sjakie

Small tip: For all IC's that have power on lower-left / upper-right pins (all 74HC... series) you can also buy sockets with cap inside. See for example GS-KO 14p on reichelt. http://www.reichelt.de/inhalt.html?ACTION=3;LASTACTION=4;SORT=artikel.artnr;GRUPPE=C131;WG=0;SUCHE=GS%2014p;ARTIKEL=GS-KO%252014P;START=0;END=16;STATIC=0;FC=667;PROVID=0;TITEL=0;CASE=ignore;CONNECT=AND;WHOLE_WORD_SEARCH=0;SORT_SEARCH=standard

For those interest or trying to solve problems; the following I found yesterday may be nice. It helped me solve my FM power supply problem ;) http://home.planet.nl/~heuve345/electronics/course/course.html

I think jdutcher is right that the device id is your problem; If you changed the device id, you must also change it for the application you are uploading, if the id for the application does not match the one you programmed in the chip the application will not be uploaded. This can be done in a few ways; change the .syx file with a perl script, rebuild the application syx file and specify the correct id, use serge's tool to upload the app or use the new MIOS studio applicatyion to upload it (I think).

It seems unfair to take this out on a single person. I bet there are more people making a few bucks doing midiboxes for others, they just won't be shouting it around on the forum here. Personally my daytime job is more than enough, and rated by the hour I'm pretty sure it brings in more than doing midiboxes would. I assume this is the same for a lot of people here. So, what is the real worry ? I mean, who cares if you make $10,000 over some midibox ? I bet it's not even that profitable considering all the labour and talk with your buyer you will undoubtably need to do? The true magic of midibox is not really found in the end-products is it? I mean, of course it is individually but that is because it is about doing it yourself, hunting the parts, making all the choices that are available from cheap to expensive from basic to slick designs etc. The ability to make it yours. The feel of having something made that only (relativily) a few people have. Even having access and discussion with the creators of it. How can you commercially exploit that essence, to the extent of getting filty rich? I don't believe in that. Maybe someone would be able to have a business selling custom midiboxes, but it would be a decent living at most, involving some pretty hard work. I can even see something honorable in that? I mean like there are people building custom harleys or something, or companies delivering hosting deals using apache/php/mysql. Wouldn't thorsten and community actually be proud? To have created something that allows a person to dedicate his professional live to it? In what way is who cheated then? Is it that you put effort in something and someone else makes money out of it? If that is the worry, then you should consider who's really commercially minded. I mean, if you keep ideas to yourself because of the fear that someone other than yourself will make money with it, I guess not talking at all would be best. I'm sorry, but without the millions of people that lived before me, the people I speak to today, I woudn't even be having the ideas I have (which also allow me to make my living). If you do think midiboxes can be exploited to the filty-rich extend, can you then please please please tell me how ;) Because I don't think I would be needing midibox technology itself for that then. I don't think there are wonders performed in the midibox technology alone. If there is such a gap in the mass-market ready to be filled, it will be filled without midibox. If someone with a commercial view would really believe midiboxes could make him rich by selling 100000's boxes, he'd probably try to pursuede thorsten (and others?) to join him in this, because that's what is needed. The true source. So what's left then, the fear of the community being flooded with people not investing themselves to understand it and to contribute to it? I guess, this is like moebius said, more an aspect of a growing community. Secondly, personally I find it pretty hard to contribute something meaningful. For new people there is so much catching up to do that I don't easily see much meaningful contributions coming from them. I also think that Thorsten, mostly only accepts ideas and suggestions, but it would be a long time from before any core code or core design from someone else will be part of midibox/mios. And I don't mean that negatively, but that's more a programmers thing I understand pretty well. From my perspective thorsten is like way up there, some miles below are a small group of others (who have probably been around some time) and then some 100 miles below follows the rest... Well, no offence intended anywhere, just thoughts spoken. Come on, someone selling his midibox on ebay, for a lousy 140 euros. I actually feel a bit sorry that he will have to miss his midibox and also having been mangled by this forum. Anyway, I'm off to work further on the FM -synth (and yes also thanks to Smash's boards) !!! Now that is really important ;)

I can understand all the excitement, but I guess it is just a license issue. If no money may be charged and the stuff can only be build for personal use then a license must be chosen for both hradware designs as well as the software to cover this. That way any attempts to exploit midiboxes commercially can be stopped. Currently I see only a GNU license, which does not forbid any of this as long as you comply to all it's requisites. I think currently there is even the risk of a company building midiboxes and sell them, as long as they provide source and pointers to ucapps.de. Similar to GNU licensed linux stuff build into routers (linksys I think and others...) But then again I am no lawyer, so I may be incorrect about this. Anyway seems to me that this should be the point of discussion....

Well after a lot of attempts to fix the problem, I decided to put in relay :P Works like a charm 8) I could only determine something went wrong with the transistor circuit, but replacing it, trying different types, adding resistors etc. all didn't work. Sort of looked like the transistor still leaks when not on and therefor creates divides the voltage or something. For example when I added a small resistor between transistor and ground, the VPP got a little higher (and of course with VPP off the voltage was also higher) .. Another thing I noticed is that regulating the voltage with the pot worked 'strangely', somewhere in the center it would be highest, going either left or right would always decrease it. But I know too little of these things to be of better help ): Still hope you can figure it out. Cheers

Ok great. Hope you find something. Cheers

Hi, I also build the burner today as I have problems burning 16F676 with JDM. Programming and verify works for the 16F676. However I also have a 18F482 which I can burn with JDM but not with the new one. When reading the VPP voltage on the socket pins (after enabling it in P18), it does not read 12.5, it is only 7.8V. On the measure point it is 12.5V. Could this be the problem with the 18F ? What should the voltage be on the socket vpp pin? (Note: I did use some other parts as well because I didn't have all the ones in the schematic; 1K resistors for leds instead of 470 and a LM317T with 10K pot) Oh and also: I used 15V DC first, but I couldn't get higher than 12.5 at measure point. Now using 20V DC and it can get high enough. Cheers

For what it's worth: the CT2260 has the chips

Yeah, I think it worked out quite well for a first-timer on such a big panel. What's funny is that the c64 case is actually a 'clone' or refit -case or something apparently from australia. Funny to find something like that 2nd hand in holland :) Anyway I have already started planning for the FM synth, which is ofcourse up next ;D I really like the casing for practical reasons, so I think the FM is going into one too :) Thanks & Cheers

bit 6-4 means bit 4,5 and 6 together can form a number 0-7 selecting one of the options listed. It is written backward (6-4) because the high value of those three bits need to go into bit 6. So; Bit 654 000 Sine (== 0+0+0 = 0) 001 Triangle (== 0+0+1=1) 010 Saw (== 0+2+0 =2) 011 Pulse(==0+2+1=3) 100 Random (==4+0+0=4) 101 Res ... 110 Res 111 Res Of course the bits have pos 4, 5 and 6 so the actual values when put into this cc value are 16, 32,64. (So pulse is 48) Note that when writing a value bitwise you should (as with all numbers) start with the highest value bit. (Bit 7 in this case) So 1000 0010 = (128 + 2) = 130. bit 7654 3210 You can do also sorts of conversions with windows calculator, just put it into scientific mode.

As far as I know SRAMs use similar pinning as 128KB for 256 and 512KB (even for standard eproms and flash it is basically the same). The only PIN you probably shouldn't use is CS2 (e.g. connect to +5 with pull-up). It is used as a extra address line (a17) on bigger sizes. Pin 1 is also used for addressing on 512KB (a18). Using latches would be more elegant and much more powerful, so if it doesn't matter for speed please do! :P It may be useful in that case to use a 3->8 decoder (74hct138 or 238) to control the latches and ram cs. That way there is room to put in even more bus type devices. Since 3 IO pins are already required for this setup, there is no extra 'cost', only gain :)

Hi Guys, Wouldn't it be better to put the high address lines in the latch and dedicate the low address lines to port J5. This allows for really fast 256 bytes block reads I think. (Of course this can be done in software without changing current design). Just a thought ;)

Hi mb, Does it sound like the 'badsid' sample I posted here? http://69.56.171.55/~midibox/forum/index.php?topic=4107.0 I suspect it must be SID damaged, as changing it for another SID gives me a working sound.

Don't know anything about the MF module. But it does read on the MF page that you can calibrate them between 8V & 10V Maybe it is just up to you to make them run at higher volt :)

I took a quick look, but there is no mention of a negative voltage (it's not in the mini datasheet). Simply 5V supply. It should work as the page says "Built-in controller HD44780 compatible". That one is supported by MIOS.

Ok, thx for the check illogik. I read about the sid bug in old posts so guess I'm ok with that one. I forgot to mention that there also minor clicks when changing patch. But I'm guessing that's normal with SID too. (maybe it is an idea to post these raw samples somewhere to give others a indication as well. I couldn't attach the to the post as max size is 128KB)

Hi guys, Got the SID working for the first time. Jay ;D But..... I've included two mp3s. Both are recorded at the same (highest) input levels for my computer sound card. Both are also recorded from the same board (simple exchanged sids). Note that no input is used on the sid (the input is grounded as shown in optimized psu schematic, which I use) First part of each example records the SID output without notes being played, after a few seconds some notes are played. As you can hear the 'badsid' example has a lot of noise and the actual sound is hardly hearable between it. The second example (!! watch out this SID works so volume is high compared to first !!) has normal level of sound but still with quite some noise. My questions are; - What do you think of the first example? Is this the sound of a dead SID? - What do you think of the second example? Does it have too much noise? Example 1; (bad?) http://80.69.73.187/badsid1.mp3 Example 2; (ok?) http://80.69.73.187/sid2.mp3 (Again; watch out; starts quitely but playing notes is loud!) Thanks

Yeah I agree. Keep it friendly, don't get all rude and personal. That serves no purpose at all. The first few posts were informative, after that a lot of irrelevant crap started flying around :) I think for anyone trying to be 'professional', ignoring crap politely or silently and remain focussed is always the best way to go ;) Ofcourse what crap actually is, is totally subjective ;D

I now know the logic for buffer setting. I was trying to upload the patch-bank just now and midiox gave an error exactly at patch 32. After setting the number of buffers higher it got a little further. The number of buffers must be at least the number of sysex blocks before it works for me, so I have just put it to 1024. That should be enough ;)

Ok I have some progress with midiox. I've set default midi output device in windows control panel->sound devices to the yamaha driver and selected "Midi Mapper" as midi output device. Sysex upload now works and I get confirmation from MIOS for each block in midiox. ;D I did get errors at first when trying to upload the SID application, which was solved by setting low level output buffers of midiox to size 4096 and num 32 So the sysex works (jay!) , but I hope this doesn't indicate other midi problems will arise later.

Hi, I'm having strange problems with the midi io and upload of apps. I have build the basic core module and added the max232 interface (no optocoupler used). I set the device id to use the LTC After quite some hours of trying I've found the following; - I can upload mios and app with the Serge syxexbox but I cannot download anything and I rarely get confirmation of sysex blocks (mostly once or nothing at all) - When using midiox I get the 2 sec sysex string (when mios was not uploaded yet), but uploading anything does not seem to work (no errors but also no checksums in the sysex string from MIOS). - If I request for download using sysexbox and quickly switch to midiox I can see the sysex stuff coming in ! (but in sysexbox usually only 1 block comes in) I have tried with roland and yamaha driver. The other one does not want to install on XP. So midi in works fine with midi ox, but midi out does not. Midi in does not work very well with sysexbox but midi out works fine I think getting midiox working would be best as it has most features. I also tried loopback (with pic removed and tx/rx shorted) with midiox but no response. Pretty confusing ??? Any suggestions to solve this?

No trouble here, just reporting success ;D Got some parts today and build the jdm in about 1.5 hours. Used the extra resistor and connection with chassis ground. Worked perfect first time on a laptop ! But note that voltage read-out according to test-plan weren't very promising it still programmed and verified ok! Great! Jay!

Ok super, thanks Thorsten. Hi Andrew, Yes it runs at different baudrates. It will run at 38400 over serial with a drivers for several OS's available. See the midibox-to-COM page or LTC module. Thorsten already made all this. MIOS has this feature built-in, but normally it is controlled during programming time. This little add-on allows to change the interface type with a switch without the need for reprogramming the device id stuff, so you can easily use it directly with a laptop or in a midi-environment. It is not really auto-detect, but by re-using the J14 (touch sensor) pin, you can let the core (or all cores for the SID) know which interface type to configure. So it is only interface type at a time...

Ok great! I can just add the bset TRISD,4 to the user init as the first thing or do I have to change it in mios startup itself? Thanks