fadedpaper

Wow, only took me several months, but I FINALLY got the optimized psu figured out, and it solved all of my woes! Happiest day ever! Thanks again for your help guys!

Cool thanks for the suggestions! I'm kinda nervous about switching the psu setup now that it's all built, because I'm not sure I understand it enough to know which components to swap. If I get to that point, I'll definitely have a few more questions for ya.

Hey guys, thanks for responding. The circuit I used to power the whole thing was from the schematic on the sid page called "mbhp_sid_c64_psu.pdf. It's the simple drawing with only one sid module. I'm using an L7812CV on the sid. I'm getting 15V input and 11.94V output. Is that close enough, or should it read 12V exactly? And yes, the Audio input is grounded. And perhaps it's a silly question, but which ones are the filter caps? I just followed the instructions for smashTV's kit, so I'm pretty sure I put the right caps in the right places. Another thing worth mentioning, I re-used the big 470uf cap from the original c64 unit for the psu. Could the fact that it's old be a source of noise? Any other thoughts, places I should look? Thanks again for your help!

It's the original C64 power brick.

Hello, I built my MBSID a couple years ago and never got it working perfectly. Now it's driving me crazy and I would like to get to the bottom of this. I'm having 2 main issues and I don't know enough about electronics to even guess where to start looking for solutions. 1) There is a constant loud buzzing around 120hz. 2) When I change patches or turn the unit off, there is this EXTREMELY loud, falling high pitch sound. Imagine a C64's version of a cartoon bomb being dropped. I've attached sound clips of both issues I'm having. Be careful with the file called "turn on, play, turn off" because the turn off sound I'm talking about is very loud! Keep your volume down when listening to that one. Note I am not touching the gain at all on any of these sound clips, but the volume of the SID's output seems to fluctuate a little right when I first turn it on. As if it has to charge up or something. I think I built the SID V3, and I used a kit from smashTV that says SID R3A and core R4D. It's only got a single SID 6581 chip in there. Anyone got any ideas how a total newb like myself can get this thing working properly? Thanks. constant noise.mp3 turn on, play, turn off.mp3

Thanks guys! Glad you're liking it. Our first album "Dynamo" will be released in a couple weeks. 12 songs total, and we're extremely happy with the way it all turned-out! Help us spread the word. -Kael

This may be a silly question, but there's no legal issues when using the MB SID for commercial releases is there? It's not like the sound of the SID chip itself is under copyright by anyone, right? I just have to be extra careful in this business (Music for TV and Film).

Hey all, I'm a relative newbie here. But I got my MB SID working and have used it in several of my band's songs lately. Check it out: www.myspace.com/fadedpaperfigures Hope you like it, -Kael

Well, I gave up on my optimized PSU and went back to the standard one. It's working again. Slightly buzzy, but better than not working at all. Thanks for your help anyway guys.

Thought this picture might help shed some light. Keep in mind I have no idea what I'm doing. Oh, and the case is made of plastic, it's kinda hard to tell from the photo. mbsid shot1.JPG

Sorry to be completely ignorant here, but my midibox sid puts off nothing but noise. I've built it with the Optimized PSU, exactly as the schematic shows (as far as I can tell). The thing that puzzles me most is that even when the power is switched off, I get tons of noise coming out of it. When I switch it on, the noise just doubles. I've noticed that when I touch certain parts of it with my finger the buzzing gets a lot quieter. Is this a grounding problem? What could fix it? Also, the noise I get out of it when it's switched on sounds like digital static. I get the faint startup sound (behind a wall of noise) and then comes the digital static. After the startup sound, the sid is not responsive, but all my debugging leads me to believe that it should be working. I cannot for the life of me figure out what's wrong with it. ??? Any suggestions?

Hmm, it's better, but still skips 2, 7, and 12 for some reason. Any other ideas?

Anyone know of a good way to run the SID interconnection test on a Mac? I hear Midi-Ox is the way to do it, but only on PC. MIOS Studio only let's me adjust the mod wheel in increments of 5 or so, skipping half the pins I need to test.