Jump to content

TheAncientOne

Programmer
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    726

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    2

 Content Type 

Blog Entries posted by TheAncientOne

  1. TheAncientOne
    The missing socket arrived this morning. Full of will power I waited until after the days work was done before getting out the now rapidly declining box of bits. Socket in, C64 PSU tested, 9V tested good, so was ready to go. Small glitch until I realised that I had to change the core ID in MIOS Studio too, then all loaded smoothly. Fitted the 6852's one pair at a time, and ran through the sound banks, with a silly grin just getting wider on my face.

    Still got a minor bit of front panel work to do, (3 spacers came unglued), and a little bit of fault tracing - the mix out doesn't seem to be working, but all is good, and the only last bits I need are 4 knobs for the feedback pots.

    Now a lot of reading and learning to do. This thing is a small cased sound mainframe and I want to be able to drive it as it deserves.. Love the way my Korg Kontrol 49 keyboard loops up to a lot of the front panel controls too.

    So very grateful to TK and Wilba for this.
  2. TheAncientOne

    Closer

    By TheAncientOne,

    Still doing more stuff for other people than myself, but got another run at the MB6582. 3 parts to get, and it turns out that the ebay seller with the displays didn't ship what he thought. I have a 'plain, vanilla' black on green display, when I thought I was getting green on black 'negative'. I'll update once it's working. I had a reasonable idea for the display wiring, and put a single-in-line cable mount socket, (the kind you crimp pins to the wire, then insert into a housing), on the cable, and a 16 pin 90 degree pin header on the display. That means the fiddly display wiring only has to be done once, and I can change displays by simply plugging another one in. Pots for feedback were from Smallbear, and are neat, small Taiwan Alphas. I used heat shrink sleeving over the soldered pins to make the wiring more robust.

    I Used some salvaged 2 pin computer pin connectors, from old PC cases for the 5V connections to the power LED, and teh fan, and a 3 pin one for the audio out. I have done connectors for all the I/O and the control surface connections, so that main board could be removed safely, if I need to work on it.

    I hope to run it up next week, once my next batch of work is over.
  3. TheAncientOne

    Back in the Groove

    By TheAncientOne,

    Finally getting back to building music gear. Trying to do a bit every night; averaging 30% at the moment. MB6582, nearly complete. Must take the 'wooden spoon' for slowest assembly from the initial batch, but #31 is on it's way. Wired and tested the LCD, last night, only to find I'd mis-read an advert ages ago, and got CrystalFontz normal, (black on green) displays. Will go with it for now, but will probably go for Optrex when I get the chance, (they take way less current too).

    Chips burning session tonight. PIC4685 all burned, MIOS Loaded and basic test done. Reading through the notes, and using MIOS studio makes me realise just how much hard work TK and others have put into this. All went very smoothly.

    Started edits for my small SID box, having got the panel wiring laid out. I got lucky on ebay with some Densitron 'mini' 2x40 displays, which match some old 'Digitast' style switches I got with some scrap, so a 2x40, 10 button design resulted. I can see myself compiling that a few times before I get it right though!
    Mini production line
    And the results
    Tested - working showing Densitron 2x40 small display.



  4. TheAncientOne

    Returning

    By TheAncientOne,


    Construction.
    The last few years have not been good. A wonderful offer to do a masters degree, in 2013,  came unstuck in a mess involving sciatica and the death of child for whom I was 'adopted family'. Depression followed. So it took a while to get going again. I've popped back in a few times, only to find I had no time.
    Now I'm making time and getting some of the stuff I began contructing into playable units.
    I've bultl quite a lot for other people in the last few years, to pay bills and keep going, like Psycox 'Syncussions', 'Jaspers', and various modules. I've done quite a lot of repairs, too. I even managed to do up a few 'donated' units for myself
    I've done a few MIDIbox units I can post pictures of: the GM5 and Nils' 5 channel version. My MB6582, which was the first MIDIbox project I finsished, in fact, and some test pieces.
    Now I'm about to use up one of my old core boards to make the old MIDI-CV, for my 5U system, I'm finally getting together. I have boards built, and the original AOUT board with it's Max 525s.
    So, todays small start was some banksticks.
    No major deal, a 1 hour project, from digging out some parts to looking at the end result. But it feels good. Something for my own gear again. MIDIbox feels different from kit building, more input is needed, and the sense of achievement is somehow greater as a result.
    So a quick 'hi' and a wave.
    And hopefully it won't be another 5 years between posts...
×
×
  • Create New...