Davo

http://www.machinaesupremacy.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinae_supremacy

Does anyone here know if Machinae Supremacy is aware of the Midibox platform? I know they use a Sidstation. I was wondering what they might be able to do with a quad sid.

http://www.play-hookey.com/ is also very good for explaining basic electronic theory.

This sort of thing is frequently done by arcade game tinkerers; particularly those who play with MAME. See http://www.mame.net/ Look up "spinner" and "mame" and you should find some howtos.

I finally got the parts together to start building my SID frontpanel. Some months ago I bought some rotary encoders from Smash. I just now finished the panel that will go behind the LFO section on the frontpanel. While testing it, I was a bit baffled by what the rotary encoders did. I was under the impression that these encoders would briefly connect the inner terminal with one of the outer terminals depending on which direction the shaft was turned. Instead the inner terminal seems to be constantly connected to the outer terminals and this connection is briefly interrupted whenever the knob is turned. How are rotary encoders supposed to behave? Do I have a bad batch?

I don't clearly understand what din-sync does. I know that a C64 running Prophet-64 can be controlled with din-sync. Now if you connect a keyboard to a C64 through a midi-to-din converter, are you now able to trigger notes on the C64? Or is din-sync only good for syncronizing to clock pulses? ???

I would have countersunk those screw holes. Even then, it's a very slick job and a worthwhile use of that hard drive case.

It looks to me that this is not intended for sticking random rackmount things in. Instead, you mount the boards in the bottom and cover with the panel. Is this right? The shape of that thing looks perfect for not only my midibox synths, but for the ASM2 as well. I'd make mine out of half-inch plywood with the intent of it being permanent. http://colomar.com/Shavano/rackcase.html has info on making rack cases from plywood. It shouldn't be too hard to adapt those designs to your wedge case. Now, for whatever goes into this thing, I'd put all the modules on some platform so it can be lifted out and quickly remounted in a standard rackmount case. Hmm... Just rambling.

Mmmm... It looks like a 4017s, 555s, and some seven-segment drivers can provide a metronome as originally specified.

If you're squeamish about cutting into a SID chip, try this: Take a high-quality DIP socket with machined pins. Insert the chip into that and solder a wire from pin 28 to its corresponding socket. Then plug THAT unit into your SID module.

Dibs! Please check your private message thingy.

I figured I'd have to write the application for this sort of thing. Looking through my library of sysex files, each is about 4104 bytes.

The Yamaha TX7 (keyboardless DX7) has only 32 patch slots. This can cause irritation if you want to have a wide variety of patches available in an instant. Does a Midibox core module have what it takes to hold, say, 256 patches, scroll through a categorized menu (preset with a desktop computer), and dump the selected patch to the synth? As the subject suggests, this device would be intended for live performance.

WAIT!!!! Don't tear up that Commodore Plus/4. It's worth a decent amount more than a common C64. If you want a C64 shell, I'd be happy to send you one if someone in Europe (I guess that's where you are) can't.

Do you know what's going on with JSynthLib's development? It looks like absolutely nothing has happened for a bit more than a year.

Thinking about it again, I agree that making random patches on a PC are better. It's NOT the thing you'd want to do in a live performance. While you can get nice things with random patches, you can just as likely get something awful. If being near a computer can't be done, perhaps you can compromise with a PDA. I recently became aware of using a PDA to load patches onto a DX7. I'm not clear on how one would make a PDA talk MIDI. Do PDAs now come with USB ports? Hmm... maybe a random button could be implemented using another core module who's only purpose is making random patches.

I've seen a random button on a freeware softsynth called SpiralSynth. That button yielded lots of interesting sounds.

I found that if you keep your iron sharp, then surface-mount soldering isn't that much of a pain. For just those three chips it's okay.

I was thinking last night about using paper-backed acrylic too. For finding large enough sheets of aluminum, ask an air-conditioning contractor. If they don't have any, they should be able to point you in the right direction.

See http://scummvm.sourceforge.net/ for playing DOTT and other Lucasarts games of that era.

For the "hard" parts you list, I find them all at Jameco: CA3080 (they offer a CA3080E) for $2.95 LM3900 77 cents CD4069 unbuffered 30 cents

The ASM2 looks like a worthy project. According to the page, it's about 14 inches by 5.6 inches. This is good enough to fit into a rackmount case with room left over for a power supply. The price for a naked board, $36, is about right. I like how the controls are brought out to headers along the edges instead of having a maze of wires stuck in wherever. The latter is a big complaint I have about the Paia Fatman. The price of the parts kit may be due to the fact that the resistors are all 1% tolerance and some of the capacitors are on the exotic side. The chips aren't much more than a dime or more each. Mouser charges 9 cents each for 1% metal film resistors. You can get 100 5% units from Jameco for a dollar. If I can swing it, I'll work out a BOM for submitting to Mouser for parts in case anyone else is interested. I'm quite sure I can get the price down from US$270. Keep in mind that you'll also need a MIDI-to-CV (ie Midibox CV) if you don't already have one. I think I'm smitten by this design. For now, I'll content myself with drawing up a front panel.

http://www.thinktink.com/ sells laminators that look like the kinds used for laminating paper with plastic, except they're for applying photoresist film. It looks very quick, easy, and clean. But, the machines cost a LOT, like US$3000 or so. They also sell film in smaller quantities (10 meters for US$90), and show you how to apply it using a pouch-type laminator (like what Pulsar suggests for toner-transfer paper). The Homebrew_PCBs Yahoo group has some discussion on applying this stuff too. See http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Homebrew_PCBs/message/10669. In light of not being able to get spray resist here in the US and my horrible luck with toner-transfer, I'll experiment with a setup like this and report back my results. -Davo

That's the problem. Everywhere I look, it seems readily available in Europe, but not in the US. Oh well. I've recently bought a roll of resist film on Ebay, so I'll start using that and selling it off in smaller quantities. Anyone here who's iin the US who wants some can contact me or watch Ebay for it.

A breadboard is a white thing with sockets for temporarily mounting parts for testing the viability of a circuit. Perfboard is a sheet of fiberglass or phenolic with holes punched and usually nothing else.