Flemming

Hej Spazi.. og velkommen til :) Ja, vi er nok mange herinde som også er at finde på MSSIAH forumet. Men for at sige det mildt, så er brugerne herinde langt mere modne ;) Det bliver spændende at se hvordan din SammichSID ender, men jeg kan garantere dig at du vil elske den!! Den kan præstere langt mere end en almindelig C64 med MSSIAH og SID2SID. Måske bliver du afhængig af det her midiboxing ;) så pas på! her findes jo planer over mange lækre maskiner som man bare må bygge og lege med.. men uanset hvad, så håber jeg at du kommer til at hygge dig her

*Flem does the "It's working"-dance* :frantics:

I am very sure that you are right, 8 resistors for all the LEDs on SammichSID! MB6582 has over 100 LEDs (64x LEDs for modulation matrix, 48x other CS LEDs on control surface, 1x LED for power on) and it has only 16 Resistors for all of them. Thank Wilba for the lovely LED-matrix voodoo which makes this possible :)

Well, as these has usb connector i can't use it with a real C64 - i went on and bought two of them anyways..

Ebay scares me - i'm a pussy ;)

Lately i found great fun in playing the old C64 classics, but i miss some proper joysticks to maximize the fun and retro feel. My hope is that someone inhere might have some joysticks left over from scavenging Commodores?? My preferences would be in the likes of 'Competition Pro' or 'The Arcade' Ofcourse i hope they will be in a somewhat good condition.. but honestly i'm interested in just about anything :) I live in Denmark, so any offers from within EU would be very much appreciated!

If the 9V rail in the C64 does not work, the C64 will not make sound - it will power up alright, and look just fine. I saw this problem a few times - one time it was a first hand experience... the fuse was blown!! No sound, still it worked just fine.. i changed the fuse, and everything worked just fine :D If you have a datasette (the cassettedrive for the C64) you can quickly determine if the 9V rail works; if the datasette does not run, then the 9V rail in the C64 is broken! A quote from Wikipeida: "The 9 volt AC is used to supply power via a charge pump to the SID sound generator chip, provide 6.8V via a rectifier to the cassette motor, a "0" pulse for every positive half wave to the time-of-day (TOD) input on the CIA chips, and 9 volts AC directly to the user-port. Thus, as a minimum, a 12 V square wave is required. But a 9 V sine wave is preferred[31][32]." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64 .... some say that this fact does not apply to C64 with 6581, actually. I wouldn't know - but try to check the fuse and measure the 9V just to be sure edit: If you are curious about this, you can find quite a few threads on the Prophet64/MSSIAH-forums that discusses this matter in detail

Even though TUI (Telepathic User Interface) is pretty cool i hope you get the booboo fixed :) Whenever i experienced a similar problem (proximity aware controls) it usually was caused by poor ground connection from the knob/switch in question. When my finger got too close it would work as a ground connection.... But i highly suspect your situation to be of another nature - mostly because it seems that my issues always tend to be isolated incidents caused by a healthy mix of eagerness and plain stoopidity :tongue:

Ofcourse you can always just test them in a C64.. if you got one - if you pulled the SIDs yourself chances are that you have a working C64 which could be used to test SIDs with. Try playing some hefty SID-files (Hubbard or the likes) that you know already, and you will quickly discover if it does not sound as it should. Just be aware of the 9V/12V difference in SID and C64 ofcourse, so you won't blow any of your delicious chips. Also, the 6581 won't play mixed waveforms so be sure to find SID-files that are compatible with both chips, or the 6581s will sound dead at times. But it's a cheap and easy test, i did it myself a few times, and actually i only found 6581s with errors. The 8580s and 6582s i tried never had a problem at all.

Hi guys.. I finally built the MBFM, but my sound has a weird crackling feel to it. Here is some examples - First the initial patch 5 "Rhodes" which _almost_ sound correct. patch 5.mp3 And here is patch 1 "Acoustic grand" which sounds pretty horrible (problem very audible here). patch 1.mp3 (Patches uploaded using jsynthlib v0.20b, latest version) I have the same result on all 4 outputs, and looking at the wavefile they seem to only go downwards.. very little soundmaterial is on the positive part of the axis. I use a C64 PSU to deliver 5.18VDC (connected straight to IC3 - no vreg) to Core8 -> OPL3 - LED lights up fine. I use two 9V batteries to deliver -/+9VDC for the opamps. I measured 9.5VDC and -9.5VDC at pin 4 and 11 respectively on all 3 op-sockets, and no change in LED-brightness when batteries are connected. I use a PIC18F4685 which is loaded with MIOS for PIC18F452 + the MBFMv1.1d app. Despite my soundproblem I have full nice testtone on all 4 outputs, and i have checked all pins with the interconnection-test (i do have about 0.08V on pin A0 when it should be off, but i read in Wilba's "shorter-wire"-thread that this was not a problem to be concerned about??). Also my two interconnection-wires are pretty short (about 6-7cm.) I have not connected any bankstick, LCD, DIN, DOUT or anything like that - it solely consists of OPL3-module and Core-module (which i strongly suspect to work just fine as it has been used to run 2 SIDs in a quad-SID box for a while). MIDI seems to work fine - i can upload apps at will, and i can upload a single patch to play around with until the thing is powercycled, returning to the standard patch. Sending note on/off also works flawless. I resoldered the interconnection-wires and the 3 SMD chips to make sure they were ok, and it looked much nicer 2nd time, but it had no impact on the soundproblem. Also, i soldered a bit of a resistor lead to fix the "broken trace"-error on the OPL3 board. I really hope someone inhere can help me out finding my error(s)??

You tried google, youtube and the likes ?? Edit: also the MIDIbox wiki might hold some goods - http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/

I am really out of my league here :blink: i don't even own a core32...yet! ..but i know that core32 users likes to use SD cards instead of the 'bank stick'-solution. If it would be any good in your situation, i can't say - http://www.ucapps.de/mbhp_sdcard.html

You mean SID1 and SID2?? Lead engine uses all 3 oscs in one patch, so i guess your plan will not work. The patch can be stereo (SID1 and SID2 will play the same, but with a stereo effect), or it can be mono (SID1 and SID2 plays alike). But if you want more 'sound' you could mess around with ensembles in multi-mode - I'm sure you could have chn1 go to osc1/2/3 (SID1) and chn2 go to osc4/5/6 (SID2) The ensemble-concept is pretty easy to grasp with a bit of practice - http://www.ucapps.de/midibox_sid_manual_e.html ...i did not do a lot of patch programming with MBSIDv2 yet, so i might be way off here :) please leave feedback about your discoveries

It is.. because it was Commodore who made Amiga. They also made C16, VIC20, Plus4, PET and a ton of other machines too.. Apart from that they also made pocket calculators and wristwatches - a little background on Commodore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_International Amiga PSU http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/images/amiga-psu.jpg Commocore 64 PSUs http://jope.fi/cbm/cbm/c64psu.jpg Amiga PSU has 5V and -12V/+12V with square plug http://www.hardwarebook.info/Amiga_500/600/1200_Power_Supply C64 PSU has 5VCD and 9VAC with round plug http://www.allpinouts.org/index.php/Commodore_C64_Power_Supply Anyways, we're OT here ;) initially i just wanted to mention it

The PSU with square plug is for Amiga - the C64 PSU has round plug

You will get a lot of usefull info from here http://www.ucapps.de/ Take a look at the 'MIDIbox SID V2 walkthrough' and 'design', which describes basically how to build and what you need :) Also read about the modules - 'PIC based core' and 'SID module'. The MBSIDv2 manual can also give you an idea about what this box can do and maybe help to clarify what you're after. You will quickly discover that MIDIboxSID can have practically any form you like (from 1 to 8 SID-chips, fullblown controlsurface or just a MIDIcontrolled soundmodule) so it mostly depends on your needs and budget.. It's a lot of information to grasp in one go, but investigate a bit and things will quickly start to clear up - Everyone here was once a MIDIbox-beginner, but with a lot of reading and some help from the awesome guys here in the forum you will end up with a lovely and unique synthesizer :) The forum itself is also full of usefull stuff to read - no matter what kind of question you have, it probably was asked inhere before. So to make things easier for yourself you should also consider searching the threads for answers. And then there is the wiki http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/ which may take some getting use to, but it also holds a lot of answers, for both beginners and advanced builders. Most people will most likely suggest that you buy your stuff from SmashTV - http://www.avishowtech.com/mbhp/buy.html Welcome aboard :) but beware.. this DIY thing is highly addictive :thumbsup:

GM5 is the best, really - not only is it fast, cheap and easy to get from TK, but the Windows driver is multi-client! I tried a lot of commercial MIDI-interfaces through time, and none of them rocks like GM5 - also, i can't be bothered with drivers missing, unsupported OS'es and stuff.. a quick forum search will reveal that practically no bad arguments has been made about the GM5 ;) Besides that, i just think it's pure magic that enables such a tiny chip to control 5 MIDI ports simultaneously :P

So, you read about the MidiBox platform, what it can offer and what limits it may present? It somehow seems a bit redundant to discuss box-layout if your ideas can't be realised anyway, right? Also, a debate of this character seems to be much more rewarding for both parties if their point of reference is the same!

Well, philetaylor already mentioned some facts about hardware limitations, and you'd probably have to program software for the console too.. To get a good overview about the possibilities of the MidiBox-platform, you should start by having a thorough read at http://www.ucapps.de You can also find a gallery there containing pictures of some of the most impressive builds

There are tons of threads where both china and ebay is discussed here on the forum.. The last one that comes to mind is this one: You can do a search here containing words like 'pulls' or 'remarked' to get indepth with the facts. In general, people tend to beware of these. Not that they won't work (they most likely will) but it's hard to be positively sure about what you actually get! You could also post in this forum under 'fleamarket' to see if any members has spare SIDs they want to sell - us 'boxers tend to be more trustworthy than the average chinese electronics supplier :)

Smithy, if you mean CC#0 it is for bank change - i don't think it will work for ensembles

I'm not trying to be picky or anything... but i never heard of a 8561? :)

I'm positive that the VST SDK contains examples and docs to get started http://www.steinberg.net/en/company/3rd_party_developer.html You can find a lot of indepth SID info using Google. Here are some nice articles, especially the Yannes interview deals with SID internals http://sid.kubarth.com/articles.html