TheAncientOne

Did you find this too? http://www.colinfraser.com/tr909/my909.htm

Take a look at http://www.introspectiv.eclipse.co.uk/. On the site there are PDF's with the circuit diagrams. A bit of dilligent Googling wil turn up the originals too. Having done a lot of work with modulars in days gone by, I can say that it doesn't take that much parameter changing to loose the 'drum' sound altogether. I'd certainly try playing with a few parameters mildly, (like you can on the free 'ReBirth' - you can get it here http://www.rebirthmuseum.com/). But as much fun and effect can be had by post processing the sound, through controlled delays and filters. Best wishes

Looks like I'm a little off the spec curve here. Transcend http://www.transcendusa.com/ are offering 'industrial grade' Compact Flash with 2,000,000 program/erase cycles, so a swap file might not be that bad here. they also support so-called 'wear levelling' algorithms, but that might mean a special driver. If I was really keen, I'd be looking at the linux world for that. One other thought I've had is to use 2 drives, one dedicated as a swap drive, (easier in Linux), I've done this for a photographer's machine, dedicating a Western Digital 'Raptor' series SATA drive as the Photoshop swap disc. That way, if the swap drive dies, it's not the end of all your other data, it might even be possible to do some logging, (not too hard with the Linux journalling files systems, harder under Windows), and do a precautionary replacement at the life point. Or wait until you get swap file error and replce it at that point. If it improves the way it has been doing, the second one might be the last one you buy. HTH Mike

Another point. Compact flash is the best if you can get it. The adapters need no drivers, (a CF card looks like an IDE drive to the PC), and because it is an ATAPI 16 bit interface, it's quite fast. MMC and SD both use a 'short' serial type interface and are much much slower. THis is why all the pro cameras still use CF. I can get a brand new CF <=> PCMCIA adapter here in the UK for £5.16. If you have a supply problem I'd be glad to help. The same people do the older slower (x66 speed) 1 Gigabyte CF cards for £7.04, and the latest 4Gigabyte fast (x 133 speed) cards for £35.24. http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Products.ASP?CatID=13&Category=Flash+Memory&Thumbnails=yes I've just been given a Vaio P3 with busted panel hinges and no hard disc. Somewhere I've got a PCMCIA SCSI card, so it might get recycled as a rackmount to run the edit software for the Akai S3000xl I just grabbed off Ebay - the guy was local and I got it for £97, and no carriage costs. I wonder if I can run that off a CF? Mike

Hi Sasha I'm with you on the normal use of paper, but I use that technique a lot in the past to try out panel ideas. I still have a bench microprocessor power supply with a paper front panel from years ago - I never thought it worth spending the money on engraving. The secret to it's long life is that the paper, (Print from a BBC micro on a Dot Matrix!), is under a clear plastic over panel, held down by all the 4mm sockets. If I want a graphic or 'flowchart' style panel, as I will with some of my analogue stuff, then it's not that easy to get things like that engraved, and a colour print, under a protective film, or a mirror image print onto a clear film can look good. There are colour graphic effects that can only be printed too, like gradient tints, or, if you like the 'Aceed'/graffiti/Sk8r look. In the past, I did prototypes for engraved panels by drawing onto a foam cored mounting board, (I think it was called 'Foamex'), and mounting the controls directly on it. The first ones were done on a drawing board in Rotring film ink with draughting pens. Later I scored an old flat bed plotter and used that. As an aside, the plotter did well for ages until a servo amp failed and took the motor with it: Calcomp wanted £150 in 1985 for a spare, so I scrapped it. 3 months later, a customer in Manchester offered me another one that had been dropped during a move and was all bent, but still had two working servos. Isn't that a special case of Murphy's law? It was an A1 size flatbed. I could still use one of those today, htough Ilve in a smaller place now and definitely don't have the room. they could take a vinyl cutter, and I guess a small router. Perhaps I ought to build one of the DIY little CNC's, just enough to engrave and drill PCB's. Ther are enough designs out there. By the way, back on thread, I really like Chris's layout, and I wouldn't have thought it was laquered paper either. Mike

Perhaps sometimes called a Thermal Wax Transfer Printer'. There are also 'Dye Sublimation Printers'. These t use secondary colour films, They will do beautiful opaque colours with full page bleed (meaning they can cover the entire sheet with print, and leave no plain border), but they will not print white. In UK you can buy the older Tektronix 'Phaser' printers very cheaply second hand: the reason is simple, a full load of 'ammunition' for the thing costs about 300 Euro! There is a later type that uses 'sold ink', cheaper to load, (though not a lot), and each colour is loaded seperately, which keeps cots down, though on the otherhand, they are best left powered up, because of the amount of ink that they waste on the power up cleaning cycle. A friend saved over £100 in 12 months by putting his on a UPS - mains dropouts in the office at night were chewing through his ink supply. The white ink thing is wierd. They only seem to be available for big commercial unit, and are often a UV curing ink, as used in silk screening. If I wanted to do this at home, I'd go the silkscreen route, or maybe it would be kind of neat to recycle an old large format Epson inkjet, but load it with the special black inks that one can get for photographers to print in black and white. Lyson are the most famous. The problem is that opaque inks are hard to make and keep stable, The liquid white inks usually contain Titanium Dioxide in suspension, and if you are not careful they settle out, so need agitating - specialist printer again. Same goes for metallics, you can get silver ink too, but the same problems apply. The only type that might be usable on the small scale are the wax ribbon transfer type, used in a lot of bar code printers, though the only white ink ribbon printerI knew of was made by Alps, and is now discontinued. So we're back at 'waste lots of ink or toner', or go to a specialist. I have just found some packets of white letraset, but I really don't know if I can put up with that fiddly approach. I was more patient as a kid...... Mike

Important warning. Only do this if you can make your system run without a swap file (virtual memory). Any flash memory has a write limit, (the number of times a cell can be re-wrtitten). For normal files this is unlikely to be exceeded, for the swap file, writing many times an hour, this can soon hit the limit on most written cells. As an example, a friend set up a smoothwall firewall using compact flash. The card failed in about a month. Newer flash may have more cycles available, but until it get into the millions, a swap file will still wear it out. Mike

There is a really good Theremin kit available from Jaycar in Australia - and the do ship to europe - I've built two and they sound quite good. It's a full kit, with case and everything. they have a UK website: Theremin is at: http://www.jaycarelectronics.co.uk/productView.asp?ID=KC5295&CATID=25&keywords=&SPECIAL=&form=CAT&ProdCodeOnly=&Keyword1=&Keyword2=&pageNumber=&priceMin=&priceMax=&SUBCATID=557 Hope this helps Mike

I got a pack of the 22nF 1% Mylar caps from the states, if a few UK members need some, memo me. Yours at cost plus postage. Mike

I found a Los Alamos paper, that suggests a failure mode of delamination of one of the 'back' contact films occurring at around 1000 hours. Other papers suggest main failure in the blue PLED systems. There is little on the web, so I'm beginning to worry that there might be some as yet unreported toxicity in the chemicals used - a picture from one of the PLED printer makers shows an operative in a full suit, though this may be for clean room reasons. My view is to go for one of the newer transmissive LCD's with the latest backlighting. Mike

More Piracy on the IC's http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/bonobo-conspiracy/?i=266 Serious Warning, very geeky highly addictive cartoon strip Mike

Brilliant Wilba, and thanks for clearing this one up, a bit baffled for a moment. I've actually got some 22nF polystyrenes, but they're HUGE. Near to this topic, I wonder if Smash might like to put a slightly bigger cap area, perhaps with a few extra holes, on his PCB, to facilitate experimentation? The present board is a bit of a tight fit for anything other than 2.5mm pitch caps. Mike

Now I'm confused..... The Commodore 6581 datasheet I have, says 2200pF = 0.0022uF, or 2n2 You're using 22n = 22000p or 0.022uF Data sheet for 6582 says 6800pF = 0.0068uF or 6n8 (Same for 8580) Have I got bad data sheets, Do we just prefer the sound of a lower filter cutoff? I guess the real answer is to hurry up and finish my Basic MIDIbox SID and do some tests. Edited to add - I've ordered a pack of the 22nF too, so if anyone in the UK needs a few, memo me. Mike

I've done this now and again, cutting the remote control receiver circuitry from old videos, bar graph meters from old cassette decks, things like that. For getting SMD chips off I use a hot air gun, (the type they seel for paint stripping). When harvesting chips for my MIDIbox FM, I just heat the opposite side of the old soundcard with the gun, over the chips I want, when the solder looks 'runny', I give the board a sharp tap, and a rain of chips falls off the other side. You need a covered surface, and I use an old welders glove, (asbestos eek!), to protect the hand holding the board. Works for me... Mike

From the original Commodore data sheet: For the non-mathematical 2.6E-5 = 0.0000026 To save calculation, using 2200 pF, (2200E-12 Farads), plugging in that value in gives 11.8KHz. NOTE: I've used a "." as a zero seperator. The English and the US use "." Europe uses ",", Which is why, if the story is true, an engineer at a large French music institution has a big polyester paper weight. It's probably the same mythical person said "Mikro Farad", to a German engineer, and ended up with a very small bicycle. I can't find an 'opened out' schematic, showing the filter, but I guess it's some form of twin integrator loop, (clue in the text), so the capacitors must match or the thing might go unstable at one end of the range. Mike

Check with a testmeter - they are usually already connected. Mike

http://www.nxp.com/pip/SAA1064T.html#pricing How about this for BPM display. Might take some load off the CPU. Mike

In the type you mention, 2 is usually the slider. 1 and 3 are the ends. A quick check with the ohms range of a testmeter will sort it out. In this case, 2 would go the the AIN, and 1 and 3 to positive and negative, depending upon which end was which. HTH Mike

You need one of these: Mike

Thanks Stryd! I've done some bits in a similar way - some old aircraft illuminated panels seem to be a thick screen print black over the acrylic, perhaps they didn't expect some fighters to have a long service life... That section on colours and fonts is pure gold. I've also used decent quality colour prints, double sided laminated, then glued on to an alloy backplate using spray mount glue. If you have the right kind of laminating pouches, the glue is clear, and 2 layers can act as an LCD window. This is not road worthy, but OK for prototyping. For bigger prints I'm lucky, because the guy that took my profile pic has a pro grade, roll fed, large format photo printer. I can send him a PDF and get actual size panel art back. I'm a firm beleiver in protyping panels. No matter how much you plan, there is alwsys one knob not quite where you want it, or in the case of some mixers. about 200... Mike

But it hasn't got any labels....... :o Mike

Just had another idea. Paul Maddox had a design called MIDI2SDS, which provided variable height triggers from MIDI data, It was an 8 channel unit. I think all the info is on: http://www.elby-designs.com/midi2sds/midi2sds-about.htm and it doesn't look that expensive to build. Hope this helps - you could just run one or more from the one of sequencers normal MIDI ports. I might try this myself. Hope this helps MIke

I think the Oz distributer is:http://www.awave.com.au/product_info.php?products_id=2353&osCsid=f16a69fef059e30abfecb7accdabed44 though how to audition them is another problem. Mike

OK. I hold my hand up - I went and looked, then looked at the price. Now, having had a nice cup of coffee with a shot of brandy I can say yes - way cool, and they should be at that price! On a serious note, they do look very interesting, but I'm in the UK, which is perhaps why I hadn't heard of them. On the 'stretch the budget till it squeaks' line, I could perhaps afford a pair of Dynaudio BM6A's, though for now, it's going to be some cheapish nearfields that will reflect typical target systems, and some decent cans for the monitoring/QA. When there isn't a law or rule of physics to suit a situation, I used to have 'Smiths Rule', (there were lots of them), friends changed this to 'Profs Rule', and one, invented long ago was: Headphones to speakers is about a 10:1 cost ratio: a £100 pair of cans will sound as good as a £1000 pair of speakers. Like all rules, it tends to break down at the limits. Somewhere, no doubt, are a pair of handcrafted audiophile headphones, with pure unobtainium diaphragms, oxygen free monomolecular silver cables, assembled in pure. still air conditions by virginal Japanese maidens, only available to customers who have crawled to the dealers on their hands and knees and costing more than a pair of Genelec 1036A's....... but if you want these, then I can sell you a very good bridge to listen on, and Stryd might just be able to find you a tiny quantity of esoteric ear lubricant distilled from rare Australian snakes. The CAT 5 cable idea seems to be catching on for small units - I've heard one or two references, before. I personally like the idea of having the amps near or built in to the speakers, getting rid of the cable as much as possible. On a minor audiophile kick, I've been looking at a few of the on-line headphone amp designs. All look cheap enough to build, so I might have a little fun auditioning some of them. Mike .

Sounds like a plan to me. BTW I have a drawing for the PAIA "Hip Bass DRum", though I've forgotten where I got it from. If I can find it, I'll post the URL, or could email a copy of the PDF. It's the cheapest 'moddable' bass drum module I've ever heard, and it has about 3 Euro's worth of bits in it, and nothing you can't find easily. Have you checked out the http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=6331.0 analogue drum modules thread? Mike