Goblinz

No, there's difference... Here's what wikipedia says.

That's not a pancake though... This is a pancake...

I was very pleased with what I found in my broken C64 CPU ... A burnt out fuse :D

Scarification and piercing are usually carried out by a trained professional, sticking your hand in a laser engraver is just plain stupid, no getting round it. There's nothing to say that somebody might see it and copy it. Doing something stupid is one thing, putting up instructions on how to do it makes it look like a safe thing to do. And yeh, smoking is prolly more dangerous, but it tastes like steak and gravy

I think the real danger would be from the carriage mangling his hand in the mechanics. I can't say I ever had the inclination as a child to burn my skin with a magnifying glass... that would be stupid. Admittedly I would quite like to get some branding done at some point, but I'd rather get somebody to do this professionally or at least use some equipment that doesn't have the potential to rip my hand off. Surely Instructables have a duty not to publish things that are so dangerous? I may have a go at making a "How to cut your finger nails with a hydraulic log splitter" instructable and see if it gets published. I wonder if the institute that owns the laser cutter know what he's being doing with it, I could put it to much better use!

:o

I'm trying to refrain from saying that he deserves to have an accident doing what he's doing ....

I know it's sold as something in the UK, I just don't rellish the idea of standing in the hardware store or supermarket reading all the backs of the cleaning solutions... people may get suspicious and before I know it the Special Forces will have come through the windows, bound and gagged me and put me on a plane for guatnamo bay. I don't need overly strong stuff, just strong enough to break down some plant matter ;)

http://www.instructables.com/id/Laser-Tattoo/ Just found this instructable and I'm a bit horrified at this guys stupidity. I'm suprised that he hasn't seriously damaged himself with the carriage, he mentions 1cm clearance... not much area to move in. The fact that he accidentally burnt a gash in his arm kind of shows the dangers. The worst thing is that when trying to decide on the laser settings, the guy chose a high setting and worked his way down...

I'd be more than happy to help with none midi-box stuff if I had the knowledge. I'm interested in any project mentioned on here whether it be mid-box related or not. There's a few of us here building x0xb0xen, discussing it, organising bulk orders, etc which is not a midibox related project, just something we're interested in.

See above!

Looks more fun that using Ferric Chloride anyway! Does anyone know what brand-name HCl is sold under in the UK?

He sh*ts SIDS, that's what's wrong with him.

You could make your self a lovely necklace... Or save them untill you need them!

Probably. Are you going to be joining us then, there's more than a few people here willing to help you get a MBSID off the ground.

Wilba seems to have a steady supply, but I guess it'll come to an end at some point. If you have an inkling that you may want to build one then get some chips... 3 would be a good number.. 2 for a stereo spare and a spare just in case, you can always sell them on at the fleamarket if you decide you definitely don't want to build a SID

Well, if you've already accepted that you will be crossing the species barrier then why not start off with a Gerbil and make your way up to an alien. I hope we're not talking about H.R. Geiger style Aliens here, they're almost as dangerous as women!

Corrected ;D

The MB-6582 was my first big project. Before that i'd done small electronics projects with GCSE at school. I now have a working base-board and am working on debugging the control surface. is the minimal setup for a SID, There's a couple of extra boards needed to add some knobs and lights for nicer looking Synth. As you can see they are simple modules, nothing too hard to build. The problems you have had are from lack of support... the wrong componants and dodgy documentation. The kits from Smash have the right tried and tested componants and you have all the information/instructions on this site. Trying something twice and giving up is a bad way to do things.... Do you ride a bike?

Anybody should be able to build a midibox SID, even if they haven't used a soldering iron before (There's plenty of examples of people having done this). Smash sells kits for all the modules that you need. Bulk buys are organised on here for the SID chips themselves, LCDs, etc, etc. As for learning to solder; Buy a cheap flashing lights kit or something from ebay and practice on that. It may seem daunting, but all the information you need is on the ucapps website and the wiki, as well as threads on this forum and the people on here will go all out to offer you help, advice and any information you need. We have a chat room too and the regulars will be more than happy to talk you through things you are having problems with. At the end of it all you will have a synth that you have built and looks the way you want it to look, nothing is better than that. The spirit of this community is that we all work at building our own projects (and help others). This is what it takes to get an amazing synth that's not available elsewhere or at a comparible price. Everyhting you need to know is offered here on a plate, what else could you want? There's been several threads about MBSIDS being offered on ebay, have a look through the forum and you'll see how much it upsets the people here. I can't speak for Thorston or the others online, but I think I personally would have reservations about helping someone out with support, whilst being aware that they had knowingly assisted in the license being breeched by buying an MBSID from ebay.

We don't have goats and we don't slaughter our own animals, you need a license to do that in the UK. Personally, I get skins from the music shop! The best goat skins come from Africa; the warm arrid climate over there makes the goat skin have less hair folicles and is therefore a better quality for drum skins. Tuning a djembe isn't too difficult, you just need to learn how to do a mali weave, or pulling diamonds as it is commonly known. Basically the spare bit of string is passed under two vertical strings (two that have the big gap between them) then over the top and back under the first vertical string... then you wedge the drum between your feet and pull the spare string... This should pull the two vertical strings together, creating a diamond.. you then carry on. A properly tuned drum shouldn't have more than 1cm play in the skin if you push it in the middle and should have a nice booming bass and a high topend with quite adifference in sound between the two... keep pulling diamonds untill you acheive this. Once it's setup and settled then it should be good for a long time.

You're going to hit your djembe with somehing other than your hand? :o That's such a no-no! Spose it doesn't matter if it's already cracked and was nice and cheap. It'd be quite amusing to fill a rubber glove with silicone and use that instead though! Skins are cheap enough... i paid £5 (GBP) for mine, but that was a whole goatskin with hair and tail still attached. You can get pre-shaved rings of skin the right size for your drum, they cost a little bit more.. It's very satisfying to do it yourself thouch and a good excuse to tune it up exactly as you want it.

Don't take the skin off unless you are planning to replace it! They are stretched and your's looks like it's been trimmed to the ring so would never go back on. New skins can be picked up quite cheaply though and you can learn how to skin it yourself (if your girlfriend doesn't mind you soaking a lump of goat in the bath over night) but it takes a few days and a fair bit of effort... There's loads of instructions online for re-sminning them. Cracks usually appear whilst the drum drying out. I'm not an expert about this, but if it's not getting any worse then i'd leave it along. The way the drum skin pulls the body together should prevent it from spreading further. How are you plannign on midifying it... as acontroller or as a sound module? Using it as a sound module would be really cool, but difficult to get it to play correctly with the different tones (bass, rim, slap, etc)... Again, I think it would be difficult to relay these types of strike using it as a midi controller too... maybe some sort of capacitance sensor on the top so it "knows" which bit of the skin you ar striking. One thing that I thought of doig for a while is midi-trousers. I play the djembe myself and know a lot of other people who do... without fail, if they're ever waiting for a bus, etc they will all sit and drum their knees... some inbuilt midi controller pads would be awesome!

Nice djembe! I'g guessing that you've managed to connect it to the clock-box wirelessly. :D