Jidis

Synapsys and all, I still haven't had a chance to get any ICSP going here. I've got a JDM and a Willem here which have ICSP connectors. I also want it for 16f84's and stuff. Wasn't there some weird stuff which needed to be opened/closed in the regular PIC/Core connections during that procedure? I'm planning to add the ICSP pins to a Core mod here, and have considered figuring out a way to use some board mounted DIP switches or something, so I wouldn't have to do a bunch of disconnecting and jumpering. Also, do you think the ICSP would be any different (better?) with regard to the notorious JDM issues, or any other programmer's voltage flaws? I may even just run a small JDM circuit inside the boxes, with a D-sub input, so I could program directly into the MB. ;D Thanks! George

Thorsten, I have gotten my PIC foundation stuff messed up a few times in the past, to where I wasn't getting the requests on boot or anything. I guess it could have been other factors (circuitry/burner?), but IIRC, I had done it each time by sending my Core some mangled version of an app compile. My memory on it's not that great, but it could also have been situations where a screwed-up, useless app I made would load, and then the machine was inaccessible, but either way I couldn't get MIOS or a new app back in (even with an immediate boot xfer). I've admittedly tried some weird source hacks, so I doubt he'd have a problem, but it does look like it might be possible. I've rarely done syx dumps (I'm usually doing hex xfers from MIOSStudio). Sasa- FWIW, I think even having a simple, cheap PIC18 burner on hand is a good way to go, just to save you some emergency troubleshooting. Take Care, George PS--> I'm thinking I wasn't the only one who had ruined a bootload/MIOS setup before. I'll keep a close eye on it from now on, in case it looks like anything I could get a repro formula for.

*** sorry for this long-a$$ post *** Hey again Pay_C :) Yeah, I end up having to reset a bunch of my prefs when I do a new Eagle install too. My first one is usually a black on white setting for the main board appearance, but I know most like that "negative" looking one. I also re-color a bunch of the layers while I route, so I can easily distinguish jumpers and unrouted stuff. I sometimes do simple, temporary route wires for the unrouted's, into some unused layer, and give it a nice bright color, so they stand apart more from the real lines. You can also get them out of the way better and avoid that confusing criss-cross of like-colored lines, until you're ready to work with them one at a time. Good news on the blocked holes though: I figured out a while back that they don't actually print like that. Eagle will clear them out nice and clean on the print. I don't know why it does that. I've tried to stop it before, but I'm not sure you can. To be safe, you may print to a regular piece of paper first, to see what Eagle ultimately does with everything. The part I really hate about Eagle, is when route lines actually end up being multiple short segments, and you have to go in and try to unroute them all one by one, and can't ever seem to get a "mouse grip" on the one you're shooting for. Then, sometimes the current crap won't even show up until you force the whole screen to redraw. Like if you try to unroute a wire to move some stuff, and after you've got the whole thing back to an airwire, it still has some mysterious, crazy looking, sharp "bend" or two in it. Then if you temporarily zoom out once, and zoom back in (or vice-versa) a new "blob" appears at the joint, from some free "bonus trace" that Eagle granted you. I've seen it do that stuff a lot, like when you've made nothing but straight lines, and it puts those hard-to-grab baby segments on there. The worst is when you have to slightly move some component, which really only uses simple, straight traces, and the trace/pin connections stay put, so you end up with this mess of overlapping "V"s. Then when you have to partially rip them all up, to move and re-route the first segment or two, they're all squashed together, so when you try to click the next one, you end up hitting one that you've already ripped, and Eagle rips the whole damn route, all the way back to the source. I sometimes wish I had a foot pedal tied to the "undo" keys. 8) I've found that zooming way way out for most of that critical "pinpoint" crap can help a lot. The aforementioned temporary "zoom in/out" trick is also a good idea every once in a while, just to see what Eagle has actually done to the board. BTW- When Eagle doesn't detect that you've landed on a pin you were going for, and doesn't make that "beep" noise, then you end up having to click it again to finish the connection, you can get more of those baby segments happening. The ones you can't see against the pads will actually disappear on the print from that "hole clearing" thing it does. However, it will occasionally be missing a microscopic segment near the pad, which it sees as an open connection. It may complain if you run an error check or something, but as a safety precaution, I'll often turn off all the main layers during the last stages of my board making, so I can see any of the unrouted "dots" against the wide open empty background. Another one, if you haven't hit it already, is that hatch patterns and stuff will disappear when you open a saved board, even though their parent polygon or fill is still there. They'll re-appear if you do a quick "ratsnest". I think that command may also clean up some of the other small anomalies I mentioned, but I always do a save right before I hit that, or any time I use the auto router, in case it makes a big mess. I don't always trust the undo. If any of the "Eagle veterans" here know the causes/solutions for any of that, I'm sure both of us would be glad to hear them. Take Care, George PS- I hate to say this, as Eagle is such a standard here, but a discussion in the Yahoo PCB group yesterday got me thinking about it. Some of us had been complaining about the freeware's size limits for smaller non-commercial stuff, especially with larger "simple" parts, like controls, and there have been a couple really strong recommendations on alternative apps. I'm thinking now that this generous freeware version of something which is sort of a standard in the lower end of the PCB app sector, has made it a lot harder for any promising new developers to get a foot in the door. A lot of the complaints against the cheaper stuff, involve stability issues. If you think about it, if most people weren't as quick to jump on the free version of something everyone talks about, and something they know goes up into the hundreds of dollars for most of the same functions, each of those smaller apps might have a substantially larger user base. The younger companies are also more likely to welcome any feedback they can get on individual system conflicts or bugs, as well as feature requests, and the actual programmers may even directly correspond with the customers. It's also easy to overlook the fact that many of us DIY'ers could find all of the main functionality we need from Eagle, in most of those other apps, without even crashing them. ;D I don't see myself ever getting to a point where I'd be designing a five layer board, or needing any elaborate milling info to send to a PCB house. I also don't even really use the autorouter much these days, but some of the others have their own versions anyway. The price of the totally full functioning version of many of them is probably only around the second tier Eagle version, where you still couldn't lay out a MB front panel pot/fader board or anything big. Sometimes they look more like half that price or even free, and I'm guessing the majority of us may never reach a point where we could realistically afford several hundred dollars for the real Eagle (or even the 2nd one), but many of us may reach points where we need to do a board which is more than a few inches wide or long. I hate to compare CadSoft to such a horrible beast, but that whole ProToolsFree and 001/002 thing was a pretty close example of it. Most project studios and students jumped on it, just because they knew the name, or thought they were getting a necessary "industry standard" compatibility, even though they could've exported tracks or sessions in some form, from an alternative app to anywhere they went. As many of you know, it really screwed things up for some of the others, some of which had even better features or support in that range. Until Nuendo grew up, it was hard for any of them to gain any respectable "pro" reputation beyond the "MIDI sequencer" image. I'm going to try my best to start looking harder at some of those others, if anyone has extensive experience or opinions on any. I've done this a few times, but I didn't really try to use them too long. Funny, I think my familiarity with Eagle's "twisted" logic actually made them harder to use. I figure if I got comfortable with that Eagle mess, I should be able to get used to them too. DipTrace was highly recommended by someone in the PCB group. I looked at it yesterday. It goes up into the hundreds, but the lower "limited" versions make a bit more sense for DIY (I think there's a small scale one which can do two or three layers and big boards). They've also got a 30 day demo.

Many here are better qualified to answer, but my guess would be the Core. I guess you don't have a means of re-blowing the loader or anything into the PIC, do you? ??? I had a messy Core a while back, and it booted OK for a while, but would intermittently boot to black blocks and crap. It started getting worse, and I think I asked about it in here (there were other similar posts as well). Sometimes if I rapidly threw the power at it, off & on a few times, the app would start OK. Desoldering and double checking, or swapping a bunch of parts got it up to spec. Hope you can get it back! George

Jaicen, Yeah, the Akai did sound like samples (but rather "sharp" ones). I had an HR-16 too. I'd be surprised if it wasn't as rare as the Akai now. That thing was built like a giant version of a cheap plastic calculator. The body of mine ended up breaking at the screw joints, causing the PCB button pads to "lift" from the board and ruin their accuracy. I think this was actually done by it's previous owner. I called Alesis, and the tech asked for my address and shipped me out a new plastic body within a few days, free of charge. I always liked some of it's sounds. My SR-16 is supposed to have some, but they never quite sounded the same. It's also got sort of a crappy "tinny" sound, like it has that "smiley face" consumer-appeal EQ curve on it. I've wondered if any of their stuff might have the ability to split a digital signal to either a S/PDIF output, or to an additional chip, which could convert it to one. They've got some of the common Alesis-branded DAC chips you see mentioned places. The crazy workarounds back then were pretty educational, and as I mentioned, that had a very "unique" overall sound to them. Fortunately, it didn't last too long. The Roland 330/550 stuff arrived after a few years, giving me the ability to run live multi-output sample sequences, synced to FSK/SPP, and also had a mouse/CGA hookup, which was a bit ahead of it's time. The Ensoniq EPS stuff showed up later and brought the whole market way down in price, with lots more features. You want to feel sorry for people- All the local guys I dealt with for rap production were afraid of real samplers, all the way into the end of the EPS16+ line. While I was on the 550 ,they actually used DigiTech delays with a few seconds of memory available for a single sample location. They used to add DigiTechs to get multiple samples, and I think they either only triggered from the click/pulse output on the 909's and stuff, or only on certain "short" voices. They would chain drum machines and crap to get more DigiTechs running simultaneously, manually trigger extra sample loops on each measure during the live mix to tape, or land things on 4-track and restart additional free-running sequences for the next pass. Their fear of the technology cost them about ten times what a 550 or Akai 900/950 may have run them. I usually had to accompany people to local studios, just to bring in their sample mixes and stuff I had no part in creating. Otherwise, they went to the more expensive "sampler equipped" studios and paid a fortune to sit around ripping vinyl into loops before the real session started. For a while, I was the only one in that genre of music here with a real machine, and most of them had way more money for it than me. There was good sample gear here, used by a couple composers and commercial studios, and a local friend doing R&B stuff, kept up with it more than I did, but he didn't deal with the same people. I fought my ass off trying to get those guys to buy "real" gear, with floppies and all, but they refused. The Akai's were already common a couple states up the coast, but I guess we were "slow" here. Only a couple years later, one or two of them got EPS16+'s and MPC's, and all of the sudden, they were everywhere . I was partners with a guy a few years ago, where we had the ASR-10, a Korg Trinity, an MPC60II, and some "limited edition" SP12 with a brass nameplate on it. Everything in there was maxxed out "memory/option-wise", and he didn't even know how to use most of it, and didn't bother keeping most of the manuals. The computer & recording half of the place was even worse. - nice town huh? Sorry for the nostalgic rambling ;D, George

I forgot another note: I've found that it helps in some situations, if you can solder some of the larger parts while the board and panel are connected. When there's any minor misalignment, they seem to flex a little better before they get a bunch of solder blobs holding the legs down. It can also give you an opportunity to elongate a PCB hole or two as a last resort. George

Pay_C, I'm now running a clean SP2 install on this main "home" rig (was SP1 a couple days ago). My old trusty Eagle will likely go back on there by tonight. I'll post too if it should do anything screwy. George

Or the 8x8 EgoSys (ESi) that Thorsten enlightened me to recently. ($150 !!) Thanks! George PS-- If there were ever any interest from knowledgeable parties here: I've got a MIDIMan "Portman PC/S" 1x1 serial interface here, which was killed back when 2K/XP came out. The guts are really simple. It's "brain" appears to be 3- 18 pin PIC chips (16C54), and the rest of the circuit looks relatively "basic" as well (single-sided board maybe too). The PIC's are all socketed. It's a really cool box, with a nice, thick metal case. You could probably stomp on it without hurting it. It uses the 25 pin female serial connector. With no XP support, it's probably a really cheap eBay item now. If anyone here with Windows COM port knowledge feels that they may have a shot at doing anything with it, I'd gladly rip it up and map the schematic or board out in Eagle. I can attempt to read the chips too, but I guess it's possible that they're code-protected. When I last looked at it, my PIC apps didn't support that model, but I may be able to find something that would. * I realize that thing was likely "copyrighted", but hey, it is long dead now, and it would be more to save someone the hassle of building a box, rather than to commercially exploit the dead copyrighted program code or anything.

Thanks Stryd_One!

When I've had to do that, I'll usually use some sort of layout template created from, or within, the same program I do the board in. For instance, if you were to turn off everything in Eagle, but a "hole" layer or the drill marks, and make a print of that to tap your holes and stuff. Only variable I guess, is how good a job you do on the actual tapping, cutting and drilling. Pounding a "dent" directly in the center of a pair of crosshairs isn't always as easy as it sounds. ;) I think it's come up in here before. Works pretty well if you can arrange to do it with what you're running. Take Care, George PS- I've used spray adhesive to get my template sheets onto a panel. I think others here had also printed directly to adhesive-backed "sticker" or label paper.

I hear you there! ;D My first experience with those, was either from my S-550's sound library, or after purchasing a Canadian vintage drum machine compilation library on audio CD. I remember hitting one or two of it's sounds and just thinking "what in the hell is that supposed to be"? I'm pretty sure it was the Guiro or the Clave sound. I also remembered some weird "noise" artifact behind all the sounds, which made me wonder what was wrong with the particular machine or system they had sampled it with. Cool stuff for sequencing and DAW work, but probably not for playing drums. I've flipped to various "808 type" sounds on occasion, while practicing, and they do inspire some unconventional styles of playing, but the novelty wears off rather quickly. That's great to hear! Like I said, even generic, "bland" sounding stuff is good enough for practicing. Believe me, none of us do. 8) All those machines leaned more toward the "old" side than the "old classic". When I was younger, I used to have to take the DX's outputs to tape, and use them to trigger different sounds from a delay unit with sample/trigger capability. All I was usually left with were maybe hi-hats, and those often got processed too. As bad as most of that stuff can sound, it still can suffice for drum practice, if you're able to take the tuning down fairly low, and maybe run it through a cheap reverb. What you describe sounds plenty good! I'm interested to hear that DR-110 now. If I can remember, I'll try to dig up the sounds when I get to the studio later. I may have weird taste, but for beat sequencing and music, I sort of liked the flat "two-dimensional" sound of the sampled drum hits being triggered from analog sources or pulses. It's something between the lack of velocity changes, the exactly consistent sound between any two hits, and the unnatural, "out-of-place", gated ambience which often surrounded a sound which had been "extracted" from a separate mix. Even with what I've got now, I have trouble reproducing the sound I got with that primitive system. I'm pretty confident it was not a result of any "analog tape" sound, but the lower bit rates & digital conversion may have been involved somehow, as well as even the Oberheim's sequencer. BTW- On that drum machine sample CD, I remember hearing one machine in particular that I would have loved to have had back in my DX days. Some weird Akai crap, like an XR-10(?) maybe. I don't think I ever saw one in real life, but I think I went around fishing for a picture once, and saw it. Really sharp sounding and "cartoon like", if it's the one I'm thinking of. I've thought about loading my DX EPROM's with it, but I'm not sure what the memory or sound requirements will be. Take Care, George

Probably my 700th time for bringing this subject up, (sorry :-[) I was about to reply to a MOTU-related thread elsewhere, which may involve their notorious 2K/XP driver offerings for their parallel products. In some web/usenet reading, I've seen similar mentions as this:

Definitely not! ;) I'll ditto stryd_one's interest. Sometimes not having people qualified to answer or comment has no connection to some of the other's interest in it. Some of us just patiently sit by and wait for you to make something we can selfishly clone and use for ourselves. ;D I've been trying to restrain myself and keep my DIY projects in realistic perspective, so I'm not sure how many new ones I'd be wise to take on, but I've been watching this since it showed up, and saving the images and text. At the very least, I'm interested in how some of the older sounds were actually created, if just for the electronics knowledge. I'm also a drummer myself, and while recent years have brought us several different means of DIY trigger to MIDI interfacing, and the various DIY pads and triggers for them, I haven't really seen many easy projects for the "sound module" half of the system. It would be nice to be able to build a simple piezo/pad system for quiet practicing, ideally with a really basic set of more "conservative" sounding onboard drum voices. From what I've heard of the CR-78,etc., I'm not sure most drummers would be OK practicing rock drums to those sounds, but some lo-tech Oberheim or Linn type sounds may be adequate, especially when paired with a cheap reverb or effects unit. Take care, thanks, and please keep working on it! George PS- Not sure how much sense it makes with modern digital storage, but I've thought how nice it would be to have something like the old Oberheim or Simmons stuff I've owned, where you could customize a small sound set by dumping short wav's into some EPROM's or whatever. (again, even with minimal parameter/tuning control, no multi-sampled voices or anything else)

I'm with jack on that one. I've become quite comfortable with the program, but have frozen my version back at an earlier build, which doesn't seem to be missing much of anything I need here. I remember them making some changes which required a more current version a while back, but I thought that was in going from a 4.0x up into the 4.1's. The ones I've ended up with (4.11, 13, maybe 14?) have been equally stable on 98, 2K, and XP where I've used them. IIRC, if you can get to their main "pub" FTP section, the versions went way way back. I'd say, if you can still open the boards successfully in any previous ones, just go ahead back a couple and live happily ever after. :) (just my personal two cents on it) -George PS to any avid Eagle "version followers": Have they done anything dramatic, which would be worth leaving an earlier 4.1 for?

Seems like that's what the "angle/tilt" thing on drill press tables would be able to do (at least maybe a similar shape), maybe with a bit of round file work to square the edges afterward. Only time mine's tilted, is when the stop-pin worked it's way out and the table tilted itself. Might not tilt the right direction to have enough space for a panel, but you could probably rig up an accessory table, to tilt into the other axis. ??? PS- There are "pocket hole" drill jigs (little small blocks of aluminum with a handle or something), for drilling angled holes into flat surfaces with a hand drill.

Thanks for the great tips! The Sharpie/TRF thing (I think) was actually in the tips section or somewhere on Pulsar's site, but I think it may have been user info. I've been trying to be in a habit of leaving more space around my boards, because I've been having problems with poor transfers and etched through small traces near the edges. There's really not much point in not cutting oversize now, as I've got plenty of copper. ;) I've done pretty well with rough sawing with a hack or jigsaw, and burning down to my border lines with a belt sander, or sliding the board edge across a piece of sandpaper on a flat surface. Eats away pretty easily, leaving a nice edge, but ruins the heck out of the belts and paper. I really want that laminator too. I've also got a 55 dollar gift certificate for Staples (they sell the GBC). There's a whole slew of discussions on them in the Yahoo Homebrew PCB's group these days, but that .03 thing sort of sucks to me. I don't even own anything that thin right now, and my DS boards, believe it or not, or up in the .09x range. :o I'm trying to look around for a larger one or something here, or anything I could maybe turn into one. Someone in the PCB group just had someone give him an industrial-sized free one, after putting up a local want ad. I think it needs a part or something, but would be well worth the repair. If the photo mounting press is the same sort of thing a friend recommended here (some sort of T-Shirt machine), man that thing was high. I think the decent, entry-level ones were a few hundred dollars. I've wondered if any readily available heating appliances would work. My parents have one of those new "space age" looking George Foreman grills, with the removable plates for cleaning. With the plates out, it's got two perfectly solid, smooth, flat heating surfaces, which press together when closed (actually, they might need thin metal spacers with the plates out, or the hinge could be adjusted). It's also got a really fancy thermostat and timer. I wouldn't trust myself to attempt any of that stuff without someone else documenting the procedure first. ;D I hadn't thought about the smoothing of the drill holes thing. I'll usually do that after my etching, before fluxing or populating the board, but I can see the need for the DS transfers. I do it some, but not near enough (mainly to get the scratch crap off). It's usually just with finger pressure from above. It probably needs more like you say, to get it back to smooth and flat, and the "stationary sandpaper" thing sounds good. I'll do that on my next one. Thanks Again, George

From the Nuendo forums:

Good deal! (and I envy you) May end up with one myself, if I keep running into things that need an adapter. >:( BTW- Those F***'ing ZIF sockets alone are like fifteen or twenty bucks! George PS- Anybody know a simple DIY that can read/write a 16C54?

Adam, I like the PCB's too. If you get a decent chunk of solid copper-clad off eBay, you won't worry about wasting it so much. I've been using it for everything, even simple test circuits that I may even need to re-do later. If you do that, I'd say get something fairly thick, if it's single-sided (maybe .04" or above), and also use enough stand-off's from the panel so that it doesn't squish any when you push buttons or something (maybe one or two in the middle for added support). I haven't bought any of that pre-drilled proto-breadboard stuff in a long while, and have little experience with it, but the lights, buttons,etc., usually have a nice parallel row or two of supply or ground rails, so if your i/o circuits are coming from separate MBHP boards, you should be able to easily draw many of the traces with a nice solid magic marker and a ruler or something, and just do sloppy single lines for most of the main pins (there's probably lots of space between items). You also may be able to do narrow strips of PCB for the parts, if they're in any sort of rows, to avoid the varying heights that Roger mentioned. Then either attach them all to something solid, or use separate screws/stand-off's to the panel if it isn't too many. The LED's can often sit in a small slice of tubing or rigid cable insulation to get them to the exact height you need. A small bottle of FeCl3 is only a few bucks, and should suffice for the nice thick lines you'll be using without over-etching, if you're using a shallow tray or something. You may want to draw over them a few times, letting them dry in-between, or use something stronger than a marker, since the heat and agitation may be sloppy and you may be trying to eat through a lot of wide unused space (unless you mask it off). It's a fun thing to learn about, if you haven't already done any. Just read up on it and be careful. Good Luck, George

Smash, Thanks! Yeah, the sponge thing has been on the back burner for a while now, because I've been waiting on making a DigiKey order, which will have some of that green stuff on it. I've heard great things about the sponge, but it sounds like you've verified it. I was afraid it would be more for really basic boards without much detail. The tank here is supposed to have a top, but I just used it that once because I was excited about seeing it work. I was supposed to do the top next. I really didn't want to do the FeCl3 in it, I just didn't want to waste my whole new thing of Sodium Persulfate for the one board. The tank was however, able to use three really old bottles of the Ferric, even diluted with water to fill the tank, and it did really well. I guess it was the heat and the bubblers. You done anything big with the sponge, or anything with lots of small traces or hatch patterns? Seems like it would also be good for doing double sided boards, if it doesn't put much slop around the edges of the current side. I've also recently seen that the TRF is supposed to stick to Sharpie touch-ups as well. :) George PS- I did my last Core with some of the Sodium Persulfate, using some "ZipLoc" bag technique I saw. It worked OK, but it took forever. The mix was sort of guesswork, so that could've slowed it down, plus I later read that it not only needs to sit for a week or so after mixing, and/or needs a bit of copper already in it, to get properly activated. It's in a bottle now, so I'll be using it again soon (maybe on a coffee maker).

Good idea (hadn't thought of that)! You mean like a big, rectangular brick of something to hog up all the space? Should work, but I'd have to avoid the heater which occupies a couple inches over to one side, plus my bubblers are sitting down at the very bottom. They have suction cup mounts, but I was planning to attach them to a Plexiglas plate or something easier to get out (you can't really get an arm down into this thing). The other problem is, as much as I love the tiny "fizz" of bubbles, it is actually a bit strong. When I first ran it, I just dropped them into the bottom with their hoses, and eventually they shook their way up a bit higher. As you may have guessed, all the bubble activity didn't seem to be too concerned with remaining in the tank, so I ended up with this brown "mist" of Ferric Chloride floating over the tank, and didn't notice it until there was a nice brown "cloud" on the kitchen floor, surrounding the stand I had it on. I could probably work out a way to keep them fairly low, but I'd almost rather figure a way to drop the heater and use less liquid. The heater was cheap as dirt at the PetSmart here, so I could probably just get the 6 or 8" model for a few bucks and suspend it somehow. The etch quality with that thing was great (even with old FeCl3), but it's way too much trouble to set it all up and clean everything afterward. I'm really thinking a simplified version of that coffee thing would help for small stuff, even if I had to agitate by hand. Take Care, George

Hi again, If you've got a minute, I may want to pick your brain on some firsthand MOTU MIDI info. ;) The Micro actually has "MIDIExpress half rack version" printed on the boards, so I guess they've got some of the same "quirks". I brought mine back to the studio the other night and actually saw it work in XPsp1. I made sure to give it IRQ7 and had the port on SPP/normal (per another ASUS A7N8X-e MOTU parallel owner's suggestion). I saw it disappear in Nuendo3 once or twice, but then I remembered a mention of keeping their clockworks junk open behind it, to keep the port in use, and it stayed OK. It looked OK for some MIDI faders & buttons, and it appeared to send MTC directly to Nuendo OK. It did do some funky crap with faders linked to MIDI channels (as opposed to audio), but now I think they had a thru/feedback thing happening from Nuendo. It used to screw with the JLCooper SysEx too, so I'll check that. Having experience with it, would you actually think I'm safe running that junk? Is there anything nasty you would look for, or have seen your's do, which I may not want to deal with? A guy in the Nuendo forum said that his worked fine, except when he was sending it heavy streams from some control surface or something (scary). I think he may have even said it messed with his audio when he did that, but it could've been a specific device problem. He was still using it otherwise. Has your's ever: *Crashed the machine or messed up your audio (including CPU loading)? *Mangled any data passing through it? or *Disappeared or gone undetected under the same exact boot sequence and apps you usually run? (BTW- Do/did you have a specific procedure with it, and were you running clockworks behind it?) In your opinion, is the timing and dependability of that stuff actually better, or just the speed itself? That's actually where this one came from. ;) Doesn't seem to be much of a "shortage" of them on the used market. It just doesn't do us much good if the driver can't be used or trusted. If I thought someone could write a new driver and firmware for the stupid things, I'd draw up a schematic and parts list, and dump it on the net. Looks like it's all socketed, and has some standard Atmels and flash memory, but they've got a couple of their own "S&S" brand processors or something in there too. I've got a MBHP USB box on the agenda, but you've got to admit, those old MOTU things would be nice as hell if they actually worked! Much Thanks! George PS- FWIW- The USB ones are better supported by them, but from what I've read, they're still not always "bulletproof", and they still have just a pinch of that trademark MOTU "disappearing" ability. It's looking like some of their quality control, and the actual internal parts have started taking a backseat over the past few years as well (compared to these things). :'(

Man, that etch tank is cool as sh**! - Thanks! That's a perfect idea with the heater. Makes you wonder why nobody already had one. Shame I can't read it. I built one of those flat "ant farm" fish tank looking ones a while back, with a heater and bubblers, and am kicking myself for making the internal volume so high. I have to use about a 2 litre bottle full of etchant to get it to the "safe" line on the 10" heater. >:( It's prevented me from even using my new sodium persulfate crystals, because I don't want to have to mix up a big jug just to do some small-ass board (it has a "shelf life"). I may look into that coffee thing if I can figure out what they did. I'd even settle for just the heater part. I think we've got about five retired coffee makers around here. ;D George

Funny, I've considered getting a "BCF" for that very reason. ;D It's almost as cheap as buying all the parts. I had always figured they had smushed those things down as tight as they could get, but evidently not. ;) Too lo-tech to help much on the questions, but I can try: I would guess the power thing should be possible in "theory", but you'd need to get a total of the amperage and all between it , and the wireless MIDI guy. I've got a feeling it might get sort of "heavy" on power. :'( I've occasionally wondered what could be done with laptop battery packs. I've got a few here, as well as a big, brand new, external thing for an old Mac PowerBook, which supposedly holds a much longer charge. I'm pretty sure that if you're changing the layout much, you may need to take a short ribbon or something from the main pot board to the part(s) or board(s) you use (soldering). Don't know the inside like you do, but if all that junk is on one board, and you keep the layout, it'd be easiest just to use theirs (except the switches or whatever). It may also already have a removable ribbon thing headed to the board inside it (easy). You're getting sort of complicated, if you're talking about adding any types of parts which aren't already on the Behringer in some form. It looks like a bunch of encoders, lights, and buttons, so for joysticks or something, you may have to be one of those lunatics who can dig other people's program code out of ROM or flash chips, rewrite it, and modify/add all the digital circuitry and crap. In that case, I'd probably try to build a machine that could fold space or something (might be easier and more useful). That wireless thing looks like it's more money than the knob box. Probably also smaller than itself inside. I've thought about that before and wondered if there were any existing DIY projects already out there. I know there's all sorts of other serial wireless projects, so I would guess so. Sucks that you have to bump down to 31kHz "wired" MIDI before making the transmission. If Behringer had it onboard, it may have been something better between the two boxes. Check that Grayhill thing for pinning. A few of us have the one with the removable clear caps, and it's regular individual momentary contacts with a common pin. Make sure it's not a matrix hookup or something, as you'll be dealing with their code and circuitry. Most of those parts will probably have some common supply and ground pins, so if you go with a daughter board or whatever, you'll probably get less wires than what it looks like, but you'll still have a bunch, so be prepared. I like your keypad better than mine. Why don't you go ahead and buy that 20 piece batch for me? ;D If you make him an offer on any singles, let us know what he'll take. He's only got a hundred and thirty-four. ;) Good Luck (and Welcome)! George

I'll "me too" what everybody else says about those breadboards. Only thing wrong with 'em is you never have enough. :P I got one of those long rectangular ones from RadioShack a while back, and then two more from an eBay breadboard specialist (daq-stuff), then ultimately went back to him for two more (these are the 830 point), and they still always have some bullcrap circuit stuck to them, so I can't ever use them. I actually wish they were split into two sides, with one of the "IC canal" things on each side, a few less holes on either side of the chip, and then maybe lose the second pair of +/- rails for a bit more space. You put a few IC's on these ones and most of the board is shot, because all the holes are chained to the IC pins. A couple weeks ago, I was looking into sawing down into one to get to the contacts, and slicing some scraps of it off, to mount to a PCB with some D-subs and different socket/jack connectors. It didn't look too hard. I may try it soon. I made this thing a couple months ago for jumper stuff, and I hate it's guts: The "socket row" parts are all from regular cheap DIP sockets, and they don't do a very good job of holding wires straight,etc. I think those push-hole things we're all raving about are the only way to go. BTW- Anyone know what those things can actually handle (diameter-wise)? I'm usually cutting jumpers from CAT-5 cable and stuff, but sometimes I'll do stupid things like push a pin header down into the boards and all. You think I'm ruining them? Take Care, George