Artesia

hmm.. yup thats what i found with the crystal - no signal there; should of meantioned that specifically. mustve done something really stupid somewhere :] ..the voltages for the pic mesure right, there does not appear to be any shorts or missing bits. and im reasonably certain that its the right caps & crystal for the oscillator. hmm... i presume the following combination is good for a oscillator circuit in this specific application: ? rswww.com: [829-277] 33pf disc ceramic cement coated capacitor. rswww.com: [226-1746] 10mhz CMAC HC49/4H 30pf crystal ...as for the 74hc595's ..hmm should of looked at reichelt when buying parts :/ :) ..not too bad a price there. When i bought these chips, rs did not have any of the more sensibly priced dip's in. ..however now they do have them in at 0.47 EUR. if im ordering more than a handful in the future, ill be going through reichelt. Update: Done the sensible thing and tested against another board i had not finished - same result. so its some sort of oversight which will probably affect them all i guess. Added to that - just stuck the scope on somthing else with a crystal in; to confirm that i was taking a correct ground reference for the crystal. a very definate trace from a usb device. most certainly no oscillation from the pics just tryed some other caps for the oscillator, no change on that one either. also stuffed the pic in the jdm to see if itd read and program ok ...no problem there it would seem. so the chip should be ok electrically. also even if it was not programmed, it should still tick over the oscillator. hmmm.. guess ill sleep on this & see if i wake up with more of a clue as to what iv'e overlooked...

Heyas :D ...well i've got the guts of a mios sid setup wired & ready to go - but as below i am getting nothing out of it ! ..the luck ran out ;) :/ Its drawing current (160ma with display off) but there appears to be nothing going on. Also when checking the board for signals, the only one the scope picks up is stray emissions from the lcd back down the data cable (btw tried a 2x16 display before also). Have additionally tried changing the crystal for the pic & tried afew pics with different programs burnt on them. Any pointers on debugging this ? Also below here is a solution, allbeit a fiddly one - for using the far more affordable 74hc595 SMD chips. Someone like the idea of making some little chip carriers outta proper pcbs for this application ? :) ...and maybe itd be a cool idea to integrate SMD pads into the pcbs of the modules that use these chips ? :) ..well thats all for the min; i gotta go...

..true, that is a solution ..allbeit a another work-around :)

Just got the pcbs from mike for building 1x Quadra Sid, 1x MBFM, 1x midisequencer & a JDM V2. Here's the first of the projects finished; the JDM prommer. amazingly it worked first time it was plugged in & programmed 7 pics without a hitch ! ..im sticking with this one for now - however i could help to test the new prommer too i guess. As you can see, i chose to use a proper programming socket (12 euro from voti.nl). This was done to ensure a consistantly reliable connection throughout the jdm's life & more importantly to minimise the possiblity of stressing or breaking PIC pins. Could i please make a request for the updated/newer programmer revisions to include enough extra pcb space to use one of these sockets as a option ? :) ..as i had to relocate some of the components to the underside. Below is the beginnings of the three projects; and a evenings work. ...am looking forward to posting some finished projects soon :)

INCREADIBLE ! :D Knew these chips were good back in the mid ninetys; though this is sounding way better than i rember ...good one TK ! :) Finally placed a order in for some pcbs for midibox seq v2, 4x mbsid, & the mbfm :) ...got all the other parts (except encoders). Jus kept on putting off getting the PCB processing bits for an eternity... So keep a eye about - i'll have somthing to show soon for all the banter :) If there's another order going in for these chips - i'll probably want to grab a bunch; to save looking around for yet more old soundcards...

wow tk :) ..that was quick, getting round to that - ur more organised than me ;) :) ..maybe i'll catch up one day :)

'Task for a dsp pic...' No and possibly yes... The idea of this is to take truely base level approach to manipulating the audiostream itself. Which isn't something that the run of the mill dsp chip would automatically lend itself to (?). Idea being, to see what wonderful & awful things can be done by mashing up the order of the actual audio packets in realtime (like 'shuffling a pack of cards') - something which i don't think anyone has tried yet... maybe a dsp pic could lend itself to this; But given they seem to be for just running algorythms in a somewhat more restricted framework - maybe not. Thornsten's suggestion for a suitable platform is probably the best line to start trying this one out i guess :)

...Well with regards to the xshuttle - just get the chip. There's no reason why the pcb depicted can not be made by anyone here who makes general MIOS pcbs. Interesting thing with this chip though - is that it would allow a entirely user definable shape & area to the 'control' ...with a mousepad - would be stuck with a couple of inces square.

fair comment :) Looking into that - however the website is under too high a load this afternoon to churn out the downloadable bits :/ Been thinking some more about how this might be implimentable - and it occured that if a datatable containing say 192 slots for subframes). Then a quite flexable stucture for manipulating the packet order in any way desired - could be acheived by having a outgoing 'subframe address read table' with 192 freely editable address slots. An example of how this might work with 16 slots for some examples: (some of these examples would require streching over subframes to work as intended) (SubFrames stored as - F01 to F16 ) (F00 = Blank SubFrame) Un-modifyed 'playback': Read Line: 'play' Subframe no: 001 F01 002 F02 003 F03 004 F04 005 F05 006 F06 007 F07 008 F08 009 F09 010 F10 011 F11 012 F12 013 F13 014 F14 015 F15 016 F16 an example of what a downsamplng might look like with a 16 subframe table: Read Line: 'play' Subframe no: 001 F01 002 F01 003 F01 004 F01 005 F05 006 F05 007 F05 008 F05 009 F09 010 F09 011 F09 012 F09 013 F13 014 F13 015 F13 016 F13 Then onto some other uses... Playing time interval sections backwards: Read Line: 'play' Subframe no: 001 F16 002 F15 003 F14 004 F13 005 F12 006 F11 007 F10 008 F09 009 F08 010 F07 011 F06 012 F05 013 F04 014 F03 015 F02 016 F01 'random' garbling : (This implimentation would probably give a DAC a heart attack ;) Read Line: 'play' Subframe no: 001 F08 002 F11 003 F02 004 F15 005 F14 006 F10 007 F01 008 F06 009 F09 010 F03 011 F05 012 F12 013 F04 014 F16 015 F13 016 F07 Gapper effect : Read Line: 'play' Subframe no: 001 F01 002 F02 003 F03 004 F04 005 F00 006 F00 007 F00 008 F00 009 F09 010 F10 011 F11 012 F12 013 F00 014 F00 015 F00 016 F00 Seudo Jitter : Read Line: 'play' Subframe no: 001 F01 002 F02 003 F03 004 F04 005 F01 006 F02 007 F07 008 F08 009 F09 010 F10 011 F07 012 F08 013 F13 014 F14 015 F15 016 F16 Seudo Stutter : Read Line: 'play' Subframe no: 001 F01 002 F02 003 F03 004 F04 005 F01 006 F02 007 F03 008 F04 009 F09 010 F10 011 F11 012 F12 013 F09 014 F10 015 F11 016 F12 Playing a time interval section in a 'cyclic' loop : Read Line: 'play' Subframe no: 001 F01 002 F02 003 F03 004 F04 005 F05 006 F06 007 F07 008 F08 009 F08 010 F07 011 F06 012 F05 013 F04 014 F03 015 F02 016 F01 Playing time interval sections in a 'cyclic' loop : Read Line: 'play' Subframe no: 001 F01 002 F03 003 F06 004 F08 005 F10 006 F12 007 F14 008 F16 009 F16 010 F14 011 F12 012 F10 013 F08 014 F06 015 F03 016 F01 Shuffle': Read Line: 'play' Subframe no: 001 F01 002 F02 003 F13 004 F14 005 F05 006 F06 007 F09 008 F10 009 F07 010 F08 011 F11 012 F12 013 F03 014 F04 015 F15 016 F16 hmm - crazy im sure ...But playing with editable lookup tables could provide a whole lot of fun methinks :) even without modifying the packet contents :]

All this squeaky clean sound conversion is great for transporting those sounds to and from the analog & digital domains. however it does little to add character to the sound ;) The essance of such a project would be to encapsulate the elements of sound distortion + artifacts inherent to varying imperfect transitions between these domains. The General problem with downsamplng ins software is that it tends to smooth the signal by applying a 'low pass' filter - rather than spitting it out raw. + other things like lower bit jitter sound interesting (think Casio CZ series). Would be nice to have this as a stand alone widget + ;) With the versitility of simple manipulations the streams directly - i would assume that effects could be acheived which; somthing like Reaktor could not be hacked to do. Anyway, as TK notes - not likely to be able to do anything useful with the standard MIOS pic. Will Read up some more on this - maybe somthing could be done with another chip. The resampling could at a guess be acheived by having enough memory to load a whole 'sample frame' into memory at once & then ignoring 'x' number of frames (in relation to the given sample freq) + giving the last read frame as the current frameset until this table is updated with the next frame that is read. ...hmm might need afew more mhz - but with a frame worth of memory this might work (?) :) Thanks for the feedback - will ponder this... Update #1: With the information provided on TK's link (Ta !) - the ammount of actual audio sample data in the various packets & sub packets brakes down like so: [ SubFrame ] 16 bit SubFrame = 16 bits - (per SubFrame) [ Frame ] 16 bits x 2 SubFrames = 32 bits - (per Frame) [ Block ] 32 bits x 192 Frames = 6,144 bits - (Per Block) A subframe is the smallest packet of data 32 bits (16 bits 'reserved' for the audio samples), which represents one sample frame for one audio channel. a bit flag is also assigned to say weather this frame belongs to the left or right channel; presumably the two 'Frame' 'SubFrames' are the left & right channels. [ 18F452 RAM ] 1536 Bytes x 8 = 12,288 Bits So, when stripping the data down - There is enough space in 18F452 RAM (1536 Byte) to store exactly 2 Blocks worth of data. Whilst ignoring the other (allbeit important) other non audio bits. [ AllData OneBlock ] 32bit x 2 x 192 = 12,288 bits - (All Data Total Per a Block) Now assuming that 3 instructions can be carried out during the period of one Bit of a SPDIF DataBlock arriving - then at 12,288 bits per a DataBlock - this would leave the oppertunity to execute 36,684 instructions in this timeframe ! + theres enough ram to do some juggling with.. The real problem arrives when it comes to simaltainiously sending & Receiving that data - maybe two pics could resolve this by one dealing with stripping the data appart, whilst the other picks & repeats the raw data packets to create the desired result. With the ammount of ram available on the 18f452 - this would allow for a 1 Block lag - with higher memory capacity pics from this family; maybe upto 3-6 Block lag could be used to borrow back time to do more instructions. - Any Further Thoughts on this matter anyone ? :)

Hi, I am looking into the possability of making a PIC powered SPDIF Signal 'processor'. The idea of this device; is to allow the adjustment of the signal sample frequency & bit depth in real time to give a sound to the processed signal much like early samplers. Regarding the PIC18F452 - would it have sufficient data transfer rate to Receive a 16bit 44/48khz stereo SPDIF signal & then relay it on again ? I could probably figure this if i did the math - though someone here may well know the answer to this already. Further on this point, assuming that the pic can handle realying this information - i'd assume that it was within it's capability to then pull appart this data & then do a simple bit of math to then allow downsampling the frequency sample rate ? If this is looks feasable (even if it means using a more powerful pic) i'll have a go at this sometime - should be a good way to get to grips with pic programming from scratch. Also - got afew more ideas on how to process the signal; so this could be a really fun project to toy with ! :)

You may wish to carefully modify the midi sockets & plugs used for feeding the power between the units in such a way that they can't accidentally be connected to other midi devices directly. One way is to put a screw through part of the rim of the socket; sich that it obstructs thee usual midi cable from been plugged in. However - with the ones for the link; take a notch out of the rim such that it allows the plug to be pushed in as normal. Another way around this; is to switch the connectors for some with the same panel mounting patterns - but a different pin layout. ie:din sockets alike those used on 1960/70's hifis to connect to the tape deck.

Hi d2k, Not quite where to advise in general - i tend to pick these sorts of things up at amateur radio shows for cheap. Got the 1980's one i have for a tenner ! (350mhz & still worth £500 second hand ;)) - ex batch uni stock; the guy thought they were all knackered. It just had some dirty switch contacts :) ...can pick up scopes working second hand at these shows from between £30 to £250 or so - depending on specs. For most electronics work we do here (non-rf & radio) - scopes starting at the 10-30mhz margin will work fine; anything else is a bonus. Though - look out for a X-Y plotting mode for using the scope with this project :) afew elecronics places do handheld 10mhz lcd scopes for £100 or so - would'nt reccomend them from what little experience i have of them. CRT scopes seem more responsive & finer in resolution. Keep an eye on the various second hand outlets & such i guess. Depending on where you are located - i maybe able to point out some places that deal in surplus equipment & stock... if in uk check out these people for second hand / refurb: http://www.stewart-of-reading.co.uk They do a kenwood & gould for £95 ...though id have to say, rather awkwardly - the best place for most people to pick up a scope is ebay.

All details for the working hybrid component/transisator analyzer are up now. also included a basic circuit for a curve tracer too. New pictures + diagrams added & such.... ...anyways - Finished working on this project for now - goning to go and fix some stuff with it instead ;) More stuff sometime soon - on a different thread i expect.

Hi Dr Nick, Havn't used rotarys yet due to a compact design here - am using a 4 pole toggle to switch modes. problem was i could only do it with 5 - then i spotted a oversight & i think i can get it going on 4 fine anyhow - and thus ditch the extra relay. Going to go tinker with the project again now ive figured out somthing else i overlooked - hopefully next post will be to announce that a working revision is on the site & tested. Having said that - roatarys would come in handy for one thing; extra value settings. Update: Just upped a corrected version of the tester schemetic - should work, though having abit of a job getting it working on the bench - with the right rats-nest of wires ! ...this is almost a pcb job. Update #2: Got it working ! However currently in curve tracer mode, need to set one of the channels to .5mv/div whilst the other is at 5v/div (this will be due to one channel working in a weak 'current sense mode'). will try to tweak / add some more resistor networks to allow changin between modes - without having to change oscilliscope ranges everytime. Update #3: Tester now fully reassembled - power supply section now installed. Works nicely :) However have not been able to easily balance output levels to the scope with circuit tweaks. Turning out to be more complicated than expected. Will probably impliment that at a later date by setting up a transistorised gain circuit to balance outputs correctly. Tonight i'll add the updates on the site If you are into repairing stuff in particular - have a go at building this; probably the most useful tool you'll ever have ..after the multimeter of course :) 'User Manual' to follow in a week or so...

Hi, Neearly there with the dual function version of the analyser - will finish the hardware version shortly.. got distracted wallpapering & plastering here :| :] Also, could not figure out a way to switch between curve tracer & semi tester without using a minimum of 5 switchover poles. Which means that there is a 4gang switch + another relay. When i update this project. I will be offering a free cd album (of your choice) in a challenge to find a perfect way of switching modes with only one 4 pole switch :) Also - a new project which i'll look into getting done this month; Is a project to turn almost any PC Soundcard into a Basic Oscilliscope & benchtop Function Generator/Signal Source. This would be afew Good Quality opamp circuits which would allow flexable performance in a DC Coupled configuration. This would of course offer a cheap & effective way of using the component/semi tester without having to own a 'potentally' expensive oscilliscope first Also of course it could in theory be used for general mesuring upto the soundcards bandwidth (16,000-22,000Hz normally). & as noted it should serve quite well as a signal generator / source. & if you are into messing around with lasers like me - it makes a great way of computer controlling dc servos in order to animate laserbeam scans on a budget :) Anyways will be back to report that the page has been updated with the new tried & tested analyser revision :)

:) Hi, The little box the unit was put into, came from maplin & cost under £3 ! ..wasn't even worth gettting the sheet metal bender out to make one for this project :) Will get round to adding parts lists for those projects. soon. Also a hybrid between a the Transistor analyser & a curve tracer has been concocted - however there's afew errors on the draft circuit diagram on the site right now - i will correct that soon & modify my tester for the dual functionality & report back. This will allow even greater flexability for analysing components. Though get ready to solder up a hell of alot of switch contacts ! ;) Additionally - have added to the 'Thoughts/tips/rambles' section - ''store cards & rfid tags'' + ''a hoarders paradise''. i'm thinking to myself here atm - that i should relocate this thread to somewhere appropriate for announcing website updates ? ..or just keep here for now ? ...hmm Anyways - enjoy :)

Hi, had never heard of a curve tracer uptil now :) Just looked some up on the web with ol google. Its not quite a curve tracer; but it works a little like one. unlike the curve tracer the feed signals are shifted by 90 degrees which provides a different 'angle' on the diagnostic process which is better suited to testing the behavior of semiconductors. The curve tracer seems to be geared primarily to identifying passive components. Having said that it'd be handy to expand the concept Ive been toying with to include the basic curve tracer function also ....watch this space. The first curve tracer site i saw was this one: http://www.techlib.com/electronics/curvetrace.html the second was this; seems they had the same idea i did about building in a power supply :) : http://www.fullnet.com/u/tomg/gooteect.htm (nice looking project this one) Update: Had a look and a think on the matter of including the curve tracer function - it could be done easily with a switch (or two). Since this'll make it into a fairly universal tool - ill get onto the matter within 24 hours. will make and test this idea & include the tested revision as a MK II version. will be testing all components thouroughly soon. Thanks for pointing those devices out moebius :)

Indeed you are right wise :) It had crossed my mind; after the last time i had updated the site. most of it is somewhat under construction atm..

Thanks for the feedback n' enthusiasm skunk, d2k & arumblack :) Now added a quick test of a really, really simple flash image browser - got a couple of photo's i took up as a working example of this. There'll be a large quantity of my better photos going up for easy public access - Now that i can to some degree stop my images being google-grabbed (the image search) & stop the average joe nicking off with them without any consent. however any pc tecchie would not have a problem getting the images out; anyone who knows that much, will probably treat that content with some degree of respect :) Will also adapt this idea for allowing easy viewing of the circuit diagrams within the website frame - so they can be viewed with clarity immediately on the spot. When i work out how to get circuit diagram vectors into flash - this should be lightning fast & infinately zoomable.

Website updated again, added a batch of links (got to tidy that up somewhat) - and also have put the first bits of the thoughts/tips/rambles page up.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/nausicaa.valley/INDEX.html Site now up in a fashion, a proper web address will be created shortly. The first revisions of the multimeter & transistor analyser are up now. Enjoy :)

Hi, This is to let people know i will shortly be putting up a website with a number of projects that maybe of interest to people here. Along with allsorts of misc content too ! There are two projects in detail, to be put to web-paper very shortly. The first is how to adapt those multimeters with capacitor/inductor/transistor test sockets - so that they are far more useable. Notibly on de-soldered components with short leads ! ...this consists of making up a probe set. ..theres a little more to it than that though. The second, and probably most interesting to those who repair equipment - or like to test their stock of silicon. Is a Simple Little device which can turn a Oscilliscope into a Function analyser for transistors, fets, diodes, bi-polars ..etc. This is based on a design found in a mid 80's edition of 'Practical Wireless' magazine. By observing the results on the scope, the device type, condition & any faulty (even slightly fried !) devices can be diagnosed easiily ! Also in combination with a transistor testing multimeter - the exact pinout (b-c-e) can be worked out. Additional to this, i have built into this project a module to make also serve as a mini bench power supply suitable for running midibox stuff when it is on the construction bench. This Part will Supply -15v(unreg) -5v 0v +5v +8v +15v(unreg) - The output of this supply - per the components i used; shall be good for upto 1 amp on both the negative & the positive rails. Below is a picture of the tester driving a scope with a mosfet in circuit - result displayed on scope. The box in question is directly below the scope, the 6 holes on the right are waiting for the power supply section to go in sometime later today. Most of this project was built from spare parts for nothing ! ..though i did pay for a new box, switches & connectors. This device earnt a proper project box after being built to test 50 or so signal transistors in a 3.7kw c-audio amp. ..which of course it succeded in finding the 14p culprit which brought the whole amp down ! Hope you guys enjoy this project & others to come soon ! Note: also on the books are some subwoofer & cab designs which have been built and tested... Artesia.

Hey :) Good broad thinking there :) Shall be fun to toy with that, will have time to actually finish building some hardware in 2005. On the note of such hardware modules, i shall take the time to offer up some links for such places. However i would quite like to design such hardware module solutions specifically for the MIOS project; assuming no one else is currently doing so. Unlike pointing to external links, this would provide some tryed and tested modules (ie: VCA's, Resonant EQ's etc) - which people here could offer support for new builders (and maybe even pcbs ?) etc. This would also allow people to swap patches with hardware using these extensions & get the 'same' sound out of the box :) One thing i will shortly be sorting out as my first little venture this way, is a simple light controlled voltage source. This could be used to control the brightness of leds & backlights on midibox projects to optimise viewing clarity & power consumption under varying lighting conditions automatically. Similar to the way canon camera's vary the brightness of the viewfinder readouts dependant of the light meter readings. :) ...Well, took half a guess that maybe so - however with the new gen of yamaha chips its more of a suggestion for 'distant' future possibles. Also notably the chip mentioned has onboard cpu for controlling all the widgets; so the strain maybe somewhat less - but it might however involve quite abit more programming :] On the note of gritty lo-fi non-dithered sound - i have to totally agree :) ..it sounds fantastic & gives a real zing to it. So many synths sound too smoothed & dull now (no matter how hard you push them) - with the ever excessive attempts to make them as 'hi-fi' as possible. Another little thing worth messing around with for the sake of getting weird & funky gargles out of a synth like this - is to make the sampling frequency of the DAC variable. This of course works like a really dirty low pass filter & produces some wonderful noises. This Probably could not be done with the dac chips for this synth - however with other dacs &/or some data stream processing this effect could possibly be acheived. To get a idea of what this can sound like; if you have a soundblaster live card - use the KX drivers & go into the structure editor (disable output dithering) & insert the downsampling module in the main signal output chain. This will allow both sample rate & bit depth to be adjusted in realtime on whatever is being played. This sounds -kool- ! (can also be done in cooledit, but is not realtime & thus a little tedious).

Well done ! Another neat project idea :) ..Had forgotten til now how much i liked the sound of those pc soundcard midichips. Demo's sounding very promising, be great to see more on this. By the way, i read somewhere that although this chip supports panning; its support is somewhat limited, ie hard left, center, or right - can i make a suggestion that the 4 output channels have their (panning) output modulated by a add on CV section ? ..this would add the scope for far more dynamic sound variations - (ADSR or LFO modulated?) as part of the sound patch itself potentially. Also btw, yamaha have been continuing development of such soundchips; there latest offering both plays back pcm & adpcm (audiostreams (& samples ?)) & does fm synthsis with 64 voices ! ..interesting - but opl 3 seems more adiquate & accessable right now :) ..might end up salvaging this in the future tho ;) {see: http://www.yamaha.co.jp/english/product/lsi/prod/pdf/sgl/4mf781a20.pdf}