Max Romantschuk

I'd love to combine a midibox and something like this to build a lofi drum machine. :) Should perhaps finish my current project first, though...

Not really breaking the law. It's a violation of the Midibox license, which states non-commercial projects only. Commercial, by definition, is for-profit. So technically if you built a midibox for someone and charged them for parts only (taking nothing for the work done) it would be in compliance with the license. A license violation is also not the same thing as breaking the law. You can obviously challenge someone who is ignoring the license in a court of law, but that's a separate issue. Indeed. I also feel that since TK has put a lot of effort into making this platform it's his call to say if it's OK to make money off it. I'd likely be pissed if I built an awsome platform only to have an entity with the means and funds to ramp it up to full-scale manufacturing make a pile of money out of it. (While personally I'd probably just license everything under the GPLv3, keeping the platform open and hackable regardless of other issues.)

Beautiful work! Merry Christmas to everyone as well. :)

Christmas arrived early for me today, went and picked up misc. parts from a local supplier, and got my kits from Mike. Took a bunch of photos while unboxing. Packaging not as neat as Smash's (judging from other posts, no anti-static bags etc.), but don't really care unless something is damaged. Gonna get that build blog started once Christmas is over. Need to do something about the mess on my desk too, well at least I have a good reason to tidy it! ;)

Very nice work! I like the approach to getting a perfectly square edge on the case. But that's not something you cut by hand... :) Indeed! I'm only just starting my first project, and the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) has been factored in from day one... ;)

I guess I was just confused when I couldn't find a single old page linking to a new page. Old: http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=core_module New: http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=home:mbhp:module:core Right? Because there was talk about putting some kind of info about the page having been overhauled. Basically I'm just trying to get all this straight so I don't fsck up when I find a chance to add/improve something... :) .max

With large pages I mostly meant having a single page covering the core module for example, with sections for what it is, how to build it, how to connect stuff etc. Or is the plan to break everything up into small individual pages? You can always just link a specified section within a page, right? But sematics and structure are good, and as I've said I'm still just starting to get my bearings. I do plan to add as much info as possible to the wiki in the future though. :)

I think that it makes more sense with a flatter structure and sections in a document for definition of what something is and how to build it etc. With a proper table of contents pages being largeish isn't so much of a problem. Note: I'll be happy to offer my input, but currently I'm "fairly" occupied by four little kids who are reeeally wound up waiting for xmas... ;)

Maybe a redirect would be best? But that depends on how hard it would be to access the original old page if need be after the redirect was created. I've been trying to wrap my head around it, but what is the core benefit of doing this big old page to new page thing as opposed to simply improving the existing wiki incrementally? For instance Wikipedia seems to have solved most indexing issues with dedicated list pages, linking to individual pages. I'm not saying one or the other is better, but I'm just curious as to why exactly a total refactoring would be so much better than incremental improvements?

Thanks for a great, clear answer! Going the cheap route then... :) *Making note to self to add info to the Wiki later*

I've been searching the forums for a definite answer, but haven't really been able to find one... When powering the core from J1, do I need a regulated power supply? The docs on ucapps state 7-10 volts, AC or DC, polarity insignificant. But what about stability? A lot of people seem to use around 9V. Does the core power regulation circuitry take care of stabilizing the voltage to 5V under varying load? Does it make sense to spend the extra money on a regulated power supply over a non-regulated one? Some people wrote about using a linear power supply and not a switched one. Is this important?

First of all: Great thread! On case colors: Chrome would indeed be cool... Maybe local car-tuning people could recommend a place which won't f**k it up? Black and white are classic, but a bit boring... A nordlike red would be cool, if that's your thing. Would look industial and agressive, fitting to the SID sound. :) How do you plan to do the case labels? Do you have a place to get it silkscreened or what's the plan?

Cool! Then again, wouldn't it be cooler to build one yourself from an encoder and other associated stuff? ;)

I got a reply from simplemachines: It does seem to work like that, not perfect, but better than nothing... :)

If you get a chance to look inside that usually tells a lot. If there's nothing to be seen, there's a fair chance of a single faulty component. Big burned area on the other hand... In any case there is info out there: http://www.maths.abdn.ac.uk/~bensondj/html/dx7.html Both service manual and circuit diagram. :) Always wanted a DX7, would be nice to know how it compares to my VZ-10M...

Well quite frankly I don't think you need one, unless you have a really good grasp of circuit design and signal flows. (Univerity education level grasp.) I don't think most people building midiboxes have one. In theory, this would be possible. In practice it makes more sense to get a core kit etc. and go from there. What you should do now is read the documentation. :) Start with these: http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=introduction_to_ucapps.de http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=questions_and_answers http://www.ucapps.de/

Exactly. The problem is a multimeter tests a signal rather slowly. If you needed to test an IC you'd need an oscilloscope, which can analyze a signal more quickly and plot the signal curve in respect to time. But to make use of that data you'd have to be intimately familiar with how that particular IC should work, etc... I think it's safe to say that as far as the average DIY-guy goes an IC either works or doesn't.

The soldering part is easy to learn. The electronics part, which you need to know about if things don't work right away (they never do ;)) and you have to troubleshoot, that's the hard part... ;)

I don't know about the exact details, but a technique called multiplexing can be used to drive more than one led from a smalled amount of pins. Try searching for "led multiplex" or "led rings" for some pointers in the right direction. Use the advanced search and check "Show results as messages" for more easily read results. You do mean driving more than one led so that some can be on and some off, right? In any case, relays shouldn't be needed regardless of the technique. A plain old solid state transistor can be used to switch a circuit on or off, relays are only needed when switching an independent circuit (say mains or something) on or off by a control voltage from another circuit.

That's a sweet setup! :) I see you're in Europe too. Where'd you source your ribbon cables and (especially) connectors? I've been looking for a good source, could probably order online from my local electronics supplier but too green to be sure which parts are right yet... ;)

Yes, I'm getting started as well, and have ordered a core, AIN, DIN kits and an LCD. After sourcing the other parts locally I'm just going to experiment to learn about the platform before trying to build the project that I'm planning in the long run. :) I've also gotten C programming and electronics books from the local library to help me out, but I do have programming and soldering experience so the basics are there... Hopefully! ;)

OK, once I flesh out some documentation I might well put it on the Wiki, and I'll be keeping a build "blog" thread here once I start doing something... :) Got confirmation from Mike's too, if I'm lucky maybe I'll get my parts in time for xmas. :D

Ordered and paid my kits from Mike tonight, (doable easily with EU IBAN bank transfers) so there's no turning back now... I'm very heavily in the idea/brainstorming phase right now, started to do some designs in Inkscape (will post when I have something worth showing) and found that Front Panel Designer runs fine as far as I can tell under Ubuntu 8.10. :) Been thinking I should start documenting stuff somewhere. Is it customary to set up a wiki page, or should I use this forum, or a blog? There seems to be a lot of different approaches, but I'm not sure this qualifies as a user project in the wiki. I will probably ultimately make my own firmware, but that is probably be a year off still... ;)

Some solution is definitely needed. I really don't know the best way, I'm so new to this all. :) I think that it would make sense to have both a link to the new page on the old page, as well as a link to the old page on the new page. Then it's reasonably easy to track changes on the old page after the new one has been created, and port them over. I much more familiar with mediawiki than dokuwiki, so the exact specs on how we should do this is best left to someone with the appropriate experience! :)

I'd be happy to help out as well. How are we tracking what has been copied, and what hasn't? Also, when additions are made to the old pages (had a few in mind and found this info on the whole old/new wiki) how do we make sure these too get copied to the new wiki?