hexman

Thanks for all the nice comments! Besides being a really fun and useful project, it's always fun to post your work for comments! As for some of the questions: The box and panel were all "homemade" - the front panel is 1/16" thick aluminum, machined out and much careful filing for the LCD panel. I have a counter sink bit I use to round off \ bevel the LED and button holes. Tactile switches are just the MOUSER ones and MOUSER buttons. Im using the large ones for my transport control in SONAR. Works really nice, and SONAR's ACT makes it REALLY easy to set up since you can basically map anything as a MIDI learn. I have most of the buttons for markers, transport, mute, etc. The top two rows of the encoders map to Dimension PRO and Rapture (both have midi learn). Still have to figure out how to program to get the LEDs on the tranport to on/off with a button push... The knobs are what kept me from posting for a long time! I searched and finally found (the two rows on the top 12 knobs) on eBay for 0.20 each! Very nice quality, and I didnt spend a fortune.

The wood is "recycled" from some of my other projects. Its mahogany with tung oil.

Tim / SmashTv Geez - its been so long since I posted that I got the T in TK aka Thorsten confused with Tim - sorry about that! Thanks to SmashTv and TK was what I mean to say! ;D

I FINALLY got my midibox 64E done! Took a long time, lots of work but worth it. Thanks to SmashTV and TK for their help troubleshooting my bootloader loss. I have it connected to Sonar controlling Dimension Pro and Rapture. Nice! Hope to get it working with ACT soon.

Geeez... I found my stupid mistake. The DIN I used is from SMASHTV (great board and person BTW). It shows J8/J9 2x5 pin DIL on the CORE and a J1 on the DIN. The instructions on the DIN hookup at uCapps all have what appears to be 5 pins in-line. So I incorrectly assumed that I just connect to the single row (ie 5 pins of J9) of the SmashTV board. Wrong!! You use a 10 pin cable to the J8/J9 to the J1 on the DIN. Working!!! Now I can safely proceed with the rest of construction!

Yes - thanks I'll give it a try!

Anyone? Sorry for being so dense....

It's the newbee again.... I now have (with SmashTv's great help) my CORE working! I finished my two DINx4 and want to check along the way. I measured voltages on the DINX4 at the pins etc and everything checks out. I have midibox64e.syx loaded. I connected my DINx4 to core (J9-J1) and want to check to see if buttons / encoders work - I have searched the site but cannot find this info on initial checkout. The core boots up, and then shows: INt:1 _ _ _ _ _ _ 1 | CC# 0 [ 97 ] Its stays the same regardless of button pushes, encoder turns etc. Can I not use a standard app (using MIOS studio) setup_midibox16e.HEX to check out just one button or encoder? just to see if its working? I also tried loading setup_midibox64.HEX from the zip file midibox64e_v2_2.zip (which I thought was midibox64e??) That one I get midimonitor messages (alot) but I believe this is actually just plain midibox64??? If so it's confusing since it is in the midibox64e_v2_2.zip. I also have used the vmidibox64E.exe to upload midibox64e.syx - with same results as with setup_midibox16e.hex. Can someone give me a hint or at least key words to search on?

Interesting - based on you readings I am suspecting the caps or crystal as well. Is there any way to directly check the crystal - I have access to a o-scope if required. Smash has indeed contacted me and made a more than generous offer to assist with troubleshooting. I think I will take him up on his offer unless I can verify the crystal. BTW- I did get a chance to look at all the solder joints under 7-15x microscope and they all looked fine. No lifted pads or breaks either.

Not shure if this is right for "current drain" but I measured voltage across a 10 ohm resistor in one of the power transformer lines to J1 and have about 90 mV AC across the 10ohm resistor (Im using an AC power supply to the bridge) - so I'm getting about 9 mA (minus convert to dc). I'll pulled the pic and its 75mv across the 10 ohms (7.5 mA). Sorry - I made a mistake in my original report. RC3 (pin 18) is indeed 5 v as is RA4 (pin 6), RD5 (pin 28) as well as the specified in the trouble shooting (mclr pin1, vdd pin 11, RD1 pin 20, RX pin 26, vdd pin 32). VSS is 0V But TX pin 25 is indeed about 0.8V Matt

Thanks and i PROMISE not to use caps!! I just checked all voltages on the PIC. Except for the pins that are specified to have either 5v or 0 (ground) as called out in the troubleshooting guide they all measure approx 0.75 v (including the TX pin). I checked this on the PIC not the pcb to make sure I was getting real voltage at the pic. I checked ohms between each pic pin (on the PIC not the pcb) and the resistance is 4 or greather meg ohms between each pin (should be no connected solder blobs between pins). Hope this helps... I really do appreciate the help.

I plan on looking at the whole thing tomorrow under 7x-15x microscope to check solder joints etc. I plan on tracing ALL the tracks etc to make sure of the connections. Im only trying to understand the possible causes of the low TX - if it could be a bootloader thing then I wont find anything until I either get another one from SMASHTV or have him check no matter how hard I look. Hence my question if it COULD be a bootloader issue. Thanks for your help.

by PIC not running - do you mean it may not have a bootloader or physically damaged?? or could be either???

they're all about 4.6 meg ohms BTW - thanks for the quick reply and all the help so far. I'm sure we'll get it sorted...

ok - so I'm an idiot but HUH? I did look at the path from the midi i/o connector to the TX pin and its 220 (just the resistor resistance) and >4meg to ground.