on the box too. George PS- Happy 500 Doc! ;)

Yeah, I got that at first, when trying to jump right to it, but copying/pasting the URL worked for some reason. ??? -Cool button BTW

You Live guys should be thankful that this works. ;) In the Steinberg apps, they only send output messages if the parameters are changed from within the computer. Pretty much ruins generic remote control for DIY types unless we run an emu mode. If there are any Cubasers here that are bothered by that, it might help to drop them a line while they're busy making tweaks for the version4's. George (sorry for the topic change :-\)

Thanks TK! Didn't realize the name would be different (I had been searching everything for an exact match). George

Makari, It's not looking good with this stuff. :'( It showed up yesterday and I tried to "whiten" some labels I had just done on the top of a PCB. It made no effort at all to adhere to the toner for some reason. It's also on a really thin carrier sheet (like cellophane) which curls up and is somewhat hard to handle, and it came with no instructions. The stuff I could find on the web described the same process used for the toner transfer, so I used about the same amount of heat, time, and pressure that I usually do. Figuring maybe the Staples paper residue was obstructing the TRF, I just tried more labels on a PCB top, using an old print from some JetPrint paper (no residue). Same exact result. Eventually, the heat and pressure de-fused some of the toner from the board and put a duplicate image on the white TRF paper (which stayed on the carrier). I may try some other stuff, but I'm not getting my hopes up. I'm wondering if maybe it can go bad or something in storage. I may eventually mail Pulsar. They were pretty helpful when I inquired about it a while back. Anybody else here ever tried that, or the green one? Take Care, George

Hi Goldie, No, the "null" is where the receive and transmit lines are flipped from one end to the other, so two similar devices can communicate over one cable. The 1:1 type takes all the lines straight through, like pin1 on one end to pin1 on the other and so on. Just remember you're looking at a mirror image between the female and male plugs, so pin one will be on the left side of one and the right of the other. Hope that helps, George

I see this mentioned in most of the apps as sort of a "preset" table for incoming MIDI (guessing), but they all seem to have their own tables for that under different names. Does a CONFIG_MIDI_IN table actually exist somewhere? Thanks, George

After getting a new pair of 74HC14s, I'm finally back to fighting with this. :-\ Does anyone know any likely reason that I can't turn off Vdd with the P18 software? The Vpp switch in the test panel takes me from 0.4v to close to the 12.5 on MCLR when I switch it, and turns on the Vpp light, but the Vdd line just stays at a little over 5V, regardless of the Vdd switching and there's no LED on for that either. I've swapped the two HC14 chips around, tried different parallel cables and a different computer, but it looks like the programmer. FWIW, attempting to load a PIC just gets an undetected PIC error. Thanks, George

Hey again Makari, I think Lazertran is probably the safest route, and I've seen some really nice looking results here. The toner is good for a bunch of stuff, but saying that it takes some getting used to is sort of an understatement. It can be a pain in the ass, but it's worth it if you're into doing custom PCB's on a regular basis. I'm pretty sure any black on silver I do from now on will be etched aluminum (with an initial toner stage). That seemed to work pretty well and is definitely more "scratch resistant" than plain toner. George

Yes (in theory, at least ;)) http://www.pulsar.gs/PCB/a_Pages/4_Products/4b_TRF_Foils/TRF_Foils.html The green one is just for a reinforcing mask over regular toner, but I guess that could do labels too. If the white seems to work, there are dealers who used to sell variety packs of weird colors (metallics and such) on eBay or something. I'm wondering if it will have any trouble with my current toner transfer paper, which is sold by Staples. The Staples paper makes a really tight transfer, but it leaves this weird gray paper residue film over the toner. I'm not sure if it's enough to get in the way of the TRF though (will see I suppose). I was just going to try it first on some top-side PCB labels, but I'll check the white on black too if you want. What sort of "black thing" were you planning on putting labels on? I can probably paint something or dig something up. I've got anodized black panels here, but I probably don't want text on them right now. ;D BTW- With some playing around, I've gotten pretty good results with black on plain aluminum. I'm hoping the TRF sticks to it.

Makari, Sorry, not quite an answer, but I've got some TRF (toner reactive foil) on the way for doing white on black as well (and white on raw PCB). I've been trying to get some forever and finally threw it on a Digikey order, which of course showed up today, without the TRF. >:( I'd guess it'll be here early next week. If you're interested I'll try to snag some pictures. Take Care, George

Been there friend. 8) Rest assured, if you accidentally did, I was given a fix here which wasn't all that difficult (just a couple lines). Best to try not to do it in the first place anyway. ;D George

Just a wild guess here, but it looks more heavy duty. A lot of those 125V rated switches for AC we have here are sort of stiff. I think with instruments and such you're looking for something with a lighter "touch" that you can just tap to activate. I'm not even sure what or how they've got that light worked out. It could be something running off the AC power. ??? They do look cool though. 8) George <edit> just noticed the "LED" part :-[ - still looks heavy though

Thanks for the tips Sasha, I'm not sure I'm still going with the angles, as I found a compromise I like which gets more of a smooth "vintage" shape. It's sort of a fader version of a chickenhead (pointer) knob: <-- The "knobs" are still being decided on. You're right about the right hand fingers and the angles. That was how I got to that angled thing. ;) I was trying to find a cap style that lends itself to more of a "pinch" type of use for fine changes on smaller controls, rather than how you work with long throw faders, where you can slide them up and down with a fingertip. When you pinch a control between your thumb and pointer finger, as you mentioned, they fit into that angle. I made a few clay angled caps with rounded edges and stuff, but didn't like the way they looked with the rest of the 90 degree layout and parts. The Saturn looking thing was the result of some symmetrical angled versions of the previous thing. They started looking more like a diamond shape, where you could pinch them with either hand. I guess these have that ring part too, which could be slid like a regular fader cap with the fingertip. The controller is a front end for a mastering EQ plug by Universal Audio (the Precision EQ). It's a simplified parametric with some stepped controls. The bandwidth steps are only six per band, which is why I went with up/down buttons instead of a knob. The index markings on the frequency controls don't represent the number of steps on those though (there are a bunch). If I can get through the knob making and construction, that's only the "easy" part. As Thorsten recommended to me, I'll be tossing my usual MB64 app and starting from an actual skeleton for this. Right now, I'm struggling with just the table scans to map incoming MIDI stuff to components and vice-versa. My assembler capabilities suck. :'( In addition to the stepped controls with buttons, the "set" mode will either flash the set light or just light it up and do the same thing to any of the knobs/faders which don't match their corresponding "received" values. While in that mode, it won't output any changes made. After each of them gets readjusted to match up with those values, the corresponding light (seen below the faders & knobs) will go out (or light up??) to indicate that they're in sync with the plug's state. The A/B mode thing is actually just a parameter within the plug (the EQ can store two banks of settings and flip between them). Take Care, George PS- That thing's a lot smaller than the picture makes it seem. The faders only travel about an inch and a half. The whole thing is about the size of a VHS video tape. Also-- The panel will hopefully be etched aluminum, which might make the weird hole cuts easier (I'll be able to see exactly what area needs to be cleared away). From stuff I've tried, it's soft enough to be cut easily with small files, so I'm figuring if I put drill point marks in three corners of the triangles for a large diameter drill bit, then drill them out, I can hit the connecting lines with a file.

Thanks both! It's actually that first link Sasha put up. Been looking all over for it. It's way the hell over my head though. I'm trying to design some caps, but I'm starting with clay models and custom shaping them until I get something I like. Problem is, none of the geometry is perfect, but I guess if I screw around with them long enough it'll get closer. George PS- I'd love to find a way to do the backside (shaft) part of the caps as well, but I'm thinking for my lo-tech molding level, it might be best to just go with larger holes and then fill them with something and squash the shafts into them to get the square or D shape that I need afterward.

Yeah, I normally do. I run something called "Canvas", and usually run the same version (3.5) I started with back in the MacII days. ;) It does all the dimensioning and stuff. I use it for everything from panel layouts to room layouts and furniture design. Doesn't do well on XP/2K though. BTW- Here's the Canvas panel layout of the thing I screwed up on: None of the knob or cap designs are really final, which is part of why I didn't really care about the height. The square ones with the rounded corners are the ones that sit too low, but even the others will likely be extra tall to make it up there with those god forsaken faders. >:( --> Also, I'd imagine those rounded triangles will be so hard to cut for that quantity, that I'll probably end up going with something else, but they do benefit from that "directional arrow" look. Thanks again all of you for the suggestions. :) George

If it helps, I think the original forms were done with some sort of CNC rig.

Hi, I'm having trouble finding a post here. It was an LC or maybe a sequencer with really nice custom made knobs using some colorful two-part molds. The one with the shuttle wheel that was done with an insert part for the D shaft back side of the knob. Anybody remember who's that was?

FWIW- That didn't appear to work for the beta forum. It saved a bunch of links and stuff, but would hang with a password entry box when I tried to open it with no net access. It also gave me a bunch of messages about not having saved parts of the site when it was done, so I don't think the content I was interested in even came in. No big deal anyway. :-\ George

Yeah, I'm wondering more about that other forum though. I tried a few offline browsers in addition to HTTrack, back before I gave up, and they all just saved the main entry page. Saving the current posts has gotten to be a pain, as they all have to be named and such, plus I don't know which ones I'll need to have with me each night. George

Twin-x, I'm on a beta team for something I run at the studio and don't have net access there. I really wanted to take the current postings (from a forum) with me each night, but no "offline" browsers would save the content of the forum due to some php crap or something (I'm a bit "web illiterate" ;)). Do you think that thing would do it? I run Opera here, but it would be worth running FF just to do that. I've been having to save all of the relevant posts from there as separate HTML files and drag them with me each night. Thanks for the tip! George BTW--- I run a thing called HTTrack (http://www.httrack.com) for saving most sites and it usually does well, even at the defaults. I keep a bunch of sites I need on CD.

Hi Wilba, Unfortunately, the board is already laid out and etched, but there are only six of this particular switch. The sub board thing sounds good for something else on the agenda though. I'll have to make sure to leave the proper space for it. I guess I'm debating now on the solid extension wires just mentioned, or just extending the top of the switch with my own taller button cap. I'm now remembering that these particular switches gave me trouble before, because the caps didn't protrude enough through this aluminum panel material I've got. If I go with the extensions, I guess I'll be doing that again (scary). Mark, I know the wire you're talking about (think I've got some here). I guess you're talking about running it parallel to each leg and then bending it a bit to get it back to the hole locations? It's a shame the holes in that machined pin socket weren't big enough. They would sort of "cup" around the existing pin and make for a nice strong joint. Evidently they're hard as a rock. I tried to drill one out a bit, and the bit just snapped off each time it hit the metal. George PS- Nothing ever sits at the right height with these PCB mounted parts. LEDs are probably the only ones that try to cooperate.