matrigs

yeah the additional tin may seem wild but i'm not really comfotable with the new pcb's i got and some of the traces were broken. also i wanted to make the voltage flow a little better.

i thought that the heat won't reach the traces only soldering at the tip of each SIL pin. do you recommend using connectors? okay pictures coming: this is the core top: - i cut the 4 legs of the can interface to make sure it won't make any problems. the lcd is in 4bit mode. - as you see i grounded all the analog inputs but even with a bridge like that - i get massive junk from them. core bottom: - no problems here - even in the area j10 is without shorts - checked with multimeter din top: - the two cables that go down are connected to a simple push button din bottom: - i know thos caps aren't connected very sophysticated but this way i made sure that you can have a clear view that everything is ok.

i'm very grateful for your help ! i'll try to answer all questions. i use the same cable for connecting the din to the cores - it's soldered permanently to the din and i solder it identically to the two cores. i have no idea if i'm using my iron with 25watts. but i don't really care for the watts as long as the amount of heat i use seems sufficient. if i even sink the heat the tin starts to stick to my iron and i can't to anything so i guess the amount i use is about right. with those seconds that's a weird question because it's very difficult for me to answer. i mean it sometimes takes more times simetimes less - never above like 5 secods for sure. but as i said - i mean my soldering skill have surely increased and i use a much lower temperature than before so i mean everything should at least work if not better or am i false?

i was just curious because i saw that everyone making his core has his own "way" of using capacitors of different types. everyone uses "better" caps in different places. for example thorsten has this expensive plastic cap in the picture of his sid module - but in a lot of different modules people just use simple ceramic ones...

half way meaning that i use like 25 watts for it. i it the moment when the tin gets so nic and sticky and doesn't jsut blop around when you have a too high temperature. the time i tin my chips isn't even counted in seconds. just one "hit" and that's it. when i have to redo it i wait awhile. cabling is out of question - i connected my new ain with sockets to my old core and it somehow works. so probably there is something down on my new core. no idea really.

i'm speaking more of the differences between caps of the same type but made with different materials. this and http://tme.pl/katalog_pics/7/b/9/7b9c402a32884ba3a82ac99d81d8eb66/cc%20330.jpg this one are both 330 pf caps. but i mean there is a reason why they make those different ones right ?

i have closed my old project with my old iron and now i did all the parts, ains dins and core with this new iron. i cannot do the srio test as i don't have douts. as i said - my newest din on which i used sockets works perfectly fine - so there must be in fact something in my engineering that causes all those bugs.

yeah you're right about this one - but it seemed fine all the way through so i didn't bother checking anything. the problems started after i tried to launch the sid where i realised that actually a few things aren' ok.

i was just thinking that maybe the higher amperage migh cause those breakdowns. i also get feedback from dins too so there is something very wrong going on.

yeah in my case in fact the midi interface was creating the failures.

i realised that there is nowhere mentioned which capacitors to use with the ucapps system if the ones stated in the orderlists aren't in reach. i also realised that whenever i see a picture of a core or other module, everyone uses different capacitors in different places. mostly the ceramic caps. the thing is - are all capacitors actually the same or is there a difference appart from the quality of them? can they affect the work of the system? most of the caps on my core are quite high quality but i used, for example as the 33pf ones for the crystal, those very cheap yellow ones. what differences can someone expect when using cheaper caps for his projects?

im asking because i have some troubles with my core and i'm trying to replace every part before it is fixed. i have at the moment a 7805 2A. those 2A make me suspicious because when i searched the forum, a 1A was recommended. however - with my old core i had alot of problems with a 1A 7805 when i had made a full blown midibox with 64 pots and 32 leds - it was resetting itself all over the place - changing the 7805 to a 1,5A one did the job and works perfectly until now. the problem with the new core is that the ground seems totally insufficient - even when i ground all analog ports directly on the core i get a lot of feedback from them.

is fine - 4.9 sometiems 4.8. i even switched it on a few times with the multimeter attached to make sure that there is no "peak" going on or something like this. i connected this new din to my old v2 core and it works perfectly fine - so it seems that something with my new core is damn wrong. but there is not much that i can check - voltages are perfectly fine.

o how great - now it seems that not my torch but my core is killing everything - a few seconds ago the next optocoupler died - put in a new one, works. how great - i have a killer core

okay i'm totally down on this thing here... i just finished another din with a fresh batch of 165's, the iron grounded and used sockets this time so the 165's didn't even touch the iron itself. look what i get on the screen when pressing a button: i really don't know what happened here - any hints ?

http://www.techgsm.hu/Soldering_Station_ZD98,3765.html it has something like a grounding pin which i'm not sure what to do ? connect to the core while soldering or to something in my room like a radiator? but still - i mean before that i had this totally simple soldering iron just without control of anything and 40watts which is way too much and i didn't use sockets then too and what ? no problems at all. i even sometimes soldered something with the core on and nothing happened - eventually sparks when accidently touching the +5v and ground and reseting the core. back then i was like totally impressed about the durability of the core and all the parts of the ucapps system. but now, as i said - everything goes bogus. ok i have NO IDEA if the 165's are dead - but i mean i have 4 din plates stuffed with 165's from different batches and they all seem totally down...

nope - got them from another source - mines are 74hc165n what really grinds my gears is that i had a batch of old 74ls165n which were 100 % compatible and never had a problem with it - and they are all dead too. how do you test your chips ? with a multimeter ? it's totally impossible that i wrecked 13 chips...

i don't have a meter just a unscaled pot. it has 50 watts but i use around half of it. i am very careful when soldering chips without sockets and try to heat up the legs only shortly. but i guess temperature isn't an issue - before that i had a 40watt unregulated iron and no problems with it altough it burned tin like hell. are grounding problems possible? for example might it be that the plug in my wall is ungrounded ?

yeah i already changed the subject - of course an iron. it's like one of those more professional "stations" where you have a base with an iron holder and a heat-regulator. it has stickers all over it with some passed atests and so on.

so i am very afraid now. as some of you could read in a bunch of my topics in the last week - i had some major problems with all m midibox projects lately and weird, totall random bugs. yesterday i realised that the only thing that i have changed in midiboxing during the last weeks is my torch - i bought a new one and suddenly everything god out of control. all of my soldered din boards seem dead. interconnections are fine though. so it seems the chips are dead. that made me think. is it possible that my torch might be a chip killer ?

i guess that shorts would produce much more random sounds than this. but in my case it sounds like in my preview every time. a pity i don't have another sid for troubleshooting. i must hit the town and get one to be sure.

i have made a small audio example: http://maxnet.org.pl/~mateo/martin/troubleshooting.mp3 i think that this might be the best way to show what's wrong with the box. sorry for the bad quality of the sid but i have a quite long audio cable attached to it so you can hear the hum.

which problem are you reffering to ?

YYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWW !!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT WORKS IT WORKS IT WORKS !! um... or does it? okay now thorsten have you ever encountered something like this: it seems that i have either found a bug or i have a lot of faulty 595's: i did the interconnection test again - i drove pin a0 but instead of 5 volt at pin a0 i got 2,5 volt at pin 2. then i drove pin a4 and it was perfectly fine. now the wicke thing - i changed back to driving pin a0 and guess what - stable 5 volt at pin a0? might this be a bug or is this a rather hardware related thing?? also - i came to the conclusion that i might have gotten it right much earlier but never realised it because - patch 1.lead patch and patch 2.techno pwm aren't playing at all ! the rest is quite ok. is this right? do those patches require more hardware? also a few patches further don't work too. very weird. some patches also sound quite awful i just realised - just some clicks or plucks. UPDATE: in fact those patches which seemed not to play at all actually play but with a very low amplitude...

this thing is trying to drive me nuts ! it seems that in fact - my midi usb interface went bogus. i switched to another interface (built into an emu 1616 soundcard) and i don't get any errors anymore. i even realised the fact why the usb device might have stopped working. i will later make another topic about it so a few people might get aware of this or so the search function might show it up. - as i'm also a gamer - i overclocked the polling rate of my usb port from standard 125hz to 1000hz so my mouse would be more accurate. - all other things connected to usb seemd to work pretty fine until now. it seems that usb interfaces might have problems working with sysex and midi data once you do this "overclocking". back to the sid - it's a pain in the ass. the software side now works perfectly but the sid just doesn't sing. the testtone stopped working too. it's a complete mess. and it seems a totally random problem. after i switched the midi interfaces i put a fresh pic into the socket which was blank only with the bootstrap loader on it and still nothing. the thing gets more weird when i mention that all parts are fixed stable so the cause is definately no loose cable or bad soldering. it seems i have no other option than trying too look for another sid chip and test it. if you might have another option for this thorsten i would be very glad to hear it but i guess you did all you can do remotely. cheers and thank you !