Therezin

If yours is anything like mine, You'll find the fuse in the mains plug.

I am indeedy, just north of Birmingham. There's more UK members than I thought too, didn't realise you were a brit 'til today either Toneburst.

Correction. Their P&P to the UK is absurd. They wanted $58 shipping on a $30 display. Fortunately, I mentioned that on here and c0nsumer was nice enough to send me one of his surplus ones using the USPS rather than FedEx, which worked out a lot cheaper. Maybe one of the americans on the site here would be nice enough to do the same for you?

Welcome to the forum. You'll find we're all pretty friendly 'round here (well, mostly). And controlling channel faders and transport buttons is one of the most common uses of the midibox platform. Your best bet's the MB64 if you just want faders and buttons, MB64e if you want rotary encoders ("endless pots") or the MBLC if you want motorised faders.

Be sure to let us know how it goes, I'm thinking of putting together an MBCV myself to control some of the stuff from MusicFromOuterSpace so I'd find it interesting to see how others go about it.

Correct, the only thing you need a burner for is the bootloader, as MIOS and the application can be uploaded to it over MIDI.

The way I managed it was with a serious amount of desoldering braid and a 30W iron. The trick I found was to try to soak up all the solder around each pin, as best as possible - then try and lift it with a screwdriver.

A bontempi organ? into one of the coolest SIDs I've seen in a long time? That's beyond crazy. I want one. ;D

Just checked out the datasheet for the Taiwan Semiconductor DB104G I'm using. It might be a little overkill for this project, as it can take 400V...

I just walked into my local electronics shop (Lichfield Electronics) with the parts list. He hadn't got a B40C800 either, but the guy in the shop assured me the one he gave me (a DB104G) would do the job just as well. He carried all the parts I needed except for the 330nF ceramic cap and the 7809 - the 330nano I used a mylar cap for (marginally better anyway, apparently) and the 7809 he only had in 100mA, so I went to maplin and got a 2A 78S09CV. Support your local electronics shop! :P

@ Mr. modnaR: Maplin sell these in the UK, I used one on my optimised PSU. They've got them in 5, 9, 12 or 15V for 77p. Part numbers: L78S09CV - UJ55K L78S05CV - UJ54K

Thanks to you too - I thought the best way to learn what I'm doing would be to document it. It also means I can help out other forum members. Glad to know I can help!

Photos are uploaded. Not sure what you're after exactly, so www.danielprice.org.uk/synth-diy/sid_2.htm to go see.

Ah, cool, cheers for the quick reply. In that case I'll get on with posting some photos :D

That depends. If yu bought your boards from SmashTV or Mike, it should say on the board something like MBHP_CORE_V2 or MBHP_SID_V3. This indicates which versions of the connection boards you have, from which you can find out which diagram to follow. What do yours say?

Right, I've got it finished and I'm just about to upload some photos to my site so everyone can laugh at my dodgy soldering "skills", but first I have a question: When I turn my power switch to the "off" position, the voltage drops a little, (around 1-1.5V) then slowly goes down. I assume this is the capacitors discharging, but I find it rather odd. Is this normal?

The 10.7V I think should be ok, as long as you were testing without anything connected to the PSU - it will deliver a slightly higher voltage when there's no load on it. I think mine puts out about 9.8v or thereabouts. As for the 5VDC, this strikes me as very odd. You say the PSU was powering a C64 with no errors, so it must be working - but for that it should be giving 5VDC on the pins. I have to admit I'm stumped by this, anyone else come across it?

Yeah, that's a C64-II, also known as a C64C. It's got an 8580 SID chip in it.

If you have a C64 case, you may as well do what I did and re-use the power socket and switch from the C64 as well. You'll have to bend a few pins on the switch to get them to the spacing on a piece of veroboard, but it's no big deal. You could even use the 2 controller sockets for banksticks, which is what I plan to do. The pins from the switch work as follows: Switch 'down' (switch rocked down towards pins): x x | | <--connected x x x x Switch 'up' (labeled 'on' on c64 metal plate) x x x x | | x x I'll probably post some photos of my finished one in a few days once it's done, if you can wait that long.

I second Altitude, it's definitely the way to go. I've not seen a board layout for the optimised PSU, but it's simple enough to make it on protoboard, even if you've no circuit design experience. This is in fact what I've been doing for the past week or so (Yes, I know I'm slow, I don't have much free time hehe).

Funny, I was just thinking the same thing. Maybe one of our Max/MSP masters could come up with something? I can see how it'd be done, but my Max skills aren't good enough to do it.

Thanks man, I appreciate the quick answer. Time to get soldering methinks..

OBU : Overheat and Burn if Unattended For those of us using home-made power supplies, no doubt :P

That's cool. The other thing that's been bugging me (apologies for the thread hijack tel3) is the 14VDC output to the SID module. Is it really only 1 pin? That strikes me as a little odd...

That's a lot of new midiboxes... SmashTV and Mike are rubbing their hands in anticipation ;D