Goblinz

I notice there is a thread on the bulk buy board for a bulk order of waldorf knobs for the MB-6582. I'm based in the Uk and have not been able to find a UK supplier of the waldorf knobs, or any other illuminated knobs. Can anybody point me in the right direction? G

I would definitely recheck all the solder joints to the LCD on both the Core module and the LCD end. If wiggling the connector caused the screen to intermittantly work then there's is a good chance that you've wiggled it too much and the connection has being completely lost/shorted. GobzZziE

Great thanks, that's the kind of information i'm after ;D G

hmnn, that would be very interesting, I'll do some research and see what I can find. i don't own a Mac, but hopefully there will be something similar for Windos or Linux. I really like he idea of a wireless Midi Synth whther it be through an old laptop or by somehow making an embedded linux system. I have a friend who's really good with Linux so hopefully I could swap a few pints for some coding help :D G

Point taken , I'm sure somebody will want the spare bank-sticks :-[

Yea God, just looked at the equipment list for the manufacturers site for those panels ... 1 Mitsubishi 3015LVP 3500 Watt Laser with ESL Auto Load (5’ x 10’ Cap.) 1 Amada LC 644 II 1800 Watt Laser with Fanuc OL Controller I didn't know that you could get lasers that powerful! I'd love to see one of those in action. G

The $75 is without the PICS. I also have PICS and bank-chips so would be interested if it would be possible to knock the price of the banksticks off, otherwise they will go to waste. I'm in two minds whether to order a kit with the PICS as I reckon that the cost of building the burner won't be so far off $25; I would then have to find a project for the spare PICS though. G

Cool, thanks for that. Another option would be an Atari emulator ;D . I'm not sure if this project would be worth it, I think it would look snazzy though! I wonder if it would be possible to somehow route midi signals over wifi for a wireless setup, a bit like print sharing, but with midi... Think it may be way beyond my skillset though. G

Sounds good to me.... Means that I would have some spare bankstick IC's though. G

I'm using fruity loops 6.0 at the moment on my desktop but am still learning. I just quite liked the idea of using the libretto as a sequencer to control the SID synth as I have it sat redundant on my desk. It's look smart if nothing else. G

I'm not sure they could help due to the data protection act. I think the case would have to go through court before they could release this information. G

Soldering isn't difficult. If you want some experience before building the SID then buy yourself a decent-ish soldering iron and some sort of cheap kit from the internet, do a search for "electronics kit" on ebay and get on ethat mentions that it requires solderin such as this one http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Electronics-Kits-brain-game_W0QQitemZ330160273242QQihZ014QQcategoryZ106260QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem. , to be honest though, it'd probably be cheaper to get one of the smaller kits from SmashTV and be prepared to replace it if need be. An even cheaper way to learn would be to buy some strip board and some random componants and just practice. The most useful technique I got taught by my electronics teacher was "Heat 2...3... Solder... 2...3.... Dwell 2...3 off 2...3." (The 2-3 isn't 3 secons but a count probably being only 2 seconds). Basically you heat up the joing you're soldering for a count of 3 so you heat up the componants leg, then slowly add the solder (push the end of the solder wire against the componant leg, not the soldering iron, it is the heat in the leg that melts it, not the iron), a count of 3 seems very generous for this, remove the solder and keep the iron on the joint for a count of 3 and then remove the iron and let the joint cool down for a count of 3 before starting the next joint. In my experience this usually produces a good joint. G

***hangs head in shame*** That's pretty much the only place I didn't look Thanks for the pointer. I think I may have actually deserved a slap round the face and an RTFM though! Any, I suppose I should stop hijacking this thread. G

Ooooh, this sounds interesting, I haven't been able to find anything about it though, can you put me in the right direction... It's be interesting to rig up something like a theremin to this.... Is this possible? G

The same guy has also being selling Soundlab analog synths base on a design by Ray Wilson http://cgi.ebay.com/ANALOG-SYNTH-SOUND-LAB_W0QQitemZ290154737201QQihZ019QQcategoryZ38071QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem I couldn't find any type of license agreement or detailed copyright notice on Ray's site, but it may be worth contacting him and working together to get these items banned from ebay if he feels that he is also being ripped off. G

I'd be interested to know what people are (planning on) doing with their finished SID projects and if anybody is using them professionally. Personally I'm building mine as a learning excercise and as a way to learn a bit about PIC programming. I'm starting to learn how to use fruity loops on the PC and bought an old Yamaha Portasound-780 midi keyboard as a controler (£12 of ebay :D), when I got the keyboard I found that it had a very rudementary 2 oscillator FM synth buit in and fell in love with manipulating the sounds that could be produced. I stumbled upon uCapps whilst looking for some schematics for a midi theramin (still not found any) and was so impressed when I heard the SID mp3 tracks (i think it was the zombie nation one that did it) that I decided I had to look into building one (I've had a bricked C64 in storage for ages so I'd be a fool not to). I spent ages looking at the uCapps site and reading, but the whole thing seemed a bit daunting untill I found a link to Wilba's MB-6582 on hackaday. I signed up and realised that it's a real privalage to be a member of such a helpful group of people who are offering their time, skills and expertese all for free to help people build these things. Suddenly the project seemed a lot less daunting. I'm just at the ordering stage at the moment and am going to build a 1 SID no-control surface synth to get a grips on how things work, before moving on and building one based on Wilba's design. Hopefully by the time I get the first one built I should have managed to source all the SIDS and other bits to build a version of Wiba's beast. When I get the SID synth built I'm looking at using it along side Fruity Loops to make music, more as a hobby than anything else. I'm really into psy-trance, both progressive and full on, but my real home in music is in the goth scene. There's atype of music called EBM (escuse me if you're familiar with this) which is a bit like trance music, but with lyrics, a hell of a lot more bouncy with a real industrial side to it; Some good groups that play EBM are Rottersand, Combichrist, Apoptygma Berserk, Icon of Coil and VNV nation. The beauty of EBM is that a lot of the time iit uses has really, really, really dirty synth lines (check out some of Apoptygma Berzerk's earlier stuff and you'll see what I mean) which sounds like the SID synth will be more than capable of producing. I don't think I'll ever look at producing music professionally or doing live performances, but am looking forward to having a lot of fun when I get this thing built. So, how did everybody else get into this? Who's using these thing's professionally for either producing tracks or live performances? G

Hi, I'm probably interested in one of the core kits, one of the SID kits some rotary encoders and maybe some pots. How much do you want for the encoders, etc. Please could you investigate how much it would cost to post this to the UK, it may be that it doesn't work out economical to post it across the Atlantic but let me know and I'll get back to you if I'm still interested. G

I'm toying with an idea. I'm going to be building a SID based on Wilba's uber-sexy MB-6582 as soon as a new batch of SID chips comes in. I already have an 8580 R5 which I want to use to make a simple one SID synth so that I can learn how these things fit together and work before I jump in at the deep end. I'm thinking that I could quite easily make a complete portable mini-studio by using a Commodore keyboard and an old toshiba libretto 50ct laptop that I have laying around (if I can get it working.... It only boots up occasionally so may need some fiddling). The laptop is tiny, it has a 7" (ish) screen, 16mb (could add another 16) RAM, a 800mb hard-drive which again could be upgraded to whatever I want and a P75 processor. The processor is actually a p120 with MMX but isn't clocked that high. With a bit of micro surgery on the board and a few case fans I could clock it up to 166MHz. for operating systems I will havea choice of Windows 95, Windows 98 or preferably Linux (redhat). The 14.8V laptop power supply could hopefully be used for powering the SID too. I have an old parrallel port midi interface which should work with this laptop. I would also be mounting some sort of amplifier and speaker system into the case. Can anybody else see the attraction of this? I'm thinking that I would just need a minimal control surface and maybe even could do away with the LCD. The real question I need answering though is about suitable software. I'm currently learning to use fruity loops and was wondering if anybody could point me in the direction of some similare software that would run on such a low spec machine and maybe even on Linux. Regards, G

As soon as I can find an inverter circuit I'll have a few. What input voltage/current do these need? G

This wouldn't be much good for the plastic panel, but may be OK for the Aluminium front panel. I found a trick on a website for producing home-made PCBs. The design can be printed using a very dark setting on to tracing (baking paper) (don't for get to reverse the design) and then layed face down on a PCB and, using a hot setting on an iron (no steam), ironed on to the PCB. I'm guessing that this technique would work with an aluminium front panel too. It may be worth experimenting a bit to see how good the results are. I suppose this idea could also be used to transfer labels on to the panel too. Let me know how it goes, G

I'll probably have a few of these. What colour is the backlight and do you have any schematics for a suitable inverter? Also, do you know if they are compatible by th MBHP? G

Any plans to do another order at some point, missed this one by a couple of days. :( G

Doh! Amended!

I'd be up for a set of panels, how much would shipping to the UK be? G

Name on MB Base control Opkod 1 1 Slorrin 2 1 Entrypoint 2 Jaicen 1 1 Sasha 1 Robwillis 4 4 ToF 1 1 Maniac 1 1 Mr. Fred 1 1 Mr Dapper 2 2 Chimchim 1 1 Mono=Poly 1 1 Wicked-E 1 1 Davo 2 1 Gojira 1 1 Goblinz 1 1 Totals so far 23 18 I've added mine on G