nebula

I wouldn't try to squeeze 2 cables into a single IDC connector. Maybe others have had luck with that, but I'd be dubious about getting a good connection. If you really want to go IDC, you could put a header with really long legs on the CORE, so it sticks out the bottom of the board. Then you could put an IDC connector on each side of the board. Yes, it's possible ... but it is probably more trouble than it's worth. Ribbon cables work nicely for IDC connectors because all the wires stick together, and you only need to lay down the ribbon and squeeze. Trying to lay a bunch of individual wires would probably be a challenge! What you're trying to do here is change the pinout of the LCD pins from the CORE so they match your display. At the same time you're trying to connect 2 LCDs to one CORE. Personally, I'd probably make a little adapter on a piece of prototyping board... like "pad-per-hole" board, like this: solder down a 3 headers: 1 to connect to your core, and 1 for each LCD. Then turn the board over and solder some little wires to connect the 3 headers appropriately. You could then use straight-through ribbon cables with IDC connectors on each end. This little new board would connect to your CORE and your two LCDs. But ... that takes up space, and it would be time-consuming. My interconnect method of choice is the Molex crimp method. The connectors and pins look like this: ... If you're careful you can crimp two wires into a pin. You can use ribbon cable, but I prefer to just run individual strands, similar to the way you typically see the inside of analog synths wired up. Yay! The LCDs are pretty good.

Hi Shane, I have created a few pieces that are classifiable into that dark psytrance / psy-tek / whatever-ya-wanna-call-it genre. That style is certainly an influence in my current work, but it also draws from other contemporary electronic dance styles (techno, breaks, electro). Details of the song are in the YouTube description. It appears on an amazing 2006 compilation album called "The Lurker".

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT THE UPCOMING BULK ORDER From the responses here it is obvious that a carton of 60 LCDs is not sufficient for all the people who want LCDs. As it is I want 6 for myself, so that leaves 54 LCDs while there appears to be demand for well over 120! Before I saw the LCDs, I was concerned that they could have issues - after all, this is a fire sale of sorts, and I tend to trust nobody. So I pulled out each LCD from the carton and tested it on a Core module (in 8-bit), to confirm that the MIOS copyright notice displays properly. I also tested the backlights. I am pleased to report that every display works, and they look great! (Don't worry, I didn't solder any of the LCDs other than one of my own). So I'm now a bit more confident that these displays will be suitable. I paid my friend's gas to bring the displays to me from Detroit. Because of that, and wire transfer charges from my bank, etc., each display is currently waiting to be sold for approximately $4.50 USD plus shipping. (The shipping charge will be the same as Altitude's recent group buy of Crystalfontz LCDs for MB-6582, except for Canada, which will be a bit cheaper.) I have decided to purchase the remaining stock of 40x2 LCDs from Optrex. I will be wiring them the money on Monday. I will then test all of them (that should take about an evening). This will lower the price of each LCD a little, because the shipping for a far larger quantity will be divided among two shipments. I think each will sell for about $4. I will run the bulk order (as such) for one week, starting on approximately Sep. 24. After that week, I will likely still have some LCDs kicking around, so I will continue to offer them for a good price through the Flea Market Forum and/or eBay, but by marking up the price to something a little more reasonable (probably 9 bucks each), they will still be a bargain, and I will be compensated for my time. To summarize: I will start accepting orders in about a week. There will be more than enough to go around. And even if you don't have the money / inclination to participate in this as a "bulk order", you can still buy from my remaining stock while supplies last (I hope to unload 'em within a month or two). .......... For a little video of me testing three of the LCDs, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGqs9yKaoew. Here are a couple of pics of the displays:

I was talking to a guy on bigbluelounge.com a while back who sent MIDI over WiFi using Mac OS X 10.4's MIDI-over-ethernet feature. (He did it for an installation at Burning Man)

Dare I ask what your wife looks like?

You'd know if you had a 128D. It looks like this:

interested!

To my knowledge most, if not all, Commodore 128 computers have a 6581 in them. You'll find an 8580 in the later Commodore 128D. I think I would have difficulty dissecting a beautiful and rare 128D for a SID chip.

I just went over the base PCB parts list, and not counting sockets and headers I estimate a cost of about $170 Cdn if I were to try to buy all these parts myself. (That's about $155 USD these days) ... I'd probably need to make about a hundred MB-6582's before I could do it any cheaper than $100, and that doesn't even take into account the time spent sourcing, dealing with back orders, etc. My only wish is that I could order this "kit" today. But since my time and sanity are valuable, I'd like to offer a firm "count me in" - and I will wait patiently.

The 40x2 LCDs are in, they look great, and they will be tested by the end of the week.

Did you try "Re'an"? They're a related company to Neutrik. Try googling "re-an knobs" for a start.

Check the "MIDIbox of the week" forum on this site, and also have a look at the "gallery" section of ucapps.de.

FWIW this stopped being true about 15 years ago. Macs that use IDE drives don't require anything special. And even back in the SCSI days, most off-the-shelf SCSI drives were compatible, depending on the formatting package you used.

Refer to my reply on page 2 of this thread with the big pic of the LCD. Also contains a link to the pdf. I will post a new thread in this forum once the LCD's are tested. (Only then will we know the exact yield). If the total number of available displays is significantly less than the amount of interest shown in this thread, then I may limit quantities just to be fair. So if you're interested in these 40x2 displays, and haven't spoken up yet, please just reply to this thread to let me know how many you're interested in.

Hi, I'm back after a long-weekend getaway. I've put some thought into this and there are a couple of problems, moving forward: (1) The displays are discontinued. I've heard that there are potential quality issues with these LCDs, and I've confirmed with Optrex that they are non-refundable, even if DOA. (2) The displays are not RoHS compliant, which means I can't ship to Europe. Ugh. With these two points in mind, I still think a carton is a bargain, and I'm going to get one carton (of the 40x2) by next weekend. I have a friend coming to visit me from Detroit, so I'm going to try to get her to pick them up, then pay her gas for her trip here - that will be around $50, likely less than shipping. Obviously I have no use for a carton full of displays, so I'm going to sell them as a "bulk order", i.e. at no profit, except that I'm going to build a test jig and individually test each display prior to shipping. This will be for your protection and mine, because as I suggested, there are no refunds, even if DOA. Once I have all the displays tested (by mid-next week) I will announce the price. Don't be surprised, after factoring in the cost of setting up a tester (materials only), paying "shipping", and perhaps throwing away a few displays, if the cost goes up to $5 per LCD. I will announce a 1-week window for everybody who wants to get on board. I will cut off the order if people order up all the displays. If, at the end of the week, I have not sold all the displays, I will collect money and ship to all those who asked for them, and I will sell the rest privately (i.e. on eBay or in our "Fleamarket"). So sit tight folks. I have a carton of 40x2 coming. I will let you know when I get 'em, and I will put the call out for orders shortly.

I've already requested a quote on having 1 or 2 cartons shipped to Buffalo NY. This will also serve to verify that they will honour the price. Stay tuned ...

If the 40x2 price of $2.69 is not a typo I'll take a dozen of 'em. Even if the quoted price is a typo, they will probably honour it as it is clearance stock. These were sold individually for $56.93 at Digi-Key! :o The datasheet for the 40x2 is here: http://www.optrex.com/SiteImages/PartList/SPEC/40267ade.pdf This is a really great price for this display, and it will "work" for any MIDIbox project. I think we would do well to act quickly.

In case you haven't already read this ... http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=9787.0 From newb to functional MIDIbox SID owner in 4 short days.

Unprocessed audio into AIN wouldn't give the results you're looking for. The sampling rate is not high enough, so as a result you'd get somewhat unpredictable results - and if you tried to "smooth" the input in software it would likely introduce far too much latency. You will need an analog envelope follower of some sort at the input stage. There is a variety of simple envelope follower schematics all over the net, including a couple that don't appear to require expensive and fragile vactrols: http://www.uni-bonn.de/~uzs159/envf.html http://www.angelfire.com/music2/theanalogcottage/envfol.htm (fyi: as i was typing this you posted your last reply, but i'm too lazy to change it)

That's not the same display as the bulk order, but still - good find!

I am definitely interested if we can find MAX525's for a decent price. I might even want to make a couple. But with no group buy on MAX525, I will probably pass, because the IC is just too expensive. (In that case I might be farther ahead to just buy a used Kenton unit or something)

In those days the rules were clear. Today I see a member being called out for openly sharing his PCB layout and I don't see anywhere that the rules changed. I admit - I was active in the MIDIbox community then, and even completed an old PIC16F project, then disappeared for a while when I needed to deal with some other priorities. Recently I returned, and I even started searching (specifically using the word "license" or "licence") and I haven't found anything new. I'm again considering expanding a little on MIDIbox SID for my own purposes, and planning to share my stuff with the community - but frankly I'm no longer sure where I stand. Is there a license? Are there guidelines? Am I overlooking something?

Maybe I'm being obtuse here' date=' but ... what does going after a derivative release have to do with other, existing IP in the project being sold? It contains TK's circuit designs and firmware. If I made a MIDIbox SID and sold it on eBay but used my own layout, or put it on vectorboard, would that somehow cause me to be violating the MIDIbox licence less? I always thought that we are required to release our derivative works. I am reminded of an old thread in I announced my plans to create a new PCB layout:

He's selling a second MB-SID: http://cgi.ebay.com/ANALOG-SYNTH-SID_W0QQitemZ290155185277QQihZ019QQcategoryZ38071QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Perhaps if you want to realize 32 encoders, you could do it in a more roundabout way. Rather than do extensive mods to the MB SEQ application, maybe you could build a separate MIDIbox 16E (it's a MIDI controller with support for endless encoders), each programmed to send a different controller or SysEx message to the SEQ. I am not terribly familiar with the MIDI implementation of the SEQ, so I don't know if it would need enhancements to be able to modify the currently playing sequence in real-time via MIDI input. Such an enhancement would likely require much less work than making it read an additional 16 encoders though! The 16E could be built in the same enclosure as the SEQ, so it could look just like a 32-encoder sequencer to the user. All that notwithstanding... If you have no experience in DIY electronics, then building a MIDIbox SEQ will take quite a bit of work. If you want to be creative with music now, you might do well to put this on the back burner. But if you're the type of person who seeks a 32-encoder analog-style sequencer, and who lusts after a Monomachine, then the MIDIbox community probably has a lot to offer you! So ... see you around ;)