wicked1

I've got the rack mount of that synth, and that's one of them that needs work.. It has a few bad encoders.

Urg.. I'll be doing a lot of repairing for quite a while, I think.. Many old projects and even commercial gear that's all showing its age. Somehow sitting in storage was worse for it all than being thrown in my truck and driven to venues every weekend. I've got a huge modular I built between 10-20 years ago, and it's full of glitches. That's going to be a nightmare to fix. All caps age, but there was a problem w/ the electrolyte they were using 15-20 years ago and those things failed in everything.. From commercial products like computers and tv's, to DIY stuff like my modular.. At least electrolytic caps are big and easy to find and replace. I'm getting too old to work w/ SMD stuff :(. Vision and steady hands are a thing of the past. Ageing is a b*tch, for me and caps.... I used cheap sockets for all the IC's in all my old projects, too, and those have gotten oxide layers or something and need to be cleaned or replaced, too :(

I figured out the 2nd issue too.. My 12v line was about .5v low. I added some capacitance after the rectifier and it increased the voltage a little. Now the 6581 performs as it should.

I just got my mb6582 out, after about 6 years of disuse. It had a few issues I tracked down to broken wires and bad connections in IC sockets. All that's fixed. I'm having a few issues w/ my filters. Edit- solved my first issue.. Filter wasn't giving me the full frequency range. Apparently I had to calibrate it in the ENS menu, for an external filter that is not currently attached. 2nd question, I have mostly 6582's, but have a pair of 6581 SID's on one core, and when I enable the filter on them, there is a loud hiss. If I disable the filter, it's got the usual background noise all the SID's have. But the as soon as I click the button to enable the filter for the oscillators, the hiss gets loud. (Ext in is not enabled). Is this normal for 6581's? Thanks for any advice!

That's kind of what this is turning in to! I'm actually thinking of having a rack panel made for my 6582.. It would still take the same formfactor, so I could use the same control surface PCB.. just have dead space to one side to make it rack-mountable. (Mount the filter components back there, or something). Oh, maybe I can fit the FM in that space.... hmm. Off to the drawing board. (which is actually just a different screen here at my same desk :) ) In the end, the goal is to have the core of my studio transportable... Couple of filter and FX boxes. MB Seq, SID and FM. 9090, novation synth, and the two problem bits... mpc2000xl and mixing board (those are "problems" because of their size and are obviously designed for desktop use)

Only because the draw is so uneven... Almost everything is pulling from the +12 side, which is why I have no headroom. The negative 12v side has several volts headroom. It's only powering my filters. My thought was basically the SID's themselves are probably drawing most of the power. I've got 4x9v sids, and 4x12v sids. I was thinking I could split the load so the 2ndaries of my transformer are doing equal work. But.... like you said, it probably won't work, and it is working successfully now...... so, I suppose I'll forget about it :).

Thank you! I'll have to change the pinout, as I'm supplying all the clean DC voltages to the 6582, but that's under control.

New question... In the end, my power supply is like the wiki, one rectifier, Center tap configuration. Could I use the +9v regulator on the negative rail? So like, connect + to 0, and - to -12? I know that will give me 9v, but its ground would be 12v lower than neutral, right? Then I guess it depends on how Wilba set up the 6582... does everything share the same ground? is my thought process correct on this? If so, do you know if it will work w/ the way wilba has the 6582 set up? It's really a shame there are no schematics for his designs!

Well, amazingly, the LDO regulators and the Schottky diodes (salvaged from a PC power supply) seem to be working. I've only got about 300mv to 1/2v headroom under load, but I can't hear any buzzing. And, that's worst case scenario.. For some reason, the outlets on the other side of my basement are about 8vac higher in voltage, so I've got no problems there.

I'm looking for a c64 style power plug. I built my own power supply for the 6582, but want to use its c64 power jack. I'd rather not cut the end off my old c64 power supply, so does anyone know where I can get a c64 style power plug? Thanks

Nice! was converting the layout easy? I want to make one for the 9090 too.. Been waiting tooooo long for my panels, and these are much less expensive.

That working c64 and burger time loaded bring back some memories! A long time ago, my sister moved out and took the commodore w/ her. She recently asked if I wanted it back. I said yes, and she brought in the monitor and disk drive and said, we threw the keyboard away... Figured you didn't need that. URG!

Or, just make them analog for real time control (in addition to the CV from the FM), and accept I can't record their values......... (for live stuff and having fun). The dedicated filter box seems better and better all the time... I have an electrix filter factory, which is a midi, time synchronized filter and lfo. It's very useful. Can use it on drums, turntables, whatever synth, etc. Building one w/ the cv2 could be very interesting. Not only midi/time synch LFO, but EG's as well. Could make a control surface w/ the LFO and envelope controls. Assign other CV's to the pitch and res, and I think all of that is saveable in a patch.. I'll have to read up on the cv2 again. But my idea for that is I think (correct me if I'm wrong) I could put it on the same channel as the FM, and when a key is pressed, it would trigger the envelope on the filter box, too... So then the FM's built in EG5 and LFO's are redundant.