toneburst

Nice. Where do you get this stuff Mr. modnaR? I've always liked the idea of a rubber-coated synth! Alex http://www.toneburst.net

Gotcha Mr modnaR, the grooves are around 1mm wide as they are. Cool cool. Alex http://www.toneburst.net

I seee. Then once the two halves have been cut, you have to add some sort of 'lip' I guess, so the halves fit together. Lol- cruel, cruel... But funny :) So you managed to break the keyboard section around the line? That's cool; I will give that a try on my spare case. Keep us informed on how it goes :) Make sure you don't fall asleep while you're working on it though... ;) This IS intriguing. I'll definitely check this out! Cheers again guys! Alex http://www.toneburst.net

Wow, thanks for all the info guys! I'm currently talking to Schaefer, who may be able to create the panel using the latest version of Front Panel Designer, which is in beta-testing at the moment, apparently. I'll see how much it's likely to cost me, and maybe take you up on that offer of a quote Michael. Some other replies to a parallel thread on filling C64 case holes make me think it might be easier to make the panel in several parts- a flat 'base plate', and laser-cut panels glued on top. This way, I can screw the circuitboards to the bottom panel, and hide the screws with the raised sections stuck on top. I'm also intrigued by Mr modnaR's suggestion of texture spray. I was wondering if there was something like that might be available. I'll look into laser-cutting services in the UK. This is what I'm thinking of so far (it's pretty-much the same as Jorge's): I was thinking originally of the grooves being arounf 1mm deep, but after taking some measurements from my C64 case, I'm now thinking nearer 0.5mm. Should I make the grooves between the sections wider to allow for the texture spray, do you think, Mr modnaR? I guess with the dividing grooves being so narrow, it might make it harder to clean up the toolmarks Michael mentions, and to apply the texture spray..... So many options. Alex http://www.toneburst.net

That's cool talion! how did you connect the joystick? Alex http://www.toneburst.net

Hi Odd, and annoying one here: my single SID/Core will only work if physically disconnected from my first 'Optimised PSU', then reconnected. It will then run fine until I switch off the PSU, then when I turn it on again- no sound! If I then disconnect, wait a few seconds, then reconnect the 5V input to the Core board, it magically works again! Anyone any idea why this might happen? It doesn't seem to do this with my mk.2 optimised PSU. I'm using the same Core and SID board with the same interconnections in both cases. Both PSUs seem to put out the required 2 voltages, and the only difference between then is that the 2nd one doesn't have a power LED (I forgot), and I'm using a slightly different bridge-rectifier (I miss-ordered). It's not that important, since I have a working setup, but I'd be really interested to know why this is happening, if anyone has any ideas. It's probably something very simple- I'm an electronics newbie, afterall... Cheers, Alex http://www.toneburst.net

Hi aileroned, I'm making things difficult for myself ;) The panel is (hopefully) going to be machined by to have raised sections a bit like (I've obviously exagerated the thickness of the panel a bit here- call it 'artistic license'). If it was sprayed before machining, the cut down sections would end up uncoloured. Mind you, then they would be transparent again... put a light under it and it could look pretty cooool Now, there's an idea!! What paint did you find that was apaque enough to do the job, if you don't mind me asking? Incidentally, why do you have to cover the holes when spraying the panel? Alex http://www.toneburst.net

Hi Micha, thanks very much for your detailed reply :) I was actually thinking of having the panel made out of plexiglass/perspex, as I want to integrate it into an existing C64 case (rather than simply bolting it on top). I'd then want to spray the whole case so that panel and original case matched. From what you say, it may not be worth having the labels engraved if the text is going to disappear when I spray the panel. If this is the case, maybe I would be best making my own labels using a decal sheet type thing like Lazertran, and not having the engraving done at all. Alex http://www.toneburst.net

Hi Jaicen! Absolutely; no point even considering it. Why don't you try it first, and let me know how you get on... ;) I don't know much about vacuum-forming, though that idea had actually crossed my mind too. I'm not sure how thick it's possible to make vacuum-formed objects though: I thought you could only use pretty thin plastic sheet. I also seem to remember there's a fair amount to work involved in accurately cutting the bottom of the sheet once it has been shaped around the form. Having said that, you could potentially make any shape case you wanted this way, so you could make a C64-style case, but with all the right ports etc. I may be able to get access to a vacuum-forming machine at work, if I talk nicely to the right people. Could take a bit of social-engineering, but might be worth it... Hmm.... Alex http://www.toneburst.net

Also, Smash's kits have a 'solder mask'- a surface coating so solder only sticks to the pads around component holes. Makes it nice and easy to solder, but I've found it tends to melt and make the surface of the PCB look messy when desoldering stuff. Hopefully you won't make as many mistakes as me, so you won't ever have to desolder ;) I bought kits from Mike and SmashTV. My SmashTV Core and SID modules are now both working, but I haven't so far managed to get the Mike's MIDIShop Core board to play ball. Think this is more a reflection on my incompetence than the quality of Mike's boards though.... Alex http://www.toneburst.net

Mornin' All... just a little question: How deeply are the labels (ie lettering) on Schaefer panels engraved into the surface? I ask because I'm wondering how practical it would be to have them engraved, but not coloured, with a view to filling them with my own colours of paint. Has anyone done this themselves? I'm interested in doing this for two reasons: 1. I'm anal about things like legending colour and want to choose my own and 2. I'm going to spray-paint the entire panel anyway, so there's no point having the labels coloured. I guess the alternative to filling the lettering with paint is to not have them engraved at all, and to print my own labels on something like Lazertran film and stick them on individually. The advantage here is that I could use my own fonts etc. Anyone any thoughts as to which approach would work best? Alex http://www.toneburst.net

I was joking about the low-tech thing. :) I agree completely. Having said that, I have no objection in principle to, for example, having Schaefer make my front-panel for me. They'll do a much better job of it than I ever could... That saw looks like yue kinda thing I need, incidentally. Cheers! Alex http://www.toneburst.net

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I should have done my research and found out exactly what tool I needed before flexing the old creditcard and buying the Dremel.... Still, I'm sure it will come in handy for something in the future. Yeah, it didn't alert me either. I suspect allowing guests to post to the list is probably asking for trouble too... I actually emailed a query to them a few days back and they haven't got back to me yet, annoyingly. Alex http://www.toneburst.net

Hi Mr modnaR, Easy for you to say- you work in a garage so you have all this stuff lying around at work, I assume ;) That's very true. Seems to melt it's way through it quite nicely though. But hacksaws are soooo low-tech.... I'll give it a go. Or I may try that. Thanks, I'll need it! Incidentally, I saw your name on the Schaefer forum the other day Mr modnaR. Small World.... ;) Alex http://www.toneburst.net

Hi again a7thson, Agreed. Just assigning the filter res. and cutoff to the touchpad is fun, especially with a nice bass fat patch! I'm becoming a big fan of the Wave Bass patch in the presets library, and the high-pass filter mode. Very fat! It's just a shame that the filter mode and osc. waveform are so difficult to control from the XStation though. I mean, it IS possible to access all the options, just not in a way that makes much sense. Incidentally, the XStation synth can make some pretty cool sounds too. I've yet to use it in a track, but it sounds good to me. I have a Nova too (the desktop one), which I'm also a big fan of. It's just I'm comfortable using Reaktor. I also have the NI Kore controller, so I could potentially use that also to control the SID via Reaktor. Kore has high-resolution encoders, and I could also use it as a librarian of sorts for SID patches. I imagine using Reaktor purely to send out MIDI controller data shouldn't be too processor-crippling, though obviously just running the plugin involves some CPU hit. Incidentally, there's no obvious mention of Mac support on the Brainspawn site, so I'm assuming their stuff is Windows-only. Think it's probably a bit OTT for my simple needs too ;) Have you seen this thread? http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=7569.0 I thought of the Evolver as soon as I read it! Alex http://www.toneburst.net

Just got my Dremel ( one of these http://www.dremel-direct.com/acatalog/300_Series___25_Accessories_and_Case.html ) and was trying it out on one of my C64 Mk.1 cases. I've found it is possible to cut through the plastic with one of the cutting disks, but it does get pretty hot and the plastic tends to melt. It's not too hard to clean up the edges though, as the melted bits seem to break off quite easily and the cut itself is quite clean. It seems to melt most at the top, so it might be better to cut my final case from below. I haven't tried sanding the edges yet. I'm also toying with the idea of attempting to cut along the edge of a metal ruler, for a completely straight edge. Not sure if this will work or not, but it should, as it will be the flat, non-cutting edge of the disk in contact with the ruler, so I shouldn't end up cutting into it. Not sure how easy it will be to cut out parts small enough to use as blanking plates to cover the holes at the back of the case. I think I would have to cut them slightly larger than needed, and sand down the edges with wet & dry. Probably the most accurate method, anyway. The other thing that concerns me sightly are the fumes that could potentially be given off by the hot plastic (polystyrene, I think). Anyone any advice on this? Should I do the cutting outside? Hmm... powertools.... Alex

I sympathise. I trashed my Crystalfontz red neg LCD by plugging the connector in to the Core module the wrong way round. It still occasionally works ok, but most of the time I get a glitchy mess of pixels, which sometimes flicker and fade out towards the left of the screen. I do remember it getting pretty hot when I first plugged it in, so I unplugged it as quickly as I could. It was OK for a while afterwards, but has been playing up since. It's really annoying, as I spend ages making sure I had the ribbon cable wired up correctly, then made the most stupid mistake imaginable by plugging it in the wrong way! Comforting to hear others have made similar mistakes though ;) I'll wire up another display soon. I have a blue one I picked up on eBay for about £6 Alex

Hi a7thson, I wonder if this is also the case with the newer Remote SL too... I guess I have 2 ways to go on this then- I either down the route of contructing some kind of Reaktor-based frontend to mediate between the SID and the XStation, or I stick with what I have. In the end, in a live performance setting, the main parameters I'd like to be able to tweak can be controlled satisfactorily from the XStation, and I'm planning to build a full control-surface at some point anyway, time and money-permitting. I suppose the advantage of going to Reaktor way is I can save settings as Reaktor snapshots and have instant access to a load of different sounds from within my sequencer, without having to do sysex dumps. I wonder how the MBHPSID would cope with having settings for all its parameters send at the same time though... Hmm... Thanks for all your suggestions guys, Alex http://www.toneburst.net

Cheers Doc! I've jusy bought myself an IC extraction tool. It was very cheap, but I can tell it's going to save me a lot of trouble in the future! Alex http://www.toneburst.net

Hi ilmenator, good point- hadn't thought of that. It just occured to me that the proposed next generation of the MIDIBox SID firmware may use NRPNs rather than CCs. I remember seeing this on the SID v.2 wishlist ( http://www.ucapps.de/midibox_sid_v2_wishlist.html ), so maybe then it won't be such an issue, as there presumably will be more dedicated controllers available, so this potentially won't be such an issue. Cheers, Alex http://www.toneburst.net

Hi again folks, I'm trying to setup the controls on my Novation X-Station so that I can use it to edit the sounds on my single MBSID, but am having problems with some of the parameters. All the ones that go from 0-127 are fine, but many, like the waveform selectors, LFO mode selectors, filter mode controls and a few others are giving me a headache. The problem is, if I just assign a controller sending out values from 0-127 to any of these parameters, I get very unpredictable results. Unfortunately, while you can set minimum and maximum values for the control and a step size, the X-Station doesn't give you the option to only send specific numbers when a control is operated. For it to make sense it would need to pick specific numbers from a list of those values that actually do something. Does anyone know if there is there any way of getting around this, so that these controls are a bit more intuitive? Maybe the controller assignments can be edited in some way to make them work more easily with a MIDI controller like mine.... Anyway, if anyone is interested, I will make the the X-Station template available. It currently controls filter cutoff and res (also mapped to the X-Y pad), LFOs 1, 2, and 3 rate, voice 1, 2 and 3 wave (though weirdly, for the reasons noted above), semitone, detune and pulsewidth, the amp envelope for the 3 combined voices and env.1. Obviously, it's not really useful for sound-creation, but offers a useful amount of 'tweakability'. I'm also considering making some sort of Reaktor ensemble to control the SID, or maybe just as a frontend to edit all the sound parameters. I'll make that available to anyone who wants it too. Unless S.M. fancies porting his VST editor to the Mac, of course.... Alex http://www.toneburst.net

Hi Jaicen. Yep, that makes perfect sense. Haven't got my dremel yet, so I'll leave the cutting for a while. I think I'm actually going to put the working Core and SID modules in a temporary box for the moment- I just got a couple of free samples from Teko so I'll use one of those for the moment while I work on butchering C64 cases. Good plan. If I use sections of plastic from another C64 case, they should be the right thickness to fill the gaps perfectly. The only think that worries me slightly is the fact that the bottom of the Cassette and User Port openings is rounded. I guess I could use some sort of putty to smooth over the bottom of the blanking plate and create the curve, or make it a little longer, so it protrudes at little at the bottom, then sand it to match. The other problem is cutting out the pieces of plastic accurately. Maybe it's better to cut them a little too big, then sand them to size (thinking out loud here).... Yeah, I think you're right there. The original cases were injection-moulded, of course. Not sure how practical it would be to create something similar using any other technique anyway, and I suspect injection-moulding is a little expensive to setup, for the number of cases MIDIBox builders would need. Having said that, if you can find some rapid-prototyping-type company who will make the kind of thing we want at a reasonable price, them I'd take a couple.... Cheers guys, Alex http://www.toneburst.net

Hi Chris, sorry to hear about your troubles. I actually only got one of my two Core boards working. The other one is still giving 'Unexpected Upload Requests' all the time, so I guess the MIDI In isn't working at all. Changing the optocoupler did work on the SmashTV board, but the Mike's MIDIShop one still didn't work, even with the optocoupler that worked in the other one. :( It certainly looks like a power-related issue here. I'd test the voltages at the Core PIC socket again, and if you're not getting the right readings here, my (completely uneducated) guess is you're not providing enough power to the PIC and you might have some blown components somewhere. Alex http://www.toneburst.net

Hi Wilba! Ah... makes perfect sense! I've also been thinking about hiding the screws holding the LCD etc. on to the back of the front panel. If I were to do as you suggest, I could screw the boards to the bottom single sheet, then glue the panel fascia over the top. The only problem of course is getting hold of the plastic sheet, and cutting the panel shapes for the front surface without a laser cutter or CNC machine.... Good advice. I know it's much easier. I just don't like the way it looks. Plus, I'm the kind of person who likes to set himself unrealistic targets ;) What kind of putty do you recommend? I wonder, is there some kind of putty-like substance that will stick to the C64 case, then harden to a surface that can be sanded? I vagually remember something similar from my model-plane-making days, but can't remember the details.... Cheers again, Alex http://www.toneburst.net

Yep, the Reichelt enclosure is the same one, I think pay_c. I managed to get 3 free samples out of Teko- they arrived this morning! I got a Europult and a Europult P in light grey ( http://www.teko.co.uk/enclosures/europult.htm ) and a Processpr 96 in black ( http://www.teko.co.uk/enclosures/keyboard.htm ). ...And I only ordered them yesterday! I did actually order 2 of the Processor cases, but they only sent 1, with a note saying 'due to the value of the Processor cases, they could only send one'. Fair enough, as they sell them for £46.39! Dunno why they're so expensive, mind... RESULT!!! Alex http://www.toneburst.net