Therezin

There's a company called Drill Service that sell drill bits that can drill square holes (seriously, I'm not making this up), but their website (www.drill-service.co.uk) doesn't list a price. I assume they won't be cheap since they need to be fitted into a special fully-floating chuck that allows lateral motion as well as rotary. Might be worth a look.

This is another thing that's been getting to me too - I might have been hanging around here for ages, but I'm still at the planning stages of my SID. I bought all the bits for the optimised PSU, but the shop I got the bits only had 100nF in ceramic and 330 in mylar. Would there be any problem using them like this?

Which is exactly what I've ben thinking of for the last few days. Keep rambling!

only in it for the videos :P

That's very cool. That using Bill's c64 din stuff? The Max/MSP open source? :P

Cool idea - the handle in the top makes them easily portable, and drilling steel's easy. The surface holds paint really well too, might have to try this!

You're right; resistors do not have polarity. However, if you're using the latest SmashTV revision of the board there's an option to use SIP resistor packs, which do need you to check polarity. For more info: http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=7256.msg48524#msg48524 That is, of course, if you're using resistor packs rather than separate resi's.

I would also be interested. There's no DINx1 board on here since it's usually built on protoboard, but a PCB would kick ass.

That's what I thought - having no idea on the power draw of the whole thing I couldn't be sure, but 2A sounds plenty big enough for a CORE, SID, DIN, DOUT and PLED, even if i chose to upgrade to 4 SIDs in the future.

AFAIK there's no real difference, at least not with what we call a jigsaw or a scroll saw round here. The main thing seems to be that scrollers come with narrower blades so you can cut tighter curves - but you can put the same kind of blade in a jigsaw so there's no real difference. Just make sure you use a blade with many small teeth, not the wood-cutting blade that comes with most jigsaws. A hacksaw would probably be better, but you could probably get away with a jigsaw by placing the PCB like a sandwich between some blocks of wood, like c0nsumer mentioned.

It's ok - my girlfriend's going shopping in town tomorrow and there's a maplin there, i'll get her to get me a 2A version. A 78S09 should do the job shouldn't it?

Ouch, I better look out for that one when I start putting together mine - my local electronics place could only offer a 7809 in 100mA, and i'm not going mail-order for a single part!

I'd have thought it wouldn't be too hard since the driver for the IIC_MIDI is out there - I assume the MBHP_USB_PIC source is as well. However, I've never coded for a PIC in my life, MIOS or otherwise.

Congratulations! Did everything go smoothly?

Very cool, I love the idea of shortening the C64 case, and the keys for input is inspired ;D

So, with this new silicon somebody could throw together a USB-enabled 4620 CORE, and 3 IIC_MIDI modules to produce a 4x4 USB-MIDI box?

Nothing too majorly symbolic in mine... I like crows. There's a rook nest in a tree in my garden, and I just think crows are awesome.

Google

Jog-wheels: Depending on the way that VDJ handles the inputs on record positioning and so on, I think the best solution would just be a simple rotary encoder - even a detented one (one with "click-stops") could be used, as I'm told it is a relatively simple matter to convert them to non-detented operation. Power/shielding concerns: Every midibox ever built is powered off DC. AC current will introduce interference, but the general concensus is that DC will not, even in the same cable - look at Wisefire's Midibox Axe thread (http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=6431.0) for more info. The only thing I can think of with the 2.56" spacing as you call it is to space out everything such as buttons and LEDs in multiples of 2.54mm, since veroboard (vectorboard, prototyping board, stripboard) is set out with holes 2.54mm apart (The reason it's such a strange number as 2.54 is because it's 0.1 of an inch). If you're mounting your frontpanel switches and LEDs on veroboard, then you're in for a headache if you don't space them that way. Oh yeah, tact switch covers: I've not really found too many great ones, but they are out there. Hopefully someone will reply to this thread with where they can be found, so I can get some of the damn things as well :P /Edit: Added URL for midibox axe

@Altitude: Thanks man, never know when those might come in useful. Have you linked to them from the wiki as well?

Awesome looking project, and I love the OLED screen. I just thought to myself "I gotta get me one of those"... Til I saw that Crystalfontz want to charge me $58 shipping. On a $30 display. I think not, somehow :P

CS layout looks pretty good to me - although I tend to prefer a full CS, the designer in me likes the idea of stripping it back to only what you need. As for the board layout, the image doesn't appear to show the whole board. Is this for a reason, or just some sort of bug with putfile?

*looks at website* *feels stupid* Guess I better get myself a can of this stuff then! Anyone out there know if you can paint over it?

That's a pretty cool idea, I'd not thought of using plasti-dip in that way before. I was about to put a thread in the parts questions to see if anybody knew where i could get white soft-touch knobs, but with this stuff I could make my own! @Davo or SmashTV: What kind of feel does it have when it's been applied? Is it glossy to look at? Cheers, Dan

Robinson