Jidis

nILS- I've been tinkering with setting up a big multiboot thing for a while and ran across a good tutorial which of course I can't find now. The gist of it was that he/she did all the installs one by one onto the first primary partition (keeping it simple), and dumped a Ghost image over to another drive or partition each time until he had a whole batch of different OS images. He wiped this main partition clean in between each install. After he got them all, he dumped them each to different partitions and set up a boot loader to pick them. I think he may have gone with one of the Linux loaders. The partitioning was even pretty elaborate, with many primaries and logical drives. That system seems like it should also work and be safe if you've already got an existing install. The PITA part would just be configuring the boot loader to activate/hide the correct stuff, but if you kept the images outside everything, even trashing the MBR probably wouldn't be a dead end. If anybody has tips/pointers on these two- When I get back on it, I'll have two issues to work out: 1) An imaging app that can effectively work with any sort of partition. Ghost seems to be able to image Mac installs and stuff, but they come out giant (even with compression). I'm hoping there's something that does a better job of excluding the empty space. And 2) Selecting a good boot loader. I almost had LILO working some of it once, but the manual editing confused me (I tried to add a selection). I also want to be able to completely hide different partitions. I may be better off with a "bootloader for dummies" like BootMagic or something. George PS @Cimo- My approach on the Linux thing was a bit different. I tried a few Ubuntu variants and 64Studio, but really wanted something with almost no GUI and a really minimal footprint (just a launcher for a few audio apps). I ended up going with Arch, but being a newbie, I've got a long ways to go.

Hope that didn't come across with a Troll-like smell. :) I actually spent over a decade on Macs (from OS6 up to the first couple OSX versions). I'm now getting too curious about X and have set up a hackintosh on my laptop which I hope to dual boot with. So I guess "the rest" means you do all the MIDI/audio on Mac? Take Care, George (and please don't let the thread turn stinky :))

Simone-- Funny, I keep a MIDIBox sketch just like that pinned to the wall in my workroom too (the door actually). ;D Door.JPG

Actually, I meant the "host". ;) I guess I had grown to think you were always Windows and Linux. Are you all three now or have you switched over or something? Take Care

Hi Sasha. No, I actually do like the blues, but I've seen several complaints here from people saying they were too prominent. I haven't put any on anything here either, but I've always wanted to. Seems like a really soft blue might solve the problem if you could use really hazy plastic or distance the LEDs like you were talking about. Wonderful looking buttons BTW and great choice of font (what is it anyway?). George

I must have missed something somewhere. ;D When did this transition occur? Take Care, George

Just noticed this in the Reaper forums and thought people here might be interested. Haven't read all the details yet, but it makes me wish I had one. http://remaincalm.org/?cat=8 http://www.cockos.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21550

That brings up a good idea though. If you could use something slightly more opaque to mask most of the blue light (along with the higher value resistors). You think it would look OK then??

Great to hear it's off to a good start. :) Take your time and thanks as always! George

Thorsten- Have you gotten a chance to mess with any of the chips yet (or received them for that matter)? -- Not in any hurry, just excited about the concept like others here probably are, and hoping you haven't hit any major bumps. :) George

Added two boards to be safe and fixed (I hope ;D) the PCB total. How impossible do you guys think a homebrew PCB will be for that chip? (I'm pretty good with toner transfer, but don't remember if I've done an SMD yet) Thanks, and looking forward to this! George PS- I didn't realize those were the USB-Audio guys.

I burn down lots of stuff on handheld belt sanders. Hold the sander upside-down or sideways and bring the victim in slowly with the other hand (and watch your fingers :o). Not sure if it would work on LEDs, but it does PCB stock and stuff (which ruins the hell out of the belt BTW). George <edit> forgot: ... so I guess you can go all the way down to that YinYang element and they still function and look OK??

If any of you guys end up doing an etched panel, you can print little dots on your layout that end up working perfectly as pilot/starter holes. I did that on my last one and it made things a lot easier. I've got a benchtop Delta drill press and still usually screw up all my holes. ;D

I just threw 4 more on there. (mainly to help out :)) Let us know what it looks like on the US orders. A currency conversion online show the chips at around $5.40 here (if that's right). George PS- Also, can PayPal or whatever as soon as you need it.

I'm not sure Rasteri actually implied that he wouldn't share his development afterward, just that he might wish to sell it. -hope so :)

YES, that sucks. >:( I built one of those Winamp remotes a while back and found out the hard way. You couldn't flip through the playlist in stop mode to see what song you wanted. You had to wait until it started playing.

Thorsten, Will these be coming to any of our sellers over here in the states? Thanks! George

I'm wondering more about those neat clean raw wires sticking out of the insulation. :o That's one thing I dread about ribbons, nothing can get in there to strip them easily. His look tinned or something too (mine are always all fuzzy looking :-[). Those boards really are beautiful by the way!

Got it! (and resized the 640 to 600) I actually try to bump things to 640 for that same reason, but I guess 600 will be the new width if it's safer in that regard. BTW- That help page for the forum posting is a work of art. I either hadn't read it, or purged it when some new stuff went in my small-ass head. ;D I guess it all requires using actual post attachments rather than an outside picture host. It's a shame you can't place them within the text though. Yeah, it was nice. Mainly just because I could compile and dump an app to it, tap some buttons to see how it ran, then change it and re-dump while sitting and staring at the same area. I had to lower my monitor platform recently to accomodate a 3-space rack though. Maybe I can build a new one into the monitor stand or something that hangs at the top of the screen. Wonder if I could fit one into this stupid "multimedia" keyboard I'm using which already has transport and volume controls that barely work with anything. (I was planning a nicer PS2 keyboard MIDIbox long ago for the studio, but I'm out for now and won't need it :'() Take Care, George

Good, I hate to see stuff go to waste. :) BTW- How do you guys post the thumbnail pictures that link to the full size if you click them (or is that something I'm supposed to know how to do with stuff on Photobucket :-[ ;D)??

Here's one for anybody bummed out about trying to work in a mess (might make you feel a little better). -No, it's not usually that bad. ;D I actually took that picture because it looked so horrible at the time. Most of my electronics stuff has moved to a house for right now, so the desk gets junk piled on it sometimes. I built it for doing electronics and haven't put it to very good use. The shelves in the corner (where the monitor is) go up to the ceiling and hold some meters and junk. That monitor is on the B port of a dual head card in my main computer (beside the electronics desk) so I can throw layouts and schematics over to it while I'm working. I'll try to grab a picture sometime when it's clean. This (bottom one) was fun while it was around. It was in between my keyboard and monitor on angled brackets for working with MIOS stuff while still looking at the screen (painted to match the desk :)). I switched over to a toolbox looking thing later, but miss the convenience of that panel. The toolbox could probably use an angled stand or something. Take Care, George

Yeah, please keep us up to date here on how that box is evolving. I bought a single board computer with a P3 socket to do something like that about a million years ago and still haven't found the time to do anything with it. I wanted something similar (but less elaborate than yours ;)). The board I got has direct LCD capability and one PCI slot. A P3 is already sort of a joke, but I was planning just to use it for a remote recording box. I've got a few ADAT PCI cards here. Take Care

I'm as excited about seeing that LC mixer with the built-in keyboard (or PC). :o That's a great looking layout. Seems like it would be very efficient. Hope you don't change it too much. Great work you've done!

Simone, I did that with a compact flash to IDE adapter and it sucked crap. ;D http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php/topic,9318.0.html The adapter/card is right beside the laptop, still setup with 98Lite. I'm thinking about putting it back in tomorrow, just for the nice quiet aspect. I'm still wondering if there's a combination that doesn't perform like mine did. Maybe SD, or the Mac's drive bus, will act differently. I really like the idea. I see all those mini-laptop things are using solid state drives now. Maybe they'll get cost effective too (I don't really need but a couple gigs). Take Care, George

Stryd, Try that Plog one if you've got the chips around. I'd really like to see if it does OK, and what limitations it may have for this sort of stuff. I'm definitely planning to get back on it soon, I've just piled up a few too many tasks lately and need to dig my way back to the surface. :-[ I'll likely want to build a bigger one if you guys work one out, but the small one could be pretty convenient if it works. He said it could be stripped down without the status lights and stuff (we usually do without that luxury anyhow), and I'm wondering if it could even be ported down to a smaller chip package or something (maybe built into the sub-25). Take Care, George