thetimboroni

Stryd - nothing happens when I switch the ABC lines. However, after rewiring the whole thing I now have A0, A3, A5, and A6 working. If you recall, earlier I had A1, A2, A5, and A6 working.... so while the same number of pots work... this indeed progress in that I have something new responding!

haha yea i know... but like i said i just wanna test one out.

Hey, I have reached the point of desperation. Some of you have been reading and responding to my thread called "weird pot situation." Well I have tried countless things to get my box to work, and now i'm desperate. I'm desperate because I have to present this for a grade on Thursday. While some of the pots work (a very few "some"), I would love for all of it to work. The only thing I have not tried w/ this box is a new PIC. I'm thinking somehow it got damaged along the way and has something to do w/ my situation. Now here's where hopefully someone can help me - I need a pre-burned PIC asap so I can test it. This requires a very nice person to overnight one to me. I am fully prepared to pay all costs of shipping and whatever the chip cost you. This might seem outrageous and I'm somewhat expecting most of you to laugh at me... but like I said... I'm desperate. Having said that - can anyone help me? Thanks. tim.

well i've tried all the pots now... still can't get anything but A5 and A6 to work. this really doesn't make any sense. it's boggling my mind.

http://despair.com/problems.html haha. at least my troubles are helping someone right?

let the tedious project begin!

"Test" what? for what? As of now I'm still only able to use A5 and A6 but all 8 of them work (as in...all the A5's and all the A6's work fine... but nothing else)

hello again. i know it's been a couple weeks but i've been out of town and working at the Master's Tournament. I finally got a chance to try out Smash's "touch test" today and here's the results: ....all 8 function as they should. Meaning - grounded = no random events. open = random events ("jitters" as Smash says) edit: i also checked the ground from the gameport to the core. Change in voltage is .001 so that doesn't seem to be the problem either.

:-\ not too glad to hear that. bummer.

So after soldering and resoldering time and time again, I got to the point where I was actually worse off than I started. I was just getting random MIDI events. Finally today I got something to respond again. Oddly enough, though, now I'm just getting response from A5 and A6. Having said that here's another piece of info that might help troubleshoot: When I turn the pots on A5 and A6, the "midi channel" box in Serge's MIDIbox program constantly changes until I stop moving the pot. There is no pattern to what "channel" it starts and ends on either. Ex. - It will intially be on MIDI channel 10. While I turn it random numbers appear in the box. When I stop turning it, it lands on 16. Then when I turn it back, it lands on 14. Turn it again, it lands on 12... Having said that, what exactly does "MIDI channel" have to do w/ it? Thanks, tim. (And yea, as soon as I have a chance I'll do your test Smash!) ;)

alright, I'm confused there. If I disconnect COREJ5 I'm just gonna get random MIDI events, so how and I supposed to do this test?

MRE, Thanks a bunch for puttin' so much effort into this. It's alot for me to take in, still being new to this, but I will look over your posts several times and keep checking stuff. Thanks. tim.

Yes. The positive terminal is connected to the trace. SB Live MIDI UART gameport. It used to. Only for short period of time though until I found the problem to be a short on J8. I'll run the other test you suggested as soon as I get a chance. Thanks for putting in your effort though w/ that chart! tim.

Yes, all the multiplexers are connected correctly on J6 of both the core and the two AIN modules. This was actually the first thing I had to fix b/c it was causing tons of random midi events. beh... I guess I'll just keep looking at this thing. I can't lose hope. This will be conquered! (any other advice?) tim.

what post? I assume you meant A0 <-> A1. I did that before and like I said, the pot that responds then doesn't respond, and vice versa for the other pot. In other words, A0 never responds, and A1 always responds no matter what pot is attached to it. So what does that mean? I have 63 pots on 2 boards. thanks again for the help. i'm still really confused about this. i'm praying that one day i'll wiggle something and it will work. haha in my dreams maybe. tim.

Ok so here's some more info after further troubleshooting. -Every pot has 5v across it -I tested the configuration like TK suggested above, and got the same results (no response from the ones in the drawing w/ X's, and response from the ones w/ checks) -I know the pots themselves are good b/c if I switch the wires of a working pot w/ a non-responding pot, the "non-responding pot" now responds. -I tried wiring the non-responding pots directly to their corresponding pin on the AIN chip (thinking maybe the leads on the pcb were bad) and still got nothing. -A1, A2, A5, and A6 are the only ports responding. The rest do not respond. I'm sorry to have confused you. I made another sketch to show what I really meant. Everything is wired in columns, I just meant they were responding in rows... see what I mean? Any more suggestions of things to check would be great. Thanks for the input so far. tim.

No signal at all for that channel. What should I be checking as far as the configuration files for the MB? I'm using the MIDIBox64 editor. thanks. i'll check the chips individually.

so thanks to the troubleshooting tips i finally got "some" pots working. now i've got a weird situation though. in the attached picture, the x's represent pots that don't work, and the checks represent pots that do. as you can see by the blue/brown wires (common/+5v), all of them are wired in columns, not rows. the weird thing is, the pots only work in certain rows... what are some things i could be looking for? has this ever happened to anyone before? thanks. tim.

Well I'm only getting 5v at J1 then around 3v at IC3 and nothing at J2....

ok new problem... While uploading MIOS I had no other modules connected to the core. After I uploaded MIOS to the PIC, I soldered all the other PCBs to the core. Now when I give power to the core, MIOS does not come on (I get no initial SysEx message), and IC3 is extremely hot. Most likely a bad sign. Why would it be hot? Thanks, tim.

YAY! I played my synth this morning at church, and when I went to plug in my Midiman 1x1 I got nothing. So I ran back home and got and old midi cable that plugged into my game port. it worked. "Hm. Maybe this is the root of my problems w/ my MIOS controller..." So I just got home... first try MIOS uploaded! Thanks for all the help and troubleshooting pages! Even though it was simple there were a few things wrong I had to fix along the way (i.e. a reversed Diode, not enough voltage across the PIC...). Now I'm gonna cross my fingers on the application.

Well I've got the midi ports mounted straight to the pcb so there's no room for polarity error. (right?) On another note: I'm trying the loopback test (shorting the Rx/Tx pins), and don't think I'm doing it right. When I take the PIC out, there is no SysEx request from the out... therefore MIOS studio doesn't recognize the core... so how am I supposed to test for loopback?

ok i still get no flicker. now what does that tell me?

Alright, I'm really really trying to figure this out. I have read many posts where people have had problems uploading MIOS and their problems have been solved so i'm hoping for the same! The first page I looked was the debug page. I have done tests and the only things I'm sure of are that the optocoupler is fine (b/c i ordered two more since people had that problem often), that my polarity is fine on the midi ports, and taht my resistors in Test 1 are fine. Now I'm on Test IN3. I'm not exactly sure what this test tells me. When connected to 26 and 31, the LED is lit. However I don't understand what this means: "So long as single MIDI events are recieved, you won't notice a difference, but with a continuous SysEx stream the LED should begin to flicker." How do I get a continuous SysEx stream? Is that simply the dump request from the Out every 2 seconds? If so, then the LED does not flicker, so what does that tell me? Like I said, I'm really just confused as to what this test is supposed to tell me. Please help Thanks, tim.

after more searching i finally found a thread where TK explained that my above post is correct. The only trick is that J8-10 don't have to be used, you can instead just use J7 for all of the pots.