m00dawg

Just to close the book on this topic, I found 220 Ohm to be quite nice with my old control surface (using SmashTV's yellow LEDs). I would guess my previous dim LED woes were due to some issue with the previous board and/or the power supply. It looks great and they're plenty bright (but not too bright) to be quite usable.

Figured out the answer! It's the CC button on the control surface, duh! Of note, for those that haven't dove through this part of the manual, it is for the Knobs Assignments. On the MB6582 that would be the 5 envelope knobs - the ones below the matrix - when you have Control set to Knob. I only got as far as to look at teh CC events in Midi-Ox so haven't actually tried to use them yet.

Yes it is! In my last attempt to build an MB6582, I never got it stable enough to actually mess with the control surface :P So it's been a lovely treat! Really looking forward to using it in earnest for some music!

Had at least one person mention they cannot create a new account on the forums. I tried to create a test account just now on both Firefox and Chrome and was also unable to do so. The Captcha consistently says it fails (and there is no way to retry) even when it appears correct. I put this in news since it's not related to MidiBox hardware directly and wasn't sure where else to put it, but though I would raise the issue for visibility as well. More info is on the Discord.

Finally got my MB6582 working after a VERY LONG time. At any rate, now that I have a full control surface for the MBSID (which by the way is quite intuitive - major kudos to TK, Wilba, and others that worked on it - it's just beautiful!) - I was trying to see what knobs, if any, would be sent to MIDI OUT. Since these are encoders, I figured they wouldn't be the best option for knob tweaking so it's not a huge deal if there is no way to handle knob output over MIDI - I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something. I thumbed through the manual on ucapps and didn't see much mention of it but wanted to make sure? Random aside, I've been working on this so long, when I finally connected the audio and fired up the ASID-patched sidplay2, I'll admit I had a few tears of joy then. Been such a long road, largely due to struggling with connecting the base and CS boards. Long story there but I can't thank the folks that figured out the JST solution enough - that was a game changer for me. I may have never finished the synth were it not for that!

Update, I'm rocking the Noctua (NF-A4x10, 5V) and am running it off the 5V header. At full speed it is a tad loud but does seem to keep the SIDs rather cool. I do have heatsinks on them but the heatsinks without the fan get warm (not hot) to the touch after some time of running. As expected the ones furthest from the fan are warmer than the ones next to it. All of them seem to be cooler to the touch though. So far it doesn't seem to make a huge impact to the 5V rail. I'm using the 5V switcher often recommend, although I am using it in an external power supply I made and am supplying the 6582 with 9 and 5V directly. So I can't speak to other power configurations. I also haven't checked to see if it has an impact on noise. Really I just got the dern thing assembled and in fact one thing that may change the temps is I lost the case screws so the top isn't fully attached. In any case, if you need a pretty stout fan the Noctua seems like a good choice.

Quick update on this, the method worked wonderfully! I've got my MB6582 up and running using this method. The only thing I had to do we Dremmel the backside of the top half a bit (in the front) as my right angled connections were a bit too tall (the JSTs are on the baseboard and I'm using the JST cables though couldn't find the right angled JSTs outside of AliExpress and figured that would be a long wait). Apart from that, it's working beautifully!

Ah all good points! I managed to jam the resistors into the holes enough to test the control surface (carefully) and interestingly enough, the LEDs seemed brighter than they were previously. So wondering if something was up with my old baseboard maybe. I'm using the switching regulator often recommended here for the 5V, although I have it in an external enclosure such that voltage sag may be an even bigger issue for me perhaps. I'll have to see. So far so good though, but I don't yet have the baseboard fully populated (which may also explain why the LEDs are brighter perhaps if voltage sag becomes an issue). I also didn't add in C3 and C4 and I might opt to go ahead and do that in case that gives me a bit more oomphf for transients.

Curious what resistor values folks are using with their LEDs? I'm using SmashTV's yellow LEDs and found that with 220 Ohm resistors, they seem to be a tad dim. I can tell which ones are illuminated but it tends to blend in. Since I had to solder up a new baseboard (which is working yay!) I was thinking of using something more like 100 Ohm. These are the values I calculated with the new amber LEDs I bought (in the event I couldn't repair my existing control surface). I tested the resistor values on both (with a constant 5V rather than a matrix) and it seems to be subtle for both SmashTV's LEDs and these amber ones (they're from Mouser). The right answer is to use pin strips and just try it :) But wanted to see if anyone else was using values this low? I can't find examples of that on the wiki - seems like 220 ohm is the floor for most folks. I think for normal cases that probably might be ok, but since the 6582 is using a scan matrix bumping up the brightness a bit might be nice (assuming it won't significantly reduce the LED lifetimes of course). Any thoughts? As an aside I was quite happy that, so far, my control surface board seems to be in ok shape. It, like my old baseboard that I had to finally give up on, had some lifted pads due to using the terrible ribbon cables I originally used (twice!) for it. The new JST method of connecting the boards seems to be working wonderfully! So far the buttons and all but one of the knobs seems to work. One of the knobs is counting down no matter which way you turn it (a problem I think I had before) but otherwise, surprisingly given all the pads I've lifted off the CS board, everything seems to be working!

ooooh the thumbwheel is a great idea! Adds even more cool-points and polish to the build too!

Yes I agree with Hawkeye, beautiful work! Curious, how taxed does all this make the 5V rail? I was looking at LED choices (should I be unable to repair my old control surface and have to solder together a new one) and the number of LEDs on the panel given each LED's mA had things at like 2.7A if I did my math right. That's well above the 1A max of a typical 7805? I'm using the fancy 5V switching regulator now often recommended but back when the MB6582 first hit the scene as it were, a regular 'ole 7805 was the norm. Seems like it worked fine as far as I have seen, but curious? Sorry kinda hijacking the thread here but since the LED knobs add even more power draw, thought I might ask the question. Definitely has me thinking about doing lighted LED knobs though, they're awesome!

Got it, awesome thanks for all the info!

Yeah your price list (thank you again by the way!) had an Adafruit RGB LCD on there as I recall. I wasn't sure where I might want to place the pots. If I want one of the standard 6 or so colors, I could use just resistors (though I think an amber would require a mix). Their inverted 20x4 definitely looks nice!

I hadn't known about this project until like last week. Finally saw the overview video and this is VERY VERY cool! Highly impressive, kudos folks! Adding this to my "I wanna build" list :)

Since I'm working on my MB6582 again (and by working I mean mostly building a new one since I've lifted several pads off my old baseboard trying to get the control surface wiring working), I was thinking of updating the LCD. I have one with an amber/orange background on dark letting now. I know for a while there the inverted LCDs were something CrystalFontz sold, but I only see a few color combinations. Adafruit sells a 20x4 display that's RGB but I'm not sure how I could use it with the MB6582? Curious what folks are doing these days with their LCDs? At this point I'll just be happy to have a working MB6582 haha so aesthetics are maybe not quite as important but still thought I'd ask around.

As fine as one can expect in 2020 :P But hey for all the crap 2020 was it at least got me back to working on my MB6582! Although by "working on it again" it's mostly populating new boards :P The new JST connectors are a game changer! So here's hoping I can finally have a functional 6582 after t....err some amount of years ;) Ah...hmm...I was asking as I tried to find some on Mouser (US) but wasn't able to find ones that look like they would fit. I am using the slide on ones at the moment but was thinking something more low profile and with less mechanical concerns might be better.

Heya Hawkeye where'd you get those heatsinks? Back to the fans, I use Noctua 40mm in my Deepmind since the stock fans were loud. Prusa 3D printers also use Noctua 40x10's (though I replace those with more powerful fans). At any rate, thought I haven't tested it, my plan is to try out a a 5V Noctua for my MB6582.

Quick heads up on this for anyone that might wanna do this. I had some trouble compiling the above version for Linux Mint 19.3. Couple things you might need to do: ./configure --without-residfp This was giving me a weird "you need to be on a 32-bit platform at least" error (I'm on 64-bit, Ryzen) but we don't need this for outputting to an MBSID anyway The makefiles do not add -pthread. There's probably a more elegant way to fix this, but I just edited src/Makefile and added `-pthread` to the end of CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS and that seemed to avoid the errors You may need to symlink /usr/local/lib64/vice to /usr/local/lib if installing system wide (otherwise stuff like keyboard input doesn't work) You need the ROMs of course! Doing all this allowed me to bust out the HVSC intros included in the collection. Seems to work like a champ!

Yes I know this post is 1...err some number of years old, we don't need to do the math (I'm not old!). Anyways can confirm this works on modern Linux (I'm running Linux Mint 19.3 which is based on Ubuntu 18 or 20 I believe). I haven't been able to use my sammichSID to rock some real SID tunes in quite some time! Very cool, thanks aTc!

Self quoting myself and resurrecting an ancient thread but of note ^ yeah all that came back to bite me hard. I've had my MB6582 in a box for years now and while I want to still build a rackmount version, I'm having to remake some of those board designs as they got lost somehow :( So in the meantime, thought it'd be better to try and resurrect my 6582. Alas with all the soldering and desoldering of cables and wires to the base and CS, I've pretty handily ruined chunks of the I/O section to the point I'm likely going to just build a new baseboard. I ordered a new CS board and parts as well just in case. Back to the heatsinks though, I was pondering going back to adhesives but couldn't find any readily available on Mouser that fit the profile. So I think I'll stick with the ones mentioned here. I've been using them in my sammichSID for years without issues. I was still worried about the bottom clips touching the legs. I was looking yesterday and one end slots into the socket but it can still be wiggled on the other end to the point the metal _might_ touch the legs, though it was hard to tell when looking closely. It's painted metal so some protection there but that's my only gripe with them. Unfortunately, the links in the original post are not correct so it would take a bit of digging to find them again I suspect.

Ah forgot about Delta being 6581 so yep that probably explains some of the differences there. Fortunately I was able to find some of my 6582 SIDs stuck in the back corner of one of my hardware parts drawers. Never got to use them much before the CS of my first MB6582 attempt started giving me issues :/ Even so it'd be fun to experiment around with some of these. Using these when one needs to work around the ADSR bug and such could be useful. The drum engine might be better fit for one of these over a real SID in some ways methinks. Anyways curious what you end up finding when you're able to compare to SwinSID Ultimate but yeah sounds like ARMSID is a super compelling option! I'd like maybe like one FPGASID but I agree it's cost prohibitive to populate an entire MB6582 with them. I know TK hinted at driving them with a CORE32 which sounds exciting!

Dang that's pretty impressive to my ears! Especially the baseline. Delta sounded good but maybe not quiiiite what I read when I bust that out on my C64 (though that's using a 6581). But super close! Seems like a pretty great alternative to real SIDs! Sorry if I missed it but does it fixed the ADSR bug or is that an optional toggle? As I recall, SwinSID fixes it (though I could be misremembering there)

Quick update, I finally had time to assemble and test it. Works like a champ so far! I still need to fix my MB6582 control panel wiring fiasco but everything otherwise powered on. Of note, when I checked the voltage from my 5V out on the board, it was 5.00 EXACTLY. Not like 5.05 or 4.99, 5.0. Coincidence surely, but that was pretty wild! The linear 7809 was more like 9.04 for instance. I'll know more as I spruce up my MB6582 but so far, I think this would be a viable solution! I have yet to test any audio noise though. I'll likely compare my sammichSID (with a linear wallwart) to the MB6582 (using my PSU) to see if the switcher makes any noticeable difference (even then it's a bit apples to oranges given the MB6582 has a lot more going on). Will also have to check again when I add a proper 5V fan (will probably go with a Noctua as that is what I installed in my Deepmind rack to cut down on the OEM fan noise and it seems to work well).

Woohoo! Excited to see what you find!