DJ Trago

ahhh the typo..... downfall of even the most smug :-[ haha! but it dosent matter coz il be seting up Robins studio and i get to play with Synthi As all week :D :D :D

as you are all aware i am no expert on this but maybe there could be a solution involving a 555 timer :-[ there good for pulses and metronome type apps.

all is coolio with the patch probs, i tryed using MIDI-OX again and played about with the buffers but to no avail so instead i downloaded the patch editor made by Rutgur and just uploaded the banks through that! which worked perfectly and i can edit them all aswell! too fuzzylizard - i recomend using a combination of MIOS studio and Rutgurs patch editor if you have any problems as they both worked without a hitch, realy smooth programing! the sequencing issues are very confusing still iv had a realy frustrating play but not got any where, but i am going to do a weeks work experence with ESM (manufacture of the synthi and longest established synthesizer manufacture in the world! 8) ) next week so im going to get some good questions in there and hopefully get some good answers too!

WOW!!! cheers for the super fast replys, im at school at the mo but i will try as soon as i get home :D sound good tho, i did notice when i uploaded the bank, it compleated surprisingley fast. in answer to your questions, my bankstick is a 24LC512 and the MIDI issue is realy confusing as when i play my SID with my keyboard it works fine, switching between patches and tweeking all ok but when is sequenced it just seems to realy do somthing diffrent, iv had a little experment with diffrent sequecing styles, when the note is held i can play other notes over the top but when there is no note being payed a spesific, and normaly very high freq note is present, this note can be changed by changing the patch but the only way of stoping it is by reseting my SID ??? :-[ ???

ok, id just like to thanks everyone who has helped me will all the issues iv had, youve all been great and now iv finaly got somthing to show for it :):):) big smilles all round... but i got, as expected, a few rather odd problems... 1. when i play my SID it works fine, no problems, but when i sequence it in ableton (using midi from an m-audio fasttrack pro), randomley after a few bars a realy loud note will stick on and the only way to stop it is to reset my SID which is realy quite anoying 2. when i uploaded all the basic patches on to my bank stick i only have every other one, the others are empty?!?! eg. 001 lead 002 techno pwm 003 empty 004 techno 5th 005 empty.... and so on.. these problems are in my mind quite odd and iv had a look and found nothing notably writen by any one elce on them, any ideas ??? cheers alex

yer i have 2 x 6581 SIDs and they both have the same issue which is why i thought it might be a problem with something elce, and im realy hopeing that i dont have 2 duf SIDs coz that would be realy (pardon my french) shite! but if this is the case i will just have to grit and bear it, ebay here i come! ;)

hahaha i should have guessed! hmmmm i will put up some audio clips i abit, i knew that the 6581s were noisy but this is odd coz the note is only present after initialy pressing a note, as in its silent untill i press a note then its held ??? if id known they were going to be like this id have bought the 8580 :-[

yer i knew that was gona be a whole new kettle of fish! ;) but i just tryed my other SID chip and iv got the same issue with the quiet held note at the after iv played that note, intrestingly when i turn the volume of the note down the held note is still present, it strangely attenuats to silence when the volume value is at 33 an then comes back when i bring the value down lower ??? and i can play just the quite held note when volume is at at 0. any one elce had this problem? x

yer im going to try that when i get home, im at school at the mo. one other thing i was going to ask does any one have the conections for the minimal conntrol surface, i meen what pins do each of the push buttons and enc plug in to and do they all just go to ground? i have searched for this but only found the basic 16enc pdf and the 32buttons pdf.

AND THE GATES OF SIDIY ZION OPENED!!!! yay :) :) :) thats some good SID, yer i hadnt got the MD SC connection, noob error but all sorted now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4UEavSILe4 there is a strange release sound that holds after the note has been played, but my next task is to link up my bank stick... back soon ;)

sorry i tryed to use tab and it posted beffor i was finnished (noob error!) CORE SID vs (j2) > vs vd (j2) > vc so (j10)> so rc (j10)> rc clk(j10)> clk mu(j10)> mu and thats that, good? bad? ugly?

yo yo! im still not realy getting very far, test tone. with SID all good and without SID also works but is insainly loud, scared the crap out of me infact! :o which lead me to think maybe the tone with SID is perhaps wrong. but i was also very confused about why you get a tone without the SID? what produces it? but anyway, more importantly the interconection test... mesuring voltages without the SID i get nothing when i change between any of them apart from the cs pin that is 0V when slected and then 5V when not selected (thats what it is suposed to to isnt it?) ??? so if any ones got any top shelf advice for me then id love to here it :) one thing that i had considered was my CORE SID interconections, i have SmashTV boards that are super lovely but a little confusing sometimes, heres my conections CORE SID vs (j2) > vs vd (j2)

OK, iv been a man on a mission and found a second power supply and got :D FULL POWER :D GOOD TIMES!!! and no horrid hum, in fact i have a lovely test tone and all is good... ...no, its never that easy, test tone? yes! but thats as far as it wants to go, when i upload the main program and press some keys i get nothing still which is quite worrying as now iv proved that all the connections and power must be good enough to get some sound, but sound i can use is another matter :( i also tryed the pin check file and i dont know if i was just doing it wrong but it didnt seem to do much, my LCD registered that i was moving the mod wheel (changed the selected pin on the read out) but all the voltaged remained the same on my SID ??? should i be messuring between pin and ground or pin an pin14? a breakthrough is only a breakthrough if you can make use of the hole you have made.x

oki-dokie, im on it! 8) any surgestions for good uk retailers of such a device? oh and design wise what should i do? with the conections an so on? i assume i basicaly rebuild the OPSU but scrap the top rail (14v) and replace it with adapter? keep the love coming!x

hello again fellow midiboxers, i realy do feel like the most fail ridden noob there is! iv been building my SID for 6 months now and its begining to destroy my soul. basicaly everything i have atempted has failed and iv had to back track and now im basicaly at square one :( so i tryed with the OPSU and failed because it wouldnt suply enough voltage, so i gave up on stereo and then built the most basic SID i could hopeing that maybe after 6 months and hundreds of pounds i could aleast get even a slight mono murmer out of it. like a ray of light (after the death of a 4x20 Backlit LCD) my core came to life and i connected it to my laptop and began sending it .hex files:) GOOD TIMES! but all the display messages in the world couldnt help, my SID still does nothing, my audio output is just a massive fuzz and i feel i have reached my final dead end. i know this is all very mellowdramatic, but it realy is geting to me. so here is some pics of my set up; http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o239/Air2air/Photo0304.jpg http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o239/Air2air/Photo0305.jpg ok so some voltage info, on my SID board the 2 small IC have 4.9v (they are happy) but my SID IC (im using a 6581) only has 9.7v (DC) and my audio out for some reason has a very strange slowley decreacing voltage starting at 5vDC. ??? if any one could help it would be great and i will check any connections or voltages that you recomend, your my only hope... alex.x

sorry i forgot to say, my set up is; 1x CORE 1x SID 6581 1x basic PSU with C64 PSU 2x din 20x4 lcd

hi iv just set up a basic SID unit and its going ok, i tryed to use the OPSU system but had so many problems with it that iv now just opted for the PSU made from parts of the C64 (the very basic PSU) and it was all going well iv conected it to my laptop via MIDI and iv been sending .hex messages to the core and running programs like the test tone ect. i then tryed to run the 6581 program and it instaled fine but when ever it gets to the launching screen the system reboots and starts over in a very frustrating loop. as i said beffor the test tone program seems to run fine but the main SID program will not. i have tryed removing the lcd and runing the program and i seems to not reboot (console messages in MIOS Studio dont continualy come up) so i was wondering if there was any help with this? my lcd is a large 20 x 4 dispaly but i dont want to go and buy a smaller one just to find out i have the same problem. any ideas? alex

im taking the 9VAC reading from straight out of the C64 PSU which is then rectfied to 12VDC ???

yer cheers for that, i was checking the wrong points on the CORE and it all seems good now. i still only getting 10VDC to my SIDs though and this because of the 12VDC input from the PSU :( so im just going to keep playing about with different rectifiers as i think thats where the problem lies, 9VAC input and 12VDC output dosent make much sense to me! but cheers for the heads up with that link, much love Alex

yup iv realised a silly mistake was i had put in a 7805 instead of a 7809 so iv just changed that and now iv got 12VDC out but still only 10.7VDC on the SID ICs which im sure still isnt enough. but my main consern is the lack of power on the CORE, at j2 iv got 5.2VDC but still no power on the ICs! im going to keep trying to find the problem but as usual any help is good help ;) Alex

hi there im also having some PSU issues, so i thought id tag on to the end of this. basically iv built a stereo SID set-up with the optimised PSU but im not getting the right voltages at all. i think i all stems from the PSU as im not getting the 14VDC output, im instead getting 12.2VDC. the components i have used are the exact recommendation (7805, 2200uf25v, 2200uf16v ect...) but iv used a DC W005M rectifier as i was told this was fine. my SID boards are set up for the old 6581s and im running a 4 x 20 backlit display, the voltages for my ICs are too low though my SIDs are getting a low 7.5VDC and the other IC on the SID board are showing 5.2VDC and on the CORE my PIC appears to be getting nothing and neither does the other small IC. i have acquired 2 C64 PSUs (one black no vents and one grey no vents) and they appear to be inputting the correct voltages any ideas would be very helpful! cheers, Alex

cheers, i didnt realy make sense to me at first, to much conflicting info easly confuses me (probbly not the best idea of mine to build a MBSID in the first place!!!!) but cheers for the low down, next stop noise!

cheers for the reply, still confused about the MD port tho? as theres no MD port on the smash SID boards but there are on the Optimised Power Supply layout linking the sid and core, again my thoughts are just to leave them disconected ???

ok just a couple more questions ;) 1. the 2 caps that are in parallel with vc and vs ports on the SID boards, is this definatly the correct way? parrallel and not serise? 2. i have no MD port on my boards from smashTV, should i just ignore them? (i know this is a common question as iv looked at loads of posts regarding it but no of them give any finite answers, and considering most noobs but smash boards it should be engraved somewhere for us all to see):P and last but not least... 3.iv used a bridge canablized from a C64 in the psu board, any one tryed this? did it work? im so close, i can feel it in my waters.... ....big love to any one with some answersxxxxx

nice one, cheers buddy!