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Sinds vorige week ben ik in het bezit van de Wilba MB-6582 base PCB en het Control Surface PCB. Veel onderdelen had ik nog liggen, omdat ik m'n Midibox SID versie 1 nooit helemaal had afgebouwd, dus ik kon meteen beginnen aan versie 2. Ik heb inmiddels bijna alle onderdelen in huis of in bestelling staan, maar 2 soorten onderelen zijn praktisch niet tegen normale prijzen in te vinden. Het gaat om de volgende twee onderdelen: De tacttile switches voor het control panel. Heb ik er 48 van nodig. Ik begrijp uit de handleiding dat ze 13mm hoog moeten zijn en dat het druk pookje spits moet toelopen van 3.5mm naar ongeveer 3.0mm. Ik heb gekeken op voti.nl en hij verkoopt soortgelijke switches. Die zijn echter of te kort, of te lang. 13mm heeft hij niet. Bij Farnell kan ik ze ook niet vinden. Rapid electronics heeft ze, maar dan zit ik met hele hoge verzendkosten en bovendien zijn die 48 tact switches dusdanig goedkoop dat ik niet aan de minimum order drempel kom. Het tweede onderdeeel wat ik zoek is de Dual gang pot 500K log. Zijn er 4 van nodig. Het zijn de pots die uitsteken aan de achterkant. Tot slot hoop ik dat iemand in staat is de bootloader voor mij op de PICS te zetten. Ik heb daar de programmer niet voor. Althans niet voor dit type PIC. Heeft iemand de betreffende onderdelen toevallig nog liggen of weet iemand hoe ik er tegen normale bedragen aan kan komen? UIteraard vergoed ik alle kosten. Alvast bedankt.

The led is just a power led. The socket above the led is a combined output of the 4 stero channels. By the way: Is that a stereo output or a mono output? I guess it's stereo but I'm not 100% sure.

I'm very sorry if I'm asking some stupid questions, but English is not the language I'm used to speak and sometimes I just don't understand 100% what is written. If I'm interpreting the manual correct the shaft is be 3.5mm at the base and about 3mm at the top. The holes in the control panel are 3.5mm but when I use a button which is 3.5 mm at the top the hole is a very tight fit so that's why 3mm at the top is prefered. So are the sugested buttens from rapid correct, because I think they are 3.5mm at the top of the shaft?

Thanks for all the answers and help. I''m ready to order those last parts now and finish my MB-6582. I think the tact switches from rapid are almost right, but the button is not 3.5mm at the base and 3mm at the top. I think it's just 3.5 mm which means it prbably wouldn't fit in the control panel.

Maybe a question answered before, but are the errors fixed in the PCB's I order last week from SmashTV?

Last week I received the MB-6582 base en CS pcb's. They look great. Thanks Wilba and SmashTV ! I read all the documents about it but there's a few questions I can't find answers for. Hopefully someone can help. 1) What's the value of the 4 pots on the back of the case? 2) How do I power the fan in the back? It needs 12V, but 9V should also work (I'm building the A version). It just gets a little slower. Where do I attach the fan to the pcb? 3) What kind of connector is used on the back for the expansion options? 4) Does anyone know where to get the tactile swithes? I can't find them anywhere in Europe and ordering from Mouser is quite expensive from the Netherlands. Thanks

Any info from APBS yet? I'm just curious not impatient. Thanks for all your work ! Kind regards, Rene

Money sent for 8 sids. Thanks for all your work Wilba

Al een behoorlijke tijd geleden ben ik begonnen met de bouw van een midibox sid. Inmiddels is ie in een behoorlijk ver gevorderd statium. Ik heb een 4 sid versie gebouwd (2 6581's en 2 8580's). In principe werkt ie al heel aardig. Ik heb echter de volgende problemen: 1) De eerste sid klinkt veel zachter dan de overige sids. 2) Sid 3 valt soms na een tijdje uit. Volgens mij geeft ie wel geluid, maar enorm zacht. Lijkt dus op een gigantische volume drop na een tijdje. Wisselen van preset lost het probleem een tijdje op. Daarna valt ie weer uit en moet ik weer van preset wisselen. 3) De 4e sid geeft 1 noot en kapt er naarna meteen mee. Alle cores zijn voorzien van Mios 1.9 en de 1.7.303 sid app. Ik heb alle modificaties gedaan voor de 8580's. Ik heb de cores en sids al onderling gewisseld en zo aangetoond dat alle sids het in principe doen. Alle cores hebben de juiste ID's: 0, 1, 2 en 3 Wie kan me in de juiste richting sturen om de probleempjes op te lossen? Nog mooier zou zijn als iemand er een keertje een avondje naar kon kijken. Uiteraard hoeft dat niet voor niets. Ondanks mijn kleine probleempjes is ie wel erg gaaf en wil ik zodra de technische mankementjes zijn opgelost zo snel mogelijk verder met het control panel. Alvast bedankt, Rene

The volume drops very fast. Like it goes from the maximum volume to the lowest volume. It's gone in a blink of an eye. The sounds that demonstrates it is for instanstance preset sound number 52. When using this sound the sounds plays for a while and suddenly it's gone. Especially the 8580's have this problem. Maybe I forgot to use replace some parts for the 8550's? I didn't change a thing on the cores. All 4 are the same. On the 8550's I used a 78L09 and replaced C! and C2 with 6.8nF. I believe that's all I have to change? I don't think it's the ADSR bug but maybe you can tell. Maybe the problem isn't midi related. Could I have made it mistake in the soldering of the output on the sid board? I have also grounded the input on the sid board by placing a jumper on it. The input isn't used so it seemed logical to ground it with a jumper. Can you tell me how I can check if the output parts are working the way they should. I have also removed the midi out cable, to prevent loppbacks (although I'm sure midi throug is disabled on my pc). The results are the same. The problem is still there. Tomorrow I go the the USA for a few days so I won't be able to make the suggested mp'3. I will do that next week. I really want to thank you for all your help. It's really appreciated. Rene

Today I checked all voltages and they all turned out to be okay. The 5V pins are slightly to high (5.13V), the 12V pins measure 11.76 so are a little to low. The 9V are 8.98 so almost correct. I think those values are okay. I did a little more testing. When some of the sids stop working, the sound disappears. When I listen very close I can still hear a little sound, so the sid's don't stop working !! They just have a huge drop of volume. It's seems to be happing quite random (except for sid 1, that one always works and sid 4 never works). Sid 2 and 3 just drop there volume to almost zero after some time. Could this be a heat problem? TK you mentioned in your previous post that my volumes are lower on the slaves. But it's the other way around. The volumes on the slaves are higher than on my first sid. Could it be that those volumes are to high and because of that the sid stops working? Wat is a normal volume and how can I measure this? Thanks in advance, Rene

I have tried a few things, but so far I have not been able to fix these last issues. I have swapped the sid chips and the Master Sid is still a lot lower in volume. So the chip itself is okay and it's a problem on the sid board. The disappearing sound problem is also still there. It's really strange. The first sid always works perfect (except from the lower volume). The second sid works most of the time, but after a few notes it just stops working. The sound is not "hanging"but is completely gone. The third sid has the same problem, but it occurs sooner than on the second chip. The fourth chip only works for one note and than all sound is gone. So it looks like the problem gets worse downwards. The forst works great. Second disappears after few notes, third even sooner and the fourth stops working after one note. When I choose another sound, it all starts working again. Really strange isn't it? When I send the midi signal directly to one of the four boards, everything works great. So it only goes wrong when they are connected to each other. I hope someone can put me in the right direction. Rene

Hi everybody, It took a lot of time (it's the first project I ever soldered) and I made a lot of stupid mistakes, but thanks to this great forum I now have an almost working 4 sid midibox sid. I have two small problems left which I can't tackle so maybe this forum can help me out once again. Problem 1: All 4 sids give sound, however the volumes differ a lot. The first sid has a medium volume, the second and third are very loud and the fourth has a low volume when it works (take a look at problem 2). I'd like to have volumes which are the same. All 4 sids have there own audio out. Problem 2: Sometimes when I play a note on my midi keyboard it sounds through all 4 sids, but only the first note. After playing one note sometimes one of the others sids stops working. When I do a program change (choose another sound) it works again and I can hear them all four. Especially sid number 4 has this problem. After one note of sound it stops working in 99% of the cases. The first sid always works. Only the first core has an optocoupler. I removed the optocoupler IC on the other other cores. Is this all I need to do, or do I need to make some more changes to the slave cores? Sid 1 and are 6581's and sid 3 and 4 are 8580's. I know they operate on different voltages and I believe I made all the adjustments for that. Hopefully with the help of this forum I can finally finish my midibox sid and start working on the control panel. Rene

Sorry for the late respone. I was out of the country for a month or so. Anyway, I tried your suggestion and swapped cores and sids. I fount the problem. It turned out that sid 2 was broken and caused al the popping. I feel also a bit like an idiot, because I made a realy stupid mistake. I forgot to press the link button. Do al sids give sound now, but there's one problem left, which I will discuss in another post. Thanks TK for your great help !! Rene

A few weeks ago I managed to program all my cores, thanks to TK. I now have a four sid midibox sid, without Control Surface. The man sid and core work perfect. However the three remaining sids only make a loud popping noise, even when I don't play a note. I'm sure the problem is me, but it would be nice if someone could point me in the right direction. It's quite strange the first sid/core works perfect and the other three not. Must be something in the wiring I guess. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Rene

I finally managed to program the last remaining core. The first three were already programmed thanks to TK's advice. The last core turned out to be broken indeed. I bought a new one and it worked. Unfortunately the only comes sound from my main sid. The other three only produce a popping noise. Any idea what might be the issue here? Thanks in advance, Rene

Recently I have built a midibox sid step B. It is not quite finished yet, but in the proces of finishing it I would like to built a headphone out which combines the four independent outs I have on one headphone Jack. What do i need to do to achieve this? Thanks in advance, Patrick

Hi TK, Thanks for your advice. I think I programmed three of the four cores succesfully with MIOS and the sid app. The only core that gave me problems was ID01. It looks like that PIC is broken or the bootstrap is not on it. Tomorrow I'll try to put the bootstrap on it again and then try to programm that PIC with MIOS and the SID app. If that doesn't work I'm afraid my pic is broken. But the good news is it worked for three of the four cores. I could not do it with MIOS studio, but used midi-ox instead. I first converted the mios hex file to sysex with the following command: hex2syx.pl mios_v1_8.hex -device_ID 0x01 -os_upload It resluted in the mios syx file for my ID 1 core. I put the ID 1 core in my main core socket and uploaded this file. After that I could upload setup_6581_slave1.syx to the core. Can you confirm this is the way to set the right ID in the syx file? I repeated these steps for core 2 and 3, but used -device_ID 0x02 and 0x03 with the perl tool. I hope I did it all right. It sure looks like it's working except core 1. But, how do I test if it's working? How can I make core/sid 2 and 3 make sound? Thanks for all the help so far. Rene

Hi everybody, I have builded a 4 sid version of the midibox sid. It's all wired and ready to be programmed. The first core is programmed with MIOS and the sid application and is working perfectly. Great sound !! Thank you TK. Now I want to program the other 3 cores. I don't have the controll panel yet so I can't press the upload button. I do have a display however, so at least I can see what I'm doing. I read on the ucapps site I have to send a sysex string to enable the midi upload link. Here begins my problem. I can't send sysex with mios studio, I can only send hex files. With Midiox I can send sysex. I sent the string and hope the midi upload fuinction is enabled. Is there anyway I can see that on my display? I guess I have to send the mios application now in a few seconds, just like the first core. I don't know how to do this. I simply don't have enough time to send the "enable midi link" string, than load the mios sysec and upload that in just a few seconds. I tried to load the mios sysex data in midi-ox and type te midi upload string in front of it. I just can't tell if this is working. How can I upload MIOS to my remaining cores, without the upload button? How do I test my slave cores/sid? Is it enough to set my keyboard to midi channel 2, 3 and 4? Is this something I can see on my display? I tried to get jsynthlib running, but I can't figure out how to use this. Please help, Thanks in advance. Rene

I guess I missed something on the Voti site, because they do sell those switch buttons. Thanks Raphael and Moebius !! And sorry for not using my eyes in the proper way ::) Rene

Voti does not sell those switch buttons unfortunately. I orderded my knobs there, but they don't sell the switch buttons. Sorry, but I still can't find a shop other then Reichelt that does sell those switch buttons. Rene

I checked Reichelt today and tried to order those buttons. The problem is I'm in the Netherlands and Reichelt only sends to foreign countries if I spend at least 150 euros and I only want to spend about 5 euros. Another problem is the site is in German. I understand German very well, but not enough to understand all the money transfer stuff. I also checked farnell and found switch buttons that are almost the same, only shorter and more expensive. Can someone please point me to site that sells the buttons and sends to the Netherlands. Paying buy credit card would be the easiest way for me. Maybe someone here has about 50 buttons left and wants to sell them? Thanks in advance, Rene

Hi, I currently have a nice step B midibox sid, but I'd like to go a step further and built step c. I already ordered the frontpanel, the leds and the encoders, but I still have to order the buttons somewhere. I ordered the "standard" frontpanel on the ucapps site and I want to buy the correct buttons that fit into this frontpanel. Can anyone tell me what buttons I need and where I can get them? Thanks in advance, Rene

Yes I did. The problem is sidplay2/w does not yet support the sidstation. So I downjloaded version 1, and I can choose the sid station there. On my midibox display I see the song name, but I don't hear sound unfortunately. Rene

Hi everybody, I finally got my midibox sid working. At the moment with one SID, one core, 8 banksticks and an lcd. Wow !! It sounds fantastic !! I heard it was possible to use the midibox sid as a sidplayer, to play those old great C-64 tunes. I have downloaded sidplay2/w (the windows version). I want to configure it to use the midibox sid instead of the soundcard of my pc. I configured the correct midi port, but I can't choose anything else than the soundcard. Everything else is greyed out. Do I have to enable someting in the midibox sid (MIOS 1.8, sid app 1.7a)? Or do I have to do something in sidplay 2/w Like I said, everyhing is greyed out in sidplay 2/w. Rene