m00dawg

I know this is teetering on off-topic, but does anyone know of a ASID / Sidstation / Sidplayer application for OS X? Old versions of SIDPLAY seemed like it supported it, but I tried a few and could only find referenced to HardSID? I'm looking for one so I can demo my MB-6582 to my local hardware group and I was going to start by jamming some SID tunes. Trouble is, my old portable laptop is an Apple so I either need to Bootcamp the thing (bleh) or figure out a way to play SID tunes via OS X. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated! I did a good bit of searching and, sadly, I think I'm SOL, but thought I would check with fellow MB-SID and Apple users just in case :)

I have to agree. Of all (and I do mean all) of the forums I have used and administrated, SMF has been by favorite, by far. Even the default theme, while not the prettiest, is pretty enough, it's fast, and I can find everything I need. Putting my DBA hat on, I would have liked to have been a bit more intelligent with the DB, but I haven't seen any forum really do that to the level I would like. That said, my donation to the MidiBox project is long overdue, so I threw down. I hope people, particularly those who use the forums, wiki, and certainly have built a MidiBox do the same! MB-6582_PK.svg.zip

Haha ouch that kinda sucks :) Well, huge thanks for the people that do help us all out!

I assume you meant MyISAM when you said MySQL? Either way, I agree, if performance is never going to be highly concurrent it matters less. But while things might not be highly concurrent today, they might be tomorrow. InnoDB can handle both and, in many cases (again, when properly tuned), can do so faster than MyISAM ever could. There are reasons for when MyISAM makes sense, but most typical web-applications can benefit heavily from InnoDB. I am sad to hear Invision doesn't recommend it. Curious as to why, though I am not surprised. Most off the shelf applications don't use it, but most actually should. Drupal is a prime example, since it only recently has started to embrace InnoDB, albeit in a capacity far less that I would like. Case and point, with MyISAM readers block writers. If someone is searching the forums, and that search takes, say, 10 seconds, if anyone tries to UPDATE the same table, that update will wait. But it's even worse because that UPDATE will not cause every other query (SELECT or otherwise) to stall until the search completes. InnoDB does not have that problem, because it runs SELECTs in their own transactions (even if you do not use transactions directly) and uses row-level locking. So things like UPDATE ... SET viewcount = viewcount + 1 could cause issues with MyISAM, as long as the same row is not being updated in InnoDB, these viewcounts can all execute at the same time. Anyways, I've said my DB spiel. You know the forums way better than I so I am sure you will make the right decision! Obviously being a DBA I like to talk about DB problems :)

I would still check and see what their support is for things like Sphinx, memcached, etc. Sphinx, in particular is *AWESOME* for full-text searching. MySQL's built-in solution works but forces you to use MyISAM. InnoDB, by contrast, offers much greater concurrency and performance (as long as it is tuned properly) and you can do nice things like transparent backups. As for vBulletin support, it's moot if you're with another vendor, but my experience with them has been such that sometimes they acted like they didn't even know what InnoDB was or even recommended against it. So we ended up with customers with a super slow forum that were unwilling to try InnoDB (even though we know it fixed a majority of issues) because vBulletin didn't sign off on it. InnoDB has been with us since MySQL 3.23, so it is unacceptable for a vendor that uses MySQL not to know about it. And it's almost a disservice to paying customers not to at least properly evaluate its use. *shrug*

Well, the n00b questions can be handled by the forums, ucapps.de, and the wiki so I don't think it would be as bad as you might think. Now constantly telling people how to use the forums, ucapps and the wiki? Well, some of the admins have turned that into quite a refined art :)

Ah whoops, I see now you're actually also evaluating another forum software. Don't know anything about Invision but I would ask them a few critical questions, such as what their preferred back-end DB is, do they offer Sphinx (sphinxsearch.com) support and if not how do they handle searching, what is their stance on using InnoDB over MyISAM tables (assuming MySQL is the back-end DB). I would also ask them for references to high volume customers if you haven't done that part yet. I don't mean to be critical so I apologize if I come off that way. Again, I don't know anything about Invision, but vBulletin often evokes a knee-jerk reaction because I see problems with it so much. It could be that all the issues I have seen are easily resolvable by upgrading to vBulletin or something changing some settings (I only really have dealt with the DB back-end). Either way, no matter what you end up going with, the offer stands to look at the DB if you need help. Again, I do that day in, day out, so it's something I'm quite accustomed to and happy to help with!

Can I ask why you think vBulletin is better than SMF? I've seen both from the back-end and neither are amazing, but, as I work for a rather large server hosting company as MySQL DBA, you can imagine I see all sorts of things. I never see SMF issues. I often see vBulletin issues. I have found their support to be downright shit according to customers I have talked to. Simple things like converting tables to InnoDB to avoid locking are things that vBulletin seems to know jack about. Now this is just from second-hand experience really but I see it a lot and it pains me every-time I do. I'm just saying - SMF is free and open source. vBulletin isn't and I hold vBulletin to higher standards, and for as much as it costs, it should be significantly better than any open source forum out there. As far as the donations, I would be happy to donate! I'm sure you at least have to pay for server costs which, with as large as the MidiBox community is, might be starting to get non-trivial. But I do ask that you seriously evaluate both SMF and vBulletin before you make your decision. It could be that my experience has been quite skewed and vBulletin is vastly superior but just be sure to do your research. I also hope you have exhausted other avenues, including looking at optimizing and tuning your database. If you need help with that, be all means, send me a PM since that's what I do all day :)

It's bugging me not to say anything so...in terms of MB-SID or HardSID, the differentiation should be whether or not you enjoy or want to build your own. I would say if you don't like the idea of soldering components together, designing control surfaces, etc., get the HardSID. I think MB-SID has better features myself and, in my case, I love building stuff like this. In other words, I would say don't buy an MB-SID kit if you don't like the idea of building one. The HardSID people did all the hard work for you and you probably get a warranty that way?

*shrug* I'd be ok with the black. I dig translucency but I certainly see what you mean about the glossy factor. If you force us to go with the matte, I won't be complaining, and I'm sure that would make it easier on you for the bulk orders.

Holy crap that's a really good idea!!! I'll have to resolder a few cables (since I started soldering on the bottom of the control surface so I didn't have to keep removing it from the panel) but that can be done as a weekend job. I assume just a standard craft hot glue gun and regular glue would work (I assume that's totally non conductive)?

:) I just don't want to have to desolder all those cables again :) I am having trouble getting some of the broken wire ends out of the holes and it would just be a huge huge pain over just fixing the broken wires. The wires end up breaking simply because I measured too short it seems. So I just put a longer wire there and seems to do the trick. Besides, I still haven't figured out a good way to strip all that ribbon cable to the same length. If I could do that, it probably would be easier to manage.

I tried a few different solutions, none of which mirrored Wilba's suggestions perfectly. I used cabling that was close, but not quite the same spec as Wilba recommended and didn't bend the soldered ends properly. Stress after frequent opening and closing caused them to break. The other issue that might have avoided that was to test the mainboard more before diving into the control surface. The solution I am using now is just individual wires. This way I can at least fix a single wire without too much trouble. Back to the topic at hand, I found that 38C is about as hot as things were going to get. After playing SIDs for probably two hours it never got above 38C. I also noticed that the temperature is basically the same no matter whether or not something is playing through the SIDs or not.

You might find inspiration, also, on ucapps.de or the Wiki. Ucapps, for instance has a nice walkthrough for building a combination Traktor / MIDI controller. The forums also have plenty of information about Traktor style controllers. Simply searching for "Traktor" yields quite a few results and may give you enough information to get started. Have fun and good luck with your build!

Hmm...that might be the limit of my understanding there :/ Because that implies I should not the heatsinks of the regulators to the metal case if I use Earth ground right? Because the heatsinks are grounded using the tabs on the 78xx's. Would it help to use a diode (pointing back) on the GND pin from the synth?

Man that looks pro! Mine connections, well, do not look like that :) That picture really helps explain things. I think if I had done it closer to that the first time, it probably would not be as much of an issue. Part of my problem, I'll admit, is likely speeding through the process (I think the Wiki even says to take your time :P). The other problem is that, while the Digikey cables might be close, I don't think they are exactly the same? I did end up liking my solution fairly well. It's messy and certainly ranks high on the ugly factor but, once I fix the remaining issues, I think it will end up working well, although it's certainly not a solution I would like to show-off :) The fact that I had so much trouble with connecting the control surface can be taken many ways, but I would say if that's the only issues I had, then the MB-6582 as a whole is a pretty kick-ass design. I really didn't run into any major issues with the rest of the build (just a few cold solder joints and a short caused by excess solder). Curious, though, if you plan on making any changes to the MB-6582 for the STM32 (when it's ready) and if that might include making any changes to the control surface wiring? Doesn't look like there's any room leftover on the control-surface board, but I really like the sammichSID design of putting all the shift registers on the control surface itself. I was actually going to do that myself with my old design (before I opted, happily, to go with the MB-6582).

Well, the only thing I'm curious about is that if I use the metal case, now I should attach the Earth / GND prong to the metal chassis as well? But I was advised against doing that in a plastic case due to ground differentials. So I'm not sure how to handle that now? Otherwise, I think the metal case will rock hard. I don't think it will be a permanent solution but should suffice until I can go all out and get printed boards that fit a specific enclosure, etc. I also thought about finding some low-dropout regulators, which can require as little as .7V about the output voltage. At this point, I'm not so sure it's worth the effort though As for the LCD, I'll try shortening the cable as it is quite a bit longer than it needs to be. I think there's a short somewhere though. The contrast issue seems to be a tale-tell sign of that because it comes and goes. In fact, after I wrote my previous response, I "fixed" the problem accidentally by picking the MB-6582 up (I was playing around with using my laptop cooler underneath it to see if it made any difference in cooling) and noticed that the contrast was MUCH better after I set it down. That said, I also noticed that the LCD seems to work 100% of the time when using the MB-6852 in SIDplayer mode, but almost none of the time when in standard MB-6852 mode. It's got me confused :) I think it's either my LCD cabling, bad connections on my CS to mainboard cabling (there's a few more broken wires - GAH!) or something to do with the CAN bus (since I assume that's not used in SIDplayer mode). Or all of the above :) I've ruled out the LCD itself as the culprit for now I think.

Well...turns out that the 2-inch cables, while convenient to hook up, eventually broke off after repeated opening and closings of the lid (while I was diagnosing issues). One of my problems was that I didn't have the cabling flush against either board - the gap is where the cabling broke. I ended up simply soldering individual wires to the control surface and mainboard. It was a huge pain but the really nice thing is that if one cable gets pulled out, I can just resolder it without too much difficulty. Connecting the control surface to the mainboard has been, by far, the most challenging aspect of building the MB-6852. Everything else has pretty much been cake. In any case, I thought I would share my experiences since I didn't want anyone to assume using the 2-inch cabling is a faultless solution. I think it will work, but, so far, seems like the best approach would be to use the detachable solution Bugfight created, possibly using individual cable (as opposed to the standard .100" ribbon cable). *shrug*

Thought I'd share my experiences with these sinks since I recently got my MB-6582 to the point at which it's (mostly) function. They appear to work very well. I hooked my temperature probe to the top of the heatsink of SIDs on channel 1. I then played some SID tunes (mostly songs from the MetalWarrior games) for a good 45 minutes. Temperature at the top of the heatsink was 38C, though it took around 30 minutes to get there. Ambient temperature was around 25C or so. This was without the cooling fan, so I have a feeling adding that should make a noticeable difference as well. Even without a fan, this is a nice improvement since, without any heatsink on them, I noticed that the 6582a's seemed to be almost uncomfortably warm to the touch, though I can't remember what the temperature reading off the chip directly was the last time I checked as it was some time ago. It would be interesting to see what the temperature of the chip itself was with the heatsinks in use but I'd say it's a pretty good result. I would definitely recommend these. The only other downside, apart from having to bend the fins so that they fit, is the clip is a bit wide does not fit in to the slit in the DIP sockets I have. That means it could be possible for the clip to contact one of the pins of the socket, although it would take quite a jolt for that to happen (ie, you'd have to drop your precious MB-6852 most likely - and if you did that, you might have other problems).

While I wasn't able to move the power stuff to the metal case as I wanted, I was able to add in some power resistors with some very promising results! I ended up using 4 1-Ohm resistors in series (since that is all Radio Shack had) to end up with 4 Ohm. This appears to be just about perfect since, at full load, the resistors drop about 4V, resulting in 8V going into the 7805. The heatsink on the 7809 and 7805 still gets hot, but it's nowhere near 80C like it was. So far, after playing some SID tunes (mostly by 'kb' for the curious - the 2nd Reality SID remixes own face!!) for about 30 minutes, the heatsink temperature reads around 57C. The temperature on heatsink I put on the resistors is about 65C. That's still hot, but I think I can get that down lower by moving to the metal chassis and perhaps getting larger heatsinks. I could probably also throw in another .5-1Ohm power resistor to knock of another .5-1V. That's getting close to spec, though, since I would be supplying 7V to the 7805. At this point, I am almost ready to claim victory except that I may have a few more small issues with my control surface (looks like two adjacent outputs to the CS might be touching since some adjacent LEDs, all on the bottom half of the control surface, appear to be illuminated when they shouldn't be). After that, I need to figure out why my LCD is flaking out. It comes and goes which either means bad cabling or a short (I assume). On an side, yet again, I feel the need to thank both TK and Wilba. TK for adding in the SID player to the MB-SID v2 firmware and Wilba for offering these kick-ass 6582a SIDs. These SID tunes I'm playing sound SOOO awesome!

Yeah I'm not doing the bi-polar stuff just yet. Having said that, after gutting my busted PSU yesterday it seems like there is plenty of room for my PSU and I think adding in +12/-12 is very doable. In fact, I might add another +12 or +9 to power a fan on the PSU to help keep things cool. As for the transformers, I actually found Mouser to be far better than any other site. I usually order my parts from Allied Electronics since they are out of Austin, TX and can send me stuff super fast. Mouser is out of Dallas though I believe. There's quite a few center-tapped transformers out there. In fact, seems like there's more with a center tap than without. You would use the center-tap as GND and the outer ends for +12 and -12. Now I've never built a bi-polar supply but I think doing it this way means you may need to further smooth out AC ripples which may explain why the design calls for larger caps than the usual 2200uF caps most people use (I use bigger caps myself, but probably for not good reason :) Once thing you should do, though, is measure your current load. I was estimating 1.5A but broke out my multimeter this morning and noticed my 5V current to be closer to 1A, which does make sense a bit since I'm driving my LEDs with less voltage than is typical and my LCD brightness is all the way down. Point is, that could change what size resistors you would use. Anyways alot of this is speculative since I haven't modified my PSU yet but will be making a trip to Radio Shack today in hopes that they have some power resistors. if not, I may have to wait a few days to order some, but I'll keep everyone posted! The only takeaway I have now is that the using a gutted PSU case looks like it will work really well, at least until I can find a more cosmetic (and maybe safer) case.

Ok so I've been thinking about this and think I have a pretty good plan to get this thing up and running. I'm going to switch from using my cool plastic case (for now) to using a metal box from a gutted PC PSU. That way, I can mount the huge resistor to the metal chassis and can also connect the heatsink on the regulators to the box as well. If I mount the resistor off board, I can avoid making the board itself super hot and can also just use pins on the power board itself if I ever need to swap out the resistor. For the resistor, I think I may try using a 3.33 Ohm, 10W resistor since the load might be closer to 1.5A given the numbers I've been seeing on the forums (in this post and others). I may continue using the 7805 but I think I'd feel better going a beefier one that can handle up to 2A within the spec. I hope to have something ready to go this weekend but it depends on how many spare parts I have lying around. Will keep everyone posted!

Oh that's it? Just a little over $100? Well damn that's not bad at all!

I dunno how it works, but this sure looks like a candidate for MidiBox of the Week to me! Really nice work! If I may ask, how much did that front panel cost? It looks quite sizable and the MB-6582 panels are already over $100. I ask because my next next project is to also make a control surface for Traktor (though I want to dual purpose it also as a standard MIDI control surface for music makings) and it seems a huge cost is the front panel itself.

Wow that's awesome and really helpful! Thanks Wilba (and NorthernLightX)! So, if I understand that correctly, my resistor choice would be 4Ohm at around 8W (I assume I can get a resister with a higher wattage rating). That would drop the voltage to between 7.4 - 10V (depending on my actual input voltage at the wall) at 1A which is a hellofa lot better than 11-14V. I think I might go that route. If that doesn't work, it's good to know there's a design that seems like it should do the trick.