nebula

What's wrong with that is that you miss the big picture. If the product of a group buy is substandard, well ... caveat emptor. No single person should have to be on the hook for hundreds of dollars in shipping costs, no matter how big their blunder, when they offer a service like this for the good of the community. "Group buy" means the group is buying from the manufacturer in this instance, not buying from Altitude. He handled your money, but he is not the vendor. I haven't seen the panel I ordered yet, but even if it looks like a wadded up ball of tin foil, Altitude did his job (which, incidentally, is not to be Q.A. for our panel vendor, which was selected by committee).

I have now requested a quotation from a dealer in upstate NY. Once we are quoted I'm going to try to see about what other knobs we might be able to mix in with this, if any. Stay tuned!

I have seen them before. Even though they are gull wing-style surface mount, they still had plastic pegs to go through the circuit board. I almost bought them just because I thought they were cool. In fact, there's a surface-mount variant of almost all standard connectors somewhere, just because it's so much easier for "pick-and-place" machines.

OK, I phoned the Canadian distributor when he didn't respond to me email for 5 days. As I suggested to Sasha, in my experience Re'an knobs are tricky to get because nobody is very excited to sell them. So ... here's what I got: in Canada there is generally a minimum order of 1000-2000 pieces. At that quantity, knobs like this tend to be pretty cheap - like under 30-50 cents each. He could not give me an exact quote. I have asked him to give me a quote on the minimum, with the exact cost. Stay turned. Hey, if I can get a thousand of these knobs for 25 cents each, that's only 250 bucks. Recognizing that this is an estimate based on an estimate, would you pay $25 for 100 of these black beauties? I sure would.

Strongly recommended: the album "Paramoral" by Krumelur. For that matter also "Bug Eyes" by Bufo.

A "sealed lead acid" battery (sometimes called a "gell cell") offers the most amp-hours by weight. They're not small, but they're simple to use. This type of battery is most often found in emergency power-fail lights, uninterruptable power supplies, some rechageable flashlights, etc. IMHO the best ones are made by Panasonic. A good example of what I think you should look at is at http://www.batteriesplus.com.au/pd/821/273/panasonic-uprw1245p1/. This is about the size of a big can of beer (but square of course), and offers 9 amp-hours of service! Mmmmm, beer..... To charge lead-acid batteries, you really should have a proper voltage-regulated charger. It's got a little more smarts than a normal power supply and is designed for recharging lead-acid batteries. A quick google check turned up this as the first hit. This would probably be suitable to power up everything you've got. Lots of your 9-volt equipment will probably work just fine with a 12V power supply, because it's usually regulated in exactly the same way we regulate the power supply on a MIDIbox.

Sweeeeeeet I'd love to see that in focus ;D

The P675 knobs in black with a white pointer are 34 cents each from Mouser. The pointer-less soft-touch REAN knobs are from the P401 line. The part # for black would be P401-S-0-D6. (In blue, as pictured, it would be P401-S-6-D6). I have been looking for some nice soft-touch knobs for my SEQ, and I think the black ones could be perfect! I've sent an email to the Canadian Re'an distributor, asking for a sample and pricing.

Well it's very similar to the ALPS. Unfortunately the only ones I have left have no bushing, so they are a bit more wobbly than the one you're looking at. I believe the Nova I replaced the cutoff freq pot on used ALPS pots, and I replaced it with the closest EVU pot I could find. I then had to cut and file the shaft. Honestly the ALPS didn't feel any better to me.

They are a little wobbly. They are similar to the pots in a Novation Nova/Supernova (I used one as a replacement with a little coaxing), and they are also similar to the pots in a Korg MS2000. I would use them in a box that I make fine adjustments to, but not in something I perform with. They are very inexpensive and readily available. I have a couple EVU pots sitting in my desk drawer. I'll send one to you with the displays I'm shipping to you today. This one is a little different though becase it has no bushing, but the mechanism is the same, with a similar footprint. (p.n EVU-F2AF30B14)

A PG-200 "clone" wouldn't need to be an exact copy under the hood. It could be a MIDIbox. My idea (if I can ever find the time): (1) Figure out the PG-200 protocol. (2) Build a PIC-based PG-200 (would be fairly easy once you understand the protocol - it really would be like a MIDIbox without the MIDI. (3) Hey, that MIDIbox still has MIDI ports available! Maybe it could be used to send/receive CC/sysex/whatever. (Unfortunately that doesn't do much for JX-3P users who can't use MIDI and the programmer at the same time without a mod, but it could be of benefit to GR-700 / MKS-30 users). Hey, maybe we could even stick some LFOs in the programmer, for good measure.

I have a JX-8P with a PG-800 and a JX-3P with no programmer. Does anybody know anything about the protocols that these programmers communicate with? Wouldn't it be cool if we could make a PG-200/800 clone? From the schematics, the programmers don't look much different from a MIDIbox64: mainly a bunch of muliplexed inputs (via 4051) read by a microcontroller (uPD8048HC-191). What's different is that instead of MIDI, they communicate with an externally clocked serial connection. To revise a MIDIbox to do this, I assume you would probably run the clock line and rx line to a DIN, and the tx line from a DOUT. PG-800 Schematics PG-200 (and JX-3P) Schematics I'm more interested in PG-200 than PG-800 right now, just because I'd like to have a PG-200, but I have no PG-200 that I could scope or otherwise analyze the serial stream on. I also have no experience in doing this, but I think with a lot of time and love it could be done. I'd love to hear from anybody who's ever thought of taking this on.

You're welcome. Doing up the order was a pleasure, even though it's a bitch to try to ship stuff to people quickly sometimes. I'd like to take a second to thank Sasha, who spotted these great Optrex deals in the first place! Thanks for the sharp eye! The world will see more MIDIboxes because of it!

There is a new blog entry dated Oct. 20, in which this fellow indicates is going to get a small run of circuit boards made. I emailed to let him know that I'm interested in buying one for my EX-800.

To sum up the current status of the MB-6582s of the world: SIDs, PCBs, panels, LCDs, and knobs have shipped. Europe is still waiting on PT-10s, and the rest of the world is buying their own. I am firmly on the "don't bug Smash" bandwagon, but I'm sure lots of people who have everything else in-hand are now eager for a status update. This is not to say I am asking for this to be "rushed" ... but I have to admit I'm now wanting to plan to start building! So ... if I may be so bold ... with all due appreciation and respect, do we have a rough ETA on base and/or control surface parts kits? It's been about 6 weeks since we've had any updates.

Hi Brother, I want to make sure you know that the pins on the display are numbered in pairs - that is to say it goes: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 NOT like this: 01 08 02 09 03 10 04 11 05 12 06 13 07 14 that was the first mistake I made when I hooked up the first display. Otherwise, we'll need to confirm ... the CORE was tested and working with a different LCD?

As discussed in the "home page changes" thread, I feel that the "PROJECTS" shouldn't include incomplete user projects. This page is an index for people who wish to browse for projects they are thinking about building. There is already a page called "USER PROJECTS" which indexes incomplete user projects. Having incomplete projects on the more prominent, high-level page (some of which haven't been updated in over a year) is redundant and adds unnecessary visual clutter. Also, it means that somebody might be able to find a project on one index, which isn't indexed/updated on the other. As a general rule we must avoid having multiple indexes for the same content. Please comment.

Vss to ground, Vcc gets +5V, Vee is fed via the contrast pot.

You're the first overseas recipient to report back! I'm glad it arrived intact. Any issues with duties, etc?

Yes, the bulk order is closed. I have additional displays that I have purchased. I will continue to sell them as a "bargoon" for existing MIDIbox forum members who missed out. PM me for pricing.

:o :o oops. check your pm

Hi everyone - Smithy et al - most shipments went out on Saturday. All outstanding shipments will be taken care of today at the latest. If you made a payment to me via PayPal, you will receive display(s). No payments were "too late".

Best I can tell: the Juno-106, the MKS-30 "Planet S", and the MKS-7 "SuperQuartet". Are there more? You learn something every day: I always thought the MKS-30 was a rackmount JX-3P, since it has an identical parameter set and uses the PG-200 programmer. But the JX-3P uses discrete filters (based around IR3109) while the MKS-30 uses 80017 chips. Jupiter-6 and Super Jupiter use CEM filters.

1. What's the Vorinov? 2. Wouldn't it be easier to store your events chronologically, like one big sequence, but then use a 1-byte tag on each event to show which sequence it belongs to? Then, when you're playing your events back, prior to outputting an event you just check that byte against the status of your matrix to make sure that it's not "muted".

Going rate for CEM3378 chips is about $10 each. People in this community use them rather than make filters using discrete components, which could theoretically be a bit cheaper. Oh and don't forget, lots of us have ponied up $20 each for SIDs, and plan to put 8 in a box! While it's completely subjective, I will step up to bat and say that the filters on Roland's classic Junos are among the sweetest sounding in synth history.