m00dawg

Ah *slaps forehead* good idea Wilba! Sorry I didn't just think of that in the first place! I'll go ahead and do that right now.

Seriously too much may be a slight stretch. The input voltage for the regulators (after passing through the bridge rectifier) is going to be around 11VDC, so they have to dissipate around 6VDC in the form of heat. However, the amount of heat is related to the load. Little load, little head. Now 9VDC will throw off less heat than 12VDC, but it doesn't seem to be enough to really cause any heat related issues. Even using 12VDC, the sammichFM runs much much cooler than my sammichSID. It depends on the brightness of the LCD too and mine is set a tad low. Now if we are talking 12VAC that's a different story since you can actually end up with higher voltage after the AC is rectified to DC. How much depends on a number of factors (such as load) but the magic number is around 1.4x of the input, so 12VAC can end up being close to 17VDC. Still, low current means low heat but it's certainly going to be more than you would get from 12VDC. On the flip-side, be careful about getting too close to the output voltage of the regulators. Too little and you can end up with drop-outs since most regulators need 1-2V (1.5V being the value I tend to see the most) to operate. The rectifier is going to remove about .7V from a DC input voltage.

Yep :) I bought me a 12V 1A linear regulator for the sammichSID from them as well!

Here is the one I ended up going with from Jameco (US). 12V 1A linear-regulated so that should be enough for even insane LCDs (I would hope). Note that the category says AC-to-DC Switching but the details at the bottom and datasheet indicate it is linear (it is also in the linear section of the catalog page). Happy to finally get away from my switched PSU for sure, though it's more pathological :) I never noticed abnormal noise when using the switcher *shrug* Either way, problem solved.

Oooh yeah 12VAC is quite a bit. So far 12VDC seems to be ok but I'm going to get a proper linear 9VDC brick just the same. I think my 12VDC is a switchmode anyway :/ Need to replace my sammichSID power supply too with a proper linear brick while I'm at it.

Here's a quick and dirty demo I threw together. I put it together in about 10 minutes so don't expect much :) Could be a neat song though! For now I just wanted to see why sort of polyphony one can get. The sounds were all from the default bank. Enjoy!

The highest temp I saw was 35C which was recorded towards the top of the inner heatsink of the 7805. I can't get my temp probe on top of the 7805 without taking everything apart and taping it directly to the reg (which I may do later). I'm not worried about it though I am still going to buy the 9VDC adapter mentioned in the other thread. Good to know I have a working solution that doesn't get super hot for the moment though.

So I was thinking about running the Sammich on a 9V battery for while but opted to just put in my 12VDC supply (similar to the one I used on my sammichSID). I was worried heat might be an issue but, so far, the 78L05 is cool to the touch and the heatsinks are just a tad bit warm for the 7805. This is when basically sitting idle and occasionally diddling on my keyboard. So far, though, it seems to be throwing off far less heat than my sammichSID. Is that expected or am I missing a potential source of heat somewhere? By the way, the thing is fully functional and appears to be working as advertised! I was worried I might have had a bad solder joint on the SMD chips (found one while doing voltage tests that I fixed, but my tests previous came out ok for the other pins). I haven't quite figured out how the audio routing works - seems like I can route all audio to just one audio out if I so desired? Haven't tried making patches yet - the default patches are typical cliche FM sounds which are fun but I want to see about adding more dynamics at some point. The drum section is fun once I figured that out. This thing basically owns face!

Oooh nice find I was just going to make a post about where to find one of these. Thanks for the link as that does indeed look like what we want if I'm not mistaken. In the interim, I have been using a 9V battery to power mine. Only for a few moments though, but I was going to get a few in parallel so I can run it for a good while. I have power bricks I can use in the interim, but they are all 12VDC which seems a bit high, at least for the 78L05.

Well it took two late nights but my sammichFM now powers up and shows Ready! I'll be trying to load the firmware today, though I haven't been brave enough to supply power to the FM chips just yet. Wilba, you did a fantastic job with the kit! It has all the wonderful details that made building it fun and even relaxing. The little things, like having the header pins snap-in (which meant I didn't have to take the header down, tack it, then burn my finger while trying to adjust it so it's vertical) and having snap-in sockets. Very cool, and the LCD looks sexah too!

MMM tasty! That sounds more like what the sammichFM can generate too? I didn't hear any crazy layering like the FS1R Hawkeye posted? I wonder what commercial solutions are available today (new, not vintage) for FM synthesis these days. My Virus has an FM knob but that's the extent of it, and I haven't been able to generate FM-like sounds all that well. I suppose that's because I'm not understanding the implementation enough on my Virus to know how to modulate the right things *shrug*

Well I stopped making my MidiBox-SID to make my sammichFM so I kinda know where you're coming from!

I thought it might be that. Sounds pretty neat all told, and it still looks like some single-board solutions (like the MB-6582) could be possible by simply having a section where one would plugin the dev board. Excited to see this mature into something cool for sure!

YAY4Photos! That caused a follow-up question though :) That board looks like a standard dev-board, so does that mean it would be possible to purchase a board with all the tiny SMD parts and simply add things to it, or if there going to be a CORE board with the chip on it directly (much like the STM32)?

I did indeed listen to some of TK's samples. Some of them I like but it gets experimental really quick when you start getting into the parts where he's using the SSM filters. I agree, though, it seems like it will be nicely versatile.

Haha "only"? Well now I wonder what could possibly surpass that (other than just going the software route, which is cheating :) ). Either way that's wildly impressive if that is just FM + effects because some of those sounds didn't sound at all like the typical FM I'm used to. Man those pads were like audio silk.

Wow some of those pads are NICE! Wonder what is being used under the covers? I heard some FM related things in there but there's also other stuff going on there that sounds more like subtractive synthesis and maybe audio patches? As far as the NES, yes I'm sure we'll have previews and things. We're actually sort of behind in that regard. Tsunami Gaiden is 99% mastered (and it sounds much better than the version we have up, in my opinion of course) and another one about 75% mastered. There's about 4-6 more in the works currently in various stages. We haven't figured out how to do the marketing/release model yet. I like the idea of "pay what you think it's worth" stuff that you can do on BandCamp (including paying $0.00 if that's your thing) but I dunno. We're focusing on finishing the album first and then we'll decide what to do. I think we'll have full length songs on Last.FM is my guess and if you want a higher quality you can do the name your price thing or something. The whole album will likely be put up somewhere too since that will include various bumps and transitions. The audio mod was pretty fun to do and not terribly difficult. You can find info on that here. It's not near as cool as MidiBox stuffs but it cleaned up the audio path a great deal. One can argue I'm bypassing some of what gives the NES character, but the buzzy audio that is heard when running it past the PPU just was not suitable for recording. And either way the sound of the 2A03 was what I wanted the most.

I've been trolling YouTube for a while now and am about to throw in the towel and just start running Adlib Tracker in DOSbox just to get my fix :) Before I do that though, anyone know of some good tunes using exclusively (or at least mostly so) FM synthesis, ala OPL3? My sammichFM is 60% complete and until I can make my own FM tunes, I need a quick fix :) Since this is a thread about posting music more so than requesting it, to keep the music submission Gods happy, here is an early cut of one of the songs that will be on a forthcoming album a friend of mine and I are doing as a tribute to surf music and chiptunes (thus simply called 'chipsurf'). It uses the NES for most of the computer generated music, though my sammichSID makes a cameo in a few of the songs. The rough cut is using FamiTracker's emulation (via outputting to WAV) but the later version uses a real NES using my CMoy inspired pre-amp to clean up the NES output and the PowerPak to play the songs (and to emulate some of the sound chips found in NES carts we sometime used): http://victimcache.com/?p=6 I don't think our current album will feature the sammichFM since are pretty far into it and introducing it may change the sound too much from the other songs, but we plan on using it for the next album (and I'll be throwing down for my own solo work for sure).

+1 for Live. The session view would work wonderfully for that and would allow you to easily name the clips. Clips can be enabled using a MIDI keyboard, PC keyboard, or mouse. You can also buy/build button matrix type solutions so you can trigger the sessions using a dedicated controller. There are a number of commercial ones for Live, including ones that change colors and fancy things. If you opted to build your own, I believe the standard MidiBox 64 firmware would work without much modification if you just needed to trigger sessions. No matter what you use to control it, Live is amazing and sounds like it would just about be a perfect fit for what you're wanting to do so I'd highly recommend checking it out. It's not cheap, but so far it's been worth just about every penny I've spent on it.

By the way, the Tempest looks pretty damn cool! Been looking at the Maschine as well recently (friend of mine and fellow MidiBoxer let me play with his last week). Have to wait on either of those as there is much MidiBoxing left to do (60% done with my sammichFM and still need to finish my CS board designs for my MB-SID) but man there sure it plenty to droll over these days!

I use the CrystalFontz LCDs and I haven't experienced any delay as long as the LCD is getting proper power and things. I was getting some weak power to the LCD from my MB-6582 for some reason and, in that state, the panel would be very slow. Otherwise it ran like a champ! The number of choices of colors available from CrystalFontz for the 4x20's seem to be fewer than they were in the past, but there is still a decent amount of choice directly on their website. Just be sure to check that you are getting a 4x20 that fits the MB-6582 (namely the larger one that matches the same measurement sheet that is on the MB-6582 build guide). Assuming you order from them, anyway. There are others, perhaps that are even better, but CrystalFontz treated me quite well in the past so I tend to stick with 'em.

I think he meant can he play the drums individually via a sequencer instead of selecting the patterns to sequence? If so, the answer there is "kinda" but using the on-board drum sequencer is much easier. Alternatively, I have sampled each drum and have thrown that into my own drum kit in Live. It doesn't have the cool factor, but no ADSR delay that way and I get basically the same affect as sequencing drums myself that way. Though I still tend to prefer using the on-board drums. Not sure why but I do.

I've been building my sammichFM and, so far, things are going well. One minor issue I have run into is that the flux doesn't clean up. I'm using too much I would bet but regardless, I have some sticky patches around my SMD devices and around some of the through holes I used it on (since it actually does help a fair amount using it on those too). So how do I clean it up? Alcohol or some special cleaner?

w00t thanks Wilba!