m00dawg

Ah ok. I think that will take a while to "sink" in (rimshot, queue wah wah noise) but I think I get the basics. I'll go ahead and try grounding those pins and see what I get. It makes a bit more sense though as to why I was able to illuminate a test LED by jumping off one of the other LEDs. All the LEDs I tested were reading 3.4V or so (I didn't test them all while running the test program) but no current as best as I could tell. So it sounds like all of the LEDs are being sinked for some reason? I guess the test will help me figure out for sure what's going on. Thanks again!

As always Wilba you are absolutely most helpful! The LED test program I tried was the one directly linked off the Wiki for that forum post so I thought it was the second one but I will double check to make sure. At least some of the knobs are working. The buttons seem like they might be having issues as well although I am able to test button presses etc. I think I will need to load up a test app for those to be sure. On the note of the current sinking, is there an explanation on how that works exactly? I tried to do some searching on the forums and Wiki and didn't come up with how that's actually doing its magic. Might help me understand what I'm doing wrong :) In fact, at first I didn't even have the transistors populated because the parts list said their were optional and I was being stupid :) Either way I will try your recommendations this evening hopefully with some good results! Thanks again for your great help and advice!

So I finally hooked everything up between the mainboard and CS. However, even though testing the LEDs manually (using J2) yields good results, none of the LEDs work when I run the LED test program (see http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php/topic,10390.0.html). I tested the continuity with the cables and that seems to be good; I think I'm missing something basic here but I'm not really sure what it could be or really where to start testing since I can't get any of the LEDs to illuminate. Anyone have any ideas?

So I ended up going with the 2 inch cables from Digikey that were posted above (http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail?name=WM08-02A-ND). Works like a champ! I haven't yet put the PT-10 case fully together, and I think it may be a bit snug. Still, it make it MUCH easier than having to cut and strip cables on my own. Just thought I'd share. This is the route I recommend going, although I'll fully confirm that with a working MB-6582 :)

So I'm in the home stretch for finishing my MB-6582 but while soldering cables to the control surface and mainboard, I noticed that my continuity tester would produce a small click when testing the +5 and GND pins (the small 2-pin cable to the far right). Looking at the numbers of the multimeter, I'm getting anywhere between .400 and .800. Is that normal? It seems to be reproducible when I test the +5 and GND on the IC sockets as well, although not all of them show the same numbers. I'm thinking this might be the reason I get lower voltage on the +5V in proportion to the load, but that was just a wild guess. Anyone with more experience mind qualifying my possible stupidity? :)

Oh wow I hadn't even though of using those type of connectors - that's pretty clever! How tight is tight though? Does the case close and nothing is, say, clamped down over a solder point? I had thought about using the standard single-row crimp terminals on both the mainboard and CS. I think there is room enough for that but I would have to be fairly creative about how I positioned the connectors such that I reasoned it wasn't worth it.

I know this topic is hugely old, but has anyone used these? The Mouser product info has very little information but it looks like it will work well - I'm just worried about the length. The spec sheet (which is linked off molex.com) says this is 6 inches. That's way too long to buy these for a quick pre-cut solution I'm guessing? I tried using the regular 50mil cable and it's a pretty huge pain to cut the wire the same length and seems like using something closer to the flat cable Wilba mention would be easiest.

Looks pretty cool! Love to hear a few demo/samples :)

The Arduino stuff is pretty cool. Some of the guys at my local hardware meetup use it for various things. Not as hard core as directly programming an AVR (or PIC for that matter) but still pretty awesome depending on what you want the thing to do. I've wanted to start playing around with these guys eventually, but the MidiBox projects will have me plenty for quite some time.

Ahh good point. It's something to think about. I think I'll play around with it once I see how much space I have left-over. The top right corner of the mainboard is empty since I'm regulating outside the case so I could use that space to try and put in a small circuit if I didn't want to cut tracks. I'm not sure I'll be able to test this all that soon though but if I do I'll let you know (assuming you haven't done the same test yourself by that time). Thanks, as always, for the excellent advice Wilba!

Oooh that does sound intriguing although some of that went above my head I'll admit :) I'm not a huge fan of cutting tracks though - although I could do something similar if I just tapped off my +9V input and ran that through a transistor off-board? That or I could just use a spare 7805 if I needed to I take it? The PSU I built is limited to 1A as it just uses a 7805. I've got a big heatsink I harvested from the northbridge of a broken motherboard that, so far, seems to work well. As long as the sagging isn't too bad, I think I'll be ok. I do like the idea of lowering the backlight down further, though. That will work today, but I'll likely switch out the LCD with an orange-backlit one and will want that to be brighter.

It's getting close! I finished soldering the parts to the CS and now have a working LCD. I also fixed up my power cable so it sucks less and, actually, it works pretty well. Since I'm tapping into the GND, +5, +9 headers directly, I had to get a power connector that would fit on the back panel without causing issues. I ended up getting a 4-pin DIN style connector that screws into the panel perfectly. I also upgraded to larger cabling (harvesting the cables from a bad PSU). I'm still getting a small voltage drop on the +5V, but it seems to be a lot less. Before it was so bad that the backlight was causing +5 to sag way too much. I only have a PIC, the BankSticks, and the LCD connected so far though. I'm going to leave it that way until I finish wiring up the CS, which I may start on as early as today. I haven't quite decided if it's worth using pin-headers or not and I still need to solder the resistors for the LEDs (I think I'm going with 1k). After that, I just need knobs, heatsinks, and to have my power-board fabbed. Oh plus some screws for mounting the mainboard and the LCD. I ran into the same problem you did with lack of tiny screws for the LCD. For now, I just used ones I had lying around from my previous MB SID project and basically threaded the holds on the LCD and CS with them :) That won't last forever, but at least I have something put together that will work until I can get more screws.

In the future, SmashTV offers IDC cables cut to length. Probably not the cheapest if you know you need a whole lot of it, but it's easy to find and works well. Allied Electronics also offers cables cut to length though it's really hard to find on their catalog (I just e-mail them for the part number). How are those heatsinks working out? I'm not ready for them yet but it will be soon. I finally soldered all the LEDs to the control surface. Now I'm stuck on a power issue but I hope to have that finished up soon.

Hi Technosoul! It would probably work - I believe I have read on the forums people use the 16Vs. Though it depends on if you are going to use a C64 PSU, etc. Me personally, I would prefer a 25V. This is to allow for voltage spikes on the line, etc. It gives the capacitor a greater tolerance before bad things start to happen. Plus, I think caps rated at higher voltages might last a little longer. *shrug*

You mean the corner screws? Yes, they are a bit long, but I haven't run into any problems. I debated on trimming them once all was said and done but it doesn't look like that will be necessary for me.

Well, at least I pushed off my smart holiday lights project (for now :). The MB64 project was mostly for a mixer I could use for both Tracktor and for at home but is kinda a side project anyway. So I'm hoping to get back into music as soon as the MB-6582 is done. The MB64 will have to take a backseat to that.

Hah me too! In fact, I stopped doing music altogether so I could concentrate on my synth. After I finish the MB-6582, I've gotta then upgrade a few parts of my "studio" but hope to get back to music soon. Using the LEDs on my Virus is indeed a good idea! I was hoping to get the LEDs today, but, alas, they were not in the mail. Oh well. And yeah, LED rings are hot. Maybe on my next MidiBox project (probably will do a MB64 type of thing at some point).

Yeah Wilba mentioned that in the guide. I've debated about using the machine hole strips but the last time I used those, they didn't hold as well as I would have liked. So I think I will try your method of bending the leads. Taping them down with electrical tape should work just for a quick test so no biggie. I'm going to start with 1k I think and go from there. Unfortunately, I don't think I have any 1k's so that's a trip to Radio Shack... As for the synth itself, I agree. It's quite expansive. In some cases, it even rivals my Virus. I'm pretty excited about the control surface, too, as that was sort of a limiting factor with my first design.

Good to know about the LED colors.. I'll have to play around with some resistor values too, I think. As for the extra LEDs, I've already got some yellow LEDs from Smash in the mail :) But thanks just the same! As for the synth itself, indeed it is one awesome beast. I believe it is the best SID based synth on the planet - even better than those you can buy. And I've done quite a bit of research on the matter over the years. It's fantastic!

Looking good! That LCD display looks pretty how with everything too! It's a bit hard to tell from the photo, but are your LEDs showing up as yellow or amber? I know you wanted yellow - I'm actually trying to see about making mine look more orangish.

So, to clarify, you used right-angles on both panels? That was my plan, though I forgot about putting the right-angles on the bottom of the main-board. Seems like that makes a lot more sense :) I started soldering diodes yesterday. I don't have any pictures (not much to speak of yet) but it's coming along. I haven't had my screws come off although I am a bit worried about them myself. I was messy about my JB Welds for the spacers too. I opted just using my screwdriver method. That worked well initially but, as the JB started to turn in to putty, it got interesting. There are a few places I would have liked a bit more JB but, for the most part, everything looks good. I did have to hollow out the screw holes in the PT case quite a bit, though. But other than that not too bad. I also thought I had ordered yellow LEDs but, apparently, I didn't :) So I had to order those. And my LCD is green since I originally thought green would be fine. I'm going to go ahead and wire it up for now but will eventually need to replace it with an orange one.

Agreed. I think it will look awesome with the rest of the look! As for the LEDs, it's a little hard to tell from your photo how orange or yellow they are. Looks like the white-balance might be a bit off? Either way, I think I know what you are talking about. My Virus appears to have yellow LEDs, but they look much more amber to me than yellow when lit. I hadn't thought of the cause being due to the LED matrix stuff (I think the Virus uses something similar too) but that would make sense. Even so, I think it would still be a damn good look!

That was my plan as well since I might end up using the baseboard in a C64 case at some point. Curious how things end up for you. Are you using standard .100" IDCs or the heavier cable Wilba recommends when soldering directly to the board?

Sure does! Thanks for the info! I know a few people I might be able to get an empty syringe from so this might be very doable for me as well. Hopefully I can get to this soon, but either way, I'll post an update once I'm past this point. Maybe there should be some sort of contest for who's method of putting on JB Weld is the best :)

I assume you put it into the syringe post mixed? How exactly did you get it in there?