seppoman

http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=9040.0 TK did say that he won´t change his own front panel. But I´d translate this to "it will probably always be possible to access all functions of the MBSID through an ordinary step C CS". When new functions are added, it´s not forbidden to think about useful additional ways to access functions. And of course more functions mean that some things have to be accessed through "hold shift, press button" actions as long as you don´t add new buttons. Seppoman

Hi, no need to start over yet. DON´T start connecting other modules to the core before the issue is solved. DON´T switch around at the PSU all the time, please keep it at the 7.5V (or 9V) mark. You didn´t comment on my backlight adjustment hint yet - I repeat: If your LCD gets hot, this means that the LCD probably draws too much current for your PSU. You said it did work without LCD! Please adjust the backlight pot to min and tell us if it still doesn´t work. If the LCD brightness doesn´t go down, you have an error around the transistor or the pots. Measure the current coming from the PSU. upload photos of your board (front and rear). follow our hints and tell us the results, then we can help you better... Seppoman

I´d say, that´s only half-wrong. Off course you can also use 12 V, but there´s no point in using 12V for a 7805 because you only raise the need for a large heatsink and reduce the PSU efficiency. 7.5 V is really optimal as long as you don´t have other needed voltages from the same source (like in a MBSID). Congratulations :) But here we have the reason why it didn´t work with "7.5V". A simple adjustable wall wart PSU always gives higher voltages than selected as long as there´s nothing connected to it. But when you connect the core or even the LCD, this voltage will go down to the official value. This means when you supplied it with "7.5V", the regulator effectively got only 4.5 V (this was the selected value?). That´s not enough. I´d strongly suggest to select the 7.5V position of the PSU, then the voltage will really be around 7.5 V when load is applied (LCD). Seppoman

have a look at the midibox gallery. Several people made 2U or 3U rack versions (including e.g. Pay_C, TwinX and me ;D). But it seems as if desktop versions are more popular these days (also with commercial gear...). Half rack should be possible with only one SID and the minimal control surface. you will probably have to put the buttons left or right of the display as the PCBs of common displays are nearly 1U high. I´ve got no idea though where to get a suitable enclosure with rack mount screw from below etc. Perhaps you could get a broken old crappy expander on eBay for cheap, e.g. a Yamaha EMT-1, and reuse the case. Seppoman

MYUBRR looks ok (if F_CPU is correct). The UCSRs I can´t tell from memory. One thing that caught my eye: 2 stop bit? Midi is normal 8N1, i.e. no parity one stop bit! about polarity: in the first picture at your link you see the midi cable from the front (or the jacks from the rear!). Seppoman

4.6V is still too low - this Midi nonsense shows that the PIC is continuously resetting itself. I suppose the regulator still gets hot (even without display)? Again: please measure the current, i.e. disconnect one side of the supply wire coming from the PSU and put your multimeter inbetween in mA mode. another test: Disconnect core, pull out the PIC and the optocoupler, then measure the resistance between Vdd and Vss (e.g. PIC socket pin 31 and 32 or between the legs of the 2200uF capacitor). You´ve most definitely got a short somewhere. Use a magnifying glass and carefully inspect all solder joints. If you´ve got a decent digital camera, perhaps it would be an idea to post hi-res closeup pics of bottom and top of your board. Seppoman

Hi, a buffer is not neccessary, MIDI will work fine without it. Which AVR do you use at which frequency? I don´t know how much experience you have with AVRs - one popular newbie mistake is the oscillator fuse, gone through that myself ;). if you don´t set the fuse correctly, AVRs run on the much slower internal oscillator. Are you sure that you´ve set the correct baud rate depending on the processor frequency? For an AtMega32 with 16 MHz, the UART initialization looks like this: // USART initialization // 8N1, Asynchron // USART Baud rate: 31250 UCSRA=0x00; UCSRB=0xD8; UCSRC=0x86; UBRRH=0x00; UBRRL=0x1F; Seppoman

when the PSU can deliver 7.5V, there´s no reason to use 9V. You´d just get even more heat on the regulator. But you should measure the current that is drawn from the PSU. If your LCD gets hot, I suppose the backlight just draws so much current that the PSU can´t keep up the 7.5 V. There are LCDs where the backlight can draw more than 500mA when adjusted to max. Either the backlight is turned fully up or you´ve got a soldering error around the backlight pot. Is the backlight extremely bright? can you adjust the brightness? You could disconnect just the backlight and find out if the core boots up without it. BTW, broken caps are extremely rare. The chances that exchanging caps or resistors brings any good are perhaps 1%. First again double and tripple check for shorts on the whole module. Seppoman

YES!!! If you put it in the wrong way, it will heat up and possibly your LCD and your Core will get too high voltages. Seppoman

Hallo, aus aktuellem Anlass zitiere ich mich mal selbst: Um zu Euren Streitpunkten inhaltlich beizutragen, fehlt mir die reale Erfahrung mit dem SJ. Aus Eurer Diskussion bekomme ich allerdings den Eindruck, dass Eure Wünsche nicht soooo weit auseinander sind. Das Geschriebene lässt für mich nur zwei Interpretationen zu: 1. Ihr redet einfach etwas aneinander vorbei und solltet Euch mal auf ein Bier treffen. oder 2. nimms mir nicht übel, Rio, aber es macht für mich einfach etwas den Eindruck, als wolltest Du nicht aus sachlichen sondern aus persönlichen Gründen auf Teufel-komm-raus eine eigene Version veröffentlichen. Was Du auf Deiner eigenen Kiste laufen hast, ist natürlich Deine Entscheidung. Für mich klingt die Diskussion trotzdem nicht so, als ob es nicht möglich wäre, die leichten Unterschiede in den Features durch irgendein Flag beim compilieren einstellen zu können. Für zukünftige SJ-Bauer wär´s auf jeden Fall besser so. Nichts für ungut, Seppoman

right :) What´s M? No, it had a big orange TNT on it ;) Seppoman

;D :) ;D :)

Sorry, but I don´t think that´s true. I can select all mixed waveforms with my 6581 and they definitely sound different than the "pure" waveforms. Seppoman

Huh? How do you come to that conclusion? I even tried selecting the Australian Analog site, they also have the "Add to cart" sign with the AD5392BSTZ-5. Did you call the Australian office directly? I´ve ordered through the normal analog.com site. Go here: http://www.analog.com/en/prod/0%2C2877%2CAD5392%2C00.html, second last line second rightmost column :) Even got the acknoledgement for my order in the meantime :) There´s no note that Australia is excluded from the sample program. Seppoman

Hi, too late :) Product Total Quantity Available to Ship Date* Estimated Delivery Date Unit Price AD5392BSTZ-5 2 04/03/2007 04/10/2007 No Charge 8-Chn 5V Single Supply 14-Bit Vout I.C. Let´s see how it works out. I also noticed that the ssm2164 is not available for sampling anymore, so they definitely cut down the sampling program a bit. But I´ve also got a confirmed account so hopefully there won´t be a problem. About the types: the -3 or -5 at the end is the supply voltage, so we need -5! the Z stands for lead-free, so it´s not important to us. Seppoman

no. Smash´s boards don´t need bridges, they´re double-layer. If you can´t see the connection on your board, take a look here: http://www.avishowtech.com/mbhp/images/core/coreR4dqv.gif Seppoman

Digikey has only the BCP types in stock, that´s the LFCSP package :-\ The BST version (LQFP) is non-stock. I´ve successfully ordered samples (ssm2164) some months ago, so I´ll try to get some DACs as samples first before spending any money. Seppoman

as stated here http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=8494.msg63092#msg63092, the next couple of months the project is on hold anyway. Help is always welcome :) But I think we already have two AOUT modules now, so designing more than one new version would be rather confusing. I think we (before all others TK!) should decide for one DAC and then make one good design. I´ve got some experience with layouts and digital design, but am lacking some more in-depth insight to high quality analog/opamp cirquits. So if you can do research on opamp designs and find out if there are even better ways than the TL0xx design on the old AOUT, that would be really great! (AD5392) The MAX525 is also "only" 0-5V. With the output opamps you can do both 0-15V and +/- 15V depending on the setup. Is there a problem with 0-5V I´m not aware of? Digikey doesn´t stock them, minimum order is 15 pieces IIRC. But perhaps we could talk SmashTV and/or Mike into selling them together with the boards. But as mentioned before, it´s probably a bit early talking about such details. Seppoman

Well, the pitch is 0.65 mm like in TQFP. I soldered a few of these last week and it´s really no problem with the right equipment. You just shouldn´t try to solder the pins individually. I´ve got a Weller soldering station with a "Hohlkehlenspitze", no idea what the english word is for that. Its a tip that is slightly curved to suck up a bit of solder. Then you take some flux (the stuff coming in a syringe), pour it over the legs and pull straight over the legs with the iron. After cleaning the flux away, the result looks nearly industrial :) Seppoman

Hi guys, @Playbo$$: you didn´t really read my pm? Please stop spreading rumours about unmade decisions. @all: there is NO such thing as an aout2 module yet and there won´t be one in the next few months! As you can read in the AOUT redesign thread, the TLV is quite ok but suffers from suboptimal linearity. It would be the choice for a new AOUT because of its price and availability, and more than good enough for VCF/LFO/VCA CVs, but the mediocre linearity would be a problem for controling VCOs. So it can´t be a complete replacement for the current AOUT. The AD53xx showed up in the discussion. These DACs have really great specs, there are 12 and 14 bit versions with 8 or 16 channels. The problem is a) the fine pitch SMD package and b) availability. We´ve found no other supplier than Farnell so far. But the IC seems to be very new, so TK and I decided to wait a few months if the availability gets better and then evaluate the topic again. So this means this project is on hold right now. I have not designed anything up to now and won´t until TK gives a Go for a certain DAC. All of this I´ve told Playbo$$ via PM. If you are in such a hurry, then go on and design some new AOUT yourself. But I won´t do anything without TKs approval - any new DAC module won´t be of much use as long as TK doesn´t announce his support for it... Even if the AD would be the DAC of choice, I don´t think the 16 channel version would be cool. More expensive, probably very dense board because of all the supporting cirquitry for 16 channels. Most people probably won´t need more than 8 channels, and if they do: These DACs are cascadable like the MAX525, so it´s no problem to build two modules. Two modules won´t be that much more expensive than a 16 channel one. Seppoman

Extra Lötfett zu verwenden, ist nicht so empfehlenswert. Wenns aber schon drauf ist: Flußmittelreste macht man am besten mit Isopropanol und vorsichtigem Schrubben mit ner alten Zahnbürste ab. Isopropanol ist eine Art Alkohol, der z.B. auch zum Reinigen von Videoköpfen verwendet wird, da er rückstandsfrei verdunstet. Gibt es in der Spraydose bei Reichelt/Conrad, in der Apotheke und evtl. auch im Baumarkt. Aber NICHT in die Augen kriegen!!! Das hab ich neulich mal probiert, macht gar keinen Spaß! Seppoman

A bit of reading for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_in-line_package http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-Outline_Integrated_Circuit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through-hole_technology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-mount_technology The usual IC package for home use is DIP (PDIP), which is the common package type with Through-Hole-Technology. Also the boards from Smash/Mike are using them. So you want DIP! I didn´t say that the letters after the 74HC14 don´t count, just that they have different meaning regarding package type and other version info. The MC from your suggested chip means they´re from Motorola or ONSemi. Google for MC74HC14AD - first hit: http://www.chipdocs.com/datasheets/datasheet-pdf/Motorola/MC54HC14.html (Motorola) second hit: http://www.chipdocs.com/datasheets/datasheet-pdf/ON-Semiconductor/MC74HC14.html (ONSemi) There you see that the type you suggest is SOIC package and PDIP is MC74HC14AN (from both Motorola or ONSemi). Seppoman

The crosshair is called "thermals". To change it for an existing polygon, use the Change tool -> Thermals -> Off and then click on the border (!) of the polygon. Seppoman

Right, a warning doesn´t hurt :) Anyway, there still seems to be some demand for this project, or Mike would have stopped selling the boards by now. But as long as this project is still on the uCApps page, perhaps it would be a good idea for TK to explicitely mention the limitations and suggest using MB64 on the MB+ page. The text looks like it hasn´t changed since the pre-MIOS times ;) Seppoman

You can ignore the letters before the 74, they´re different from every manufacturer. The letters after the number mostly tell about the package, ROHS conform etc. D or N is often DIP. Just make sure that you get a 74HC14 and that it is in DIP package. Manufacturer and other parameters are not important. Seppoman