smashtv

Lemme show you boys how to win a slap fight. ;D I guess that picture above is my keyboard..... ;) Just a reminder not to take the karma thing seriously.....at all. All in fun Smash PS Stryd you really should lose one for the marquee thing.... :P ;D

Yep he's not picking any notes, it's a variant of the hammer-on style, quite effective with a bridge pickup but requires incredible strength to do it on bass..... In other words don't shake left hands with Jay unless you have good health insurance... ;D

Some inspiration for you on this concept, except with real bass and lead keys: http://www.jaysmuseum.com/wascohouse%20clips/hog%201.wmv Met Jay while in NYC, he's got more talent in his "key" pinky than most pro musicians.... ;D http://www.jaysmuseum.com scroll sideways to see more of his stuff, if short on time at least hear his version of "I am the Walrus".....Best beatles cover ever. :) Best Smash

Impossible for me to answer, the best I can say is after the 30 or so orders in front of yours are packed and shipped. It's not an availibility issue, it's a time issue. I have a three year old, a rapidly expanding production company, two old cars to keep on the road, a yard to mow, and an average of 100 messages a day to respond to.....That's what makes it so hard to answer that question..... :-\ I'll defer to the other comments about this one, which I agree with......But considering some of those messages for me each day are people demanding to know what LCD to buy, I'll soon be answering with some 2x20's in my shop.....And to answer the question of when on those, know that they are here already, tested, working, etc. but also know that there are 19 more things on my to do list before that.....In other words they will be available the day I put them on the order page. ;) Best Smash

Sorry about that....Fixed now. There is still a bit of a wait time from order to ship date though lately. Best Smash

Wow change "fiber optics" above to "RS-485 over cat5 cable" and you and I will be on the same brainwave (sorry for you!) ;) This MIDI extension cable is high on my tinker time list, I need it for another design I have in the works.... Best Smash

I don't engineer these (just years of repairing them) so this is just a guess: Most of the keyboards leave enough room in there for the air to stay in while depressed with no vent hole, and surface tension between the rubber and the board (or sometimes glue) holds that same air in there for the life of the switch. No fresh air in there means little oxidation on the contact surfaces, assuming the factory assembly area is climate controlled (quasi-clean room). The cell phone makers get to cheat a bit, with a thin button they get a little bit of self cleaning action (since keypresses never mate the contact surfaces exactly the same). Best Smash

Hey all! Sorry to bring some rain to this parade....I think you might be in for a reliability issue with this method....The PCB contact points need to be tinned for this to work in the long term, either with gold flash or carbon paint over bare copper. Ever had to repair a non-working button on your TV remote? I can't imagine having to fight with this kind of an issue on a show day....This type of button is always rated in the low thousands for cycles/lifespan. I would bet that with bare copper after a week of air exposure and the resulting oxidation that these would fail you. Solder tinning the pads won't work either, the flux will eat the switch and solder is one of the worst alloy compositions for surface conductivity. The only benefit ever for these switches has been to the manufacturer, who can produce an entire control panel for pennies instead of using known reliable switches for dollars. :-\ No motives here on my end except not wanting to see me peeps learn an expensive lesson, if said issues could be overcome I can mill the needed tooling (a mold) and we could DIY the whole thing....it's just hot plastic casting and some carbon paint once you look past the curtain...... ;) Best Smash

You have a power and or ground path from your SID to your amp, or your CORE to your PC, or both, or your CORE+SID are making a path from your PC to your amp, etc. The burnt out wal wart thing is totally related to your "display stays lit" issue.....Did you lift the ground on the CORE MIDI yet like I suggested on the lit display thread? Best Smash

Hold up a minute there..... The caps on OSC1 and OSC2 are loading caps, not bypass caps. They help the crystal start up and continue to resonate as expected. Your choice of cap types for this is probably not too crucial at this clock speed, but I use NPO in the kits for a predictably linear temperature coefficient since all other grades of ceramic caps have a rather unpredictable reaction to temperature/voltage variance. For all I know some of you guys like to play with your Core boards in the snow..... ;D Keep in mind that your MIDIbox will work fine if built without any bypass caps, assuming you use the right parts (linear supply, "HC" family chips). Adding caps to a box that has jitter issues only serves to mask a symptom of whatever the real problem is causing the jitter. Thousands of MIDIboxes were built and still running fine without them, before the day that someone showed up here screaming about how their trade school instructor said everything needs a bypass cap..... ;) I have included them in my kits since the idiotic "I have designed xx for xx years" pissing match started, and all of my boards have spaces for them, just to end the debate. That's really sad too, considering any mixed signal design done right will have a lower noise floor without them....But that's something from the real world not the uni or trade school, so why should I expect anyone "educated" to believe such heresey? ;D Best! Smash

Sorry about that! I'm still in the process of moving all of the content from the portal, once this is done it will go away....No need for it now in the age of the wiki....and I'm done with operating a hack target that only spreads the info out more.... :) I'm pretty sure that Twin-X has user spaces set up on the midibox.org server, you might ping him to see about that (I'm curious too) ;) Best Smash

I'm probably getting this wrong....but the international-incident causing babelfish translation makes it appear that the midistation "boy" (the red box) does DMX out. Did I read this wrong? If so that's one hell of a coding jump for simple cloners. Venezuela is known to not respect any IP rights, even with laws on the books there nothing copyright related is enforced, thus piracy of everything is rampant there. Looks like we have some fresh traffic here from the promotion of that box and people connecting the dots though. Best Smash

Whee this layout makes sasha's misnamed midibox look like the wanna-be-retro-relic that it is.... ;D Love the design, hate those 1980 led having buttons. Please don't....this is not a stage lighting controller..... ;) Naturally I would not even say this if I were not about to demand your mailing address via PM, so I can send you a few of these: for your abusement. They seem to backlight with high brightness LEDs quite well, but you would have to use something to block the light from one button to the next... (else one lit will light others a little). These fit a standard tact switch (lemme know if you don't have any around and I'll send some omron switches too), and most importantly the clear part is removeable, so you can put whatever legend you want protected inside the cap. Any way I can talk you into sharing the dxf (and by extension a FrontPanelDesigner file) with everyone when you are done? PM me with your mailing address please, so I can fling a postal projectile your way. ;) Sorry if I offended anyone who likes the 80's buttons....not sorry if I offended any sasha fans. ;D Best Regards Smash

Yes. Check your PM inbox.... Best! Smash

Cool! ;) Smash

Sorry to get off topic here.... Any of the CAD boys want to discuss the design of some halo rings? It needs to be something I can mill from a sheet with only one flip of the workpiece. The cost of entry for injection molding is still way too high, but I have an NC mill collecting dust right now that could be converted to punch these out by the hundreds, even without an operator (small enough workpiece for a shaker feed!) Said design -might- also make it's way into the production Kombine controller, but that is not my choice to make..... ;) The perfect design in my eyes is something I could stock in the store with a 25 cent price tag. Any thoughts? Best Smash

Good on ya for choosing the more difficult but way more rewarding route! ;) Please post about any issues you come across due to coding on the Mac vs. the "normal" dev environment.....we'll enlist some non-MIDIbox Mac coders if ya hit a stop. ;) BTW: Your order (and others) should go out on the next run.....hopefully Monday night.....doing my best to get back to quick shipping times... :) Best Smash

Heya Toxic! Sounds like you are passing power through the Core MIDI out, not good at all... Clip the middle pin of Core:J13 (MIDI OUT) and see if this cures it.....if not there is another ground path (cases touching?). If you are using my Core R4 board and onboard jacks, cut the trace labeled "GND LIFT" between the holes....this has exactly the same effect as cutting J13:pin2. (I put the two pads/holes there so a 2 pin pinheader could be installed and jumpered drive select style if the trace is cut) Please let us know how it works out, I am compiling notes for a future wiki entry on this issue. Best SmashTV

Radio Shack sells a TV game (something about four wheel drive trucks) based on the single-chip C64 thing like these, except the Radio Shack thing has some errors fixed and other enhancements (newer code).... Search www.hackaday.com to see what I skimmed over about it. Some have hacked these to use a real keyboard, plug in a better joystick, etc. No idea if anyone has been able to load other software, or how bad the SID emulated with an fpga sounds though, might be time to find out... ;) Have fun! Smash

Yes. When loaded for relay drive the 2803's Vcc pin is brought out from each chip separately to it's respective output header. I figured the relay supply voltage would be near the devices to be driven rather than always near the DOUT itself. It's the one pin left unnamed on the J3-J6 connection silkscreen. ;) Smash

hehe no worries! ;) I'm guessing the 220 is providing the load that the regs want to see since it fired up as expected. I'm also betting that the resistor is getting hot....not a permanent solution, and it's wasting some of that available 3amps as heat. :-\ I would try an expendable device/circuit as a load, without the 220 resistor, and see if the voltage stays at 5. My guess is the resistor/led combo did not present enough load (current limited to 25ma or less by the resistor), but a real-world load of an amp or so would show you exactly 5v. This reminds me of an old Nintendo coinop/arcade game design, the main PCB did not draw enough load to stabilize the switching power supply, so they strapped a 15w low-ohm resistor complete with heatsink across the rails. And boy did those run hot. (was a common failure cause too, since the Nintendo engineers opted for connectors on the big resistor vs. solder, which would bake from the heat 24/7 and fail) Let me know how it goes! ;) Smash

Hi Rui! Since you are already using max you should be able to use the stock mb64 app without modification.......I would either: A) do a quick remap of the incoming midi via max near the inlet to pass the data the way the rest of your patch is expecting it, or B) take a look at what the stock mb 64 app is sending already and tell your max patch to listen for those messages instead. My favorite answer is B. :) Not trying to talk you out of learning how to code for MIOS, etc... just trying to reduce the learning curve needed to meet your goal. ;D Love my macs and my max here too.... ;) Best Smash

No! That resistor symbol there is your load......The designer is trying to tell you the circuit might test high or low without a bit of load there (depends on the regulator). Just to be clear: all diodes must be same, and prefer from the same batch.... Strapping a resistor across the output rails would not be good, and it would have to be a large one, then that will eat lots of your power as heat....etc. Built exactly as shown the wrong voltage should turn back into 5v.... :) Best Smash

Heya SD! 5.4v is definitely not right....looking at Figure 1 on the pdf, D1 and D2 are there to keep the regulators' outputs from backfeeding into each other, but due to the drop to 4.7 you have to float all of the regulators ground/com through the same type diode to compensate..... So: the only thing the regulator coms should connect to is each other, and the anode side of a like diode ("D" in the pdf) with that diode's cathode tying to ground.....If you connect the regulator com to ground anywhere but through "D", it won't work correctly. Also to function as expected, all regulator outs have to hit the anode side of like diodes "D1, D2" and have the cathodes all tied together for the final output, and depending on the internals of the your regulators (they do vary from manufacturer to manufacturer) it might need a load present to stabilize at the correct voltage. Simply put: Since the Vcom diode's drop exactly matches the drop from the Vout diodes, the only way you can get over or under 5v is if your regulator grounds/coms are tied directly to your circuit ground, or a diode is missing, etc. Keep in mind that -most- of these regs have a grounded tab (pin2 connected to tab internally), that might be connected to your circuit ground through a heatsink or something when it should be isolated. This circuit won't work for people who want to split the power circuits up, etc....all of the regulator output pins must tie together (via the respective diodes) to make up one power rail, otherwise the loading will be off balance and probably cause some noise. Lemme know what ya find! :) Smash

Making good on this promise/threat..... ;Dhttp://www.avicreative.com/AVIShowtechTX/ I'm processing orders now, I'll update the status page this evening to reflect all in process orders... :) It's still a one-man thing here, nothing about it is automatic, but I'll do me best to get some verification emails out tonight also. (Using Hotmail or the other freemails? You probably won't even see my mails....Bad on them lately blackholing emails from people who are not known spammers) I will have to be slow about the store stuff still for a couple of weeks due to more of the activities seen in the video, but I'm hoping for things to level out a bit soon. Meanwhile it's looking like a shipping department here more than an office with all of the incoming parts. Best Regards (and thanks!) SmashTV