no-fi

Done. Documented. Works great.

A knife tip is actually designed for this process, and lets you do it in one soldering pass. http://www.hakko.com/english/tip_selection/type_k.html

oh. 1/8" jack.... I hadn't really considered one of those for a main out. Actually the more I think of it, the more I'm thinking that I'd like to use two of the original output jack spaces as the mixed down pair, and have a mono 1/4" jacks for a main stereo out by default, like all my other gear. Guess I could always make a detachable box connected through the DB25 port with feedback pots, buffered inputs and individual outs...

Where would a summed signal jack fit on the back of the standard 6582 box? mine doesn't seem to have any space for one. (I plan on putting in the 4 feedback pots one day!)

Hi all. forgive me if this is common knowlege but I haven't seen this mentioned before, so get the feeling this could be very useful to more people than just me. so here goes: I have the standard 6582 build, that only has the 4 stereo individual out jacks on the back - not the summed stereo headphone out. But I wanted to use superpoly mode without taking up 8 mono mixer channels. One quick and simple way to automatically chain all your voices down to the one output jack is to take advantage of the existing buffered output design and the existing use of switched sockets on the 6582 board, you can bridge the L&R switch side of each of the stereo 1/4" jacks to the L&R signal side of the next jack along with a bit of spare wire. Then if no plug is in a jack, it automatically connects that jack's signal to the input of the next one. Then, when you only have a plug in output 1, you get all of 4,3,2,1 summed to it, but if for instance you put another plug at 4, you would get voice 4 on that plug, and 3,2,1 on the plug in jack 1. so you could have the synth setup as 2 instruments - one voice doing a bass sound, and 3 voices tied together doing a 3 voice pad, and each "instrument" going to its own mixer channel for EQ and fx. anyway - just thought I'd share. this tiny little mod made a massive difference to my use of my 6582...

Hi all, I made a 6582 in the standard case earlier this year, but I didn't get to use it for long, as I'd wired it up to use the C64 power supply, but then my poor old beige C64 power supply I had been using died. anyway - I left it alone for a while cause I've had a lot of other stuff going on this year, but ended up replacing the 64 supply with an open frame PSU module, and thought others might be interested in what I did. here's the supply I used: http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=MP3108 it's a 12V/5V supply with 3/4A max delivery (up to 60W total) I ended up buying a plastic box for this, and some waterproof glands, and cutting the cables out of my C64 supply to use with it. (C64 power plug pinouts are available all over the net, and if you don't already know what to do with mains, stay the hell away from this idea) Apart from the basics, the big difference here is I've replaced an unreferenced 9vAC with a 12V referenced (to 5V GND) power supply - you only need to put the 12VDC on one of the original 9VAC pins, it goes through the bridge, and comes out the other side fine, but when you do this check that the switch on your MB65852 turns off your 12V supply (it only breaks one pin of the 9VAC input so if you use the wrong pin, you can't turn off your 12V rail with the switch!) so yeah... working 6582. it doesn't seem much if any noisier than how it originally was (and really, with a 9V linear regulator between 12VDC and the SIDs, I don't expect much noise here anyway) Apart from all this, one thing to watch out for is if you can't get the open frame supply snugly mounted in your box, and you need to use screws through from the PSU frame to the outside, then you really need a metal case, and a mains plug with an earth wire that is bonded to the metal case.

actually, no. especially when you look at how much build specific info is pushed forward for kitting and assembling a given midibox project. general and specific info on programming units once you've built them is not anywhere near as easy to find as all the other info. the binaries weren't online for at least the first batch of sammiches. mine was emailed to me. "and.... in case you finish before TK releases MIDIbox SID RC34, find attached the setup_sammich_sid.hex which is built from the latest source in SVN. The button configuation is F1=Play, F2=SID L/R, F3=toggle arp mode on all oscs. Support for changing these bindings is coming, I promise :-) you'll just have to wait!" yeah I guess someone could set the defines to compile the source for "semi minimal CS" all by themselves if only the documentation of the sammich showed the schematics so they could easily see what interface components were hooked up where, and maybe also what a "semi-minimal CS" was...

As far as the case goes, I'd highly recommend the pre made front panel... either from schaeffer, or this thread there's a LOT of switch and LED holes (over 200) to drill otherwise. and there's no point planning on buying it after you built and tested the 6582, because you'll need the front panel before you can finish the control surface, in order to solder the LEDs in the right position. If you're not planning on going the premade panel, you may as well skip the CS PCB too. As for the PSU, my recently built 8 sid 6582 seems to run fine on a newer beige C64 power supply. though some people needed the black one which is a bit higher power, to get stable running. YMMV depending on the current load of your particular unit especially LCD backlight and CS LED options you go with, and the state of your c64 supply... I went with orange 70 degree LEDs from farnell in the end, and drive them with 2k resistors.

one thing that's not very well explained anywhere here is that the firmware for any MIDIBOX project normally comes from the MIOS download page. Though in the case of the sammich, you probably got sent a standalone hex file by email, because it's a different feature set to a normal midibox V2, and I'm not sure the source for this is released yet. certainly wasn't when the first batch of sammiches came out. ANYWAY - there's a preset bank in the presest folder in this standard package. that's what you're looking for. here's the link to the package: http://ucapps.de/mios/midibox_sid_v2_0_rc35.zip good luck!! :-)

cool! I never used dealextreme before. their logo makes me think of the yamaha DX7 logo....

well I painted the groves tonight with a syringe and needle. Looks like it worked great. I got an 0.6mm needle and a smallish syringe for like $1.50 from my local chemist. I asked for the biggest gauge needle they had. Put paint in the syringe, attach needle, open side of the needle points down into the groove, then you push the plunger while sliding the needle along the groove. you can work out a pretty good pressure/speed match which fills the groove without too much overspill. Then go back and wipe overspill with a tissue after each groove is done. I found wiping across the groove worked a lot better than along, which also pulls out paint you might want to keep.. Just make a point of always wiping away from any lettering. damn, I wish I'd had this technique when I did the sammich!!! I should probably get some photos up of this and my sammich sometime...

aaaah cool... thanks for the link! I didn't think of looking in that section. slowly learning my way around here. :-) ANYWAY, i spent a few hours looking in 2 art/craft shops near where i live, plus a giant hardware store, and no luck on the little bottle with the fine metal nozzle. Time to go up the road to the local chemist and see if I can pick up a fit box without looking like a junkie... not sure if the paint will work with normal injecting needles, it might be a bit too thick.... but there's only one way to find out. :-)

OK... so I bought a 2nd hand schaeffer front panel from someone who grabbed one and some SIDs, but then never got around to starting their mb6582. It currently has blue paint in the milled grooves between sections, and my plan was always to make these grooves a different colour. (even bare aluminium) My default way to do this will be to do what I learned with the sammichSID, and tape up (electrical tape?) either side of the groove, and get some layers of watered down acrylic in there, with drying periods between each coat. I'm sure this will work, but faster and easier ways to do this without making a huge mess would be very much appreciated... Also, is it worth trying to scratch the original paint out first? I could always use a scalpel or a tiny flat blade screwdriver, but I'm worried about slipping and damaging the front panel finish. thanks.

well I did a bit of reading on wikipedia... seems like white LEDs do have a fair spike of blue in them still, but they look way more spread to me than plain blue, and even more "natural" than a combination of Red, Green, and Blue LEDs. but yeah - variable brightness has killed the white LEDs plan for me. I suspect that maybe they'd be a bit more consistent if I was driving them at their rated spec (and therefore blinding myself) because with lower resistor value testing, they all seem a lot more consistent... (or my eyes are saturating......) but part of what I was wanting to do with hi power LEDs was to get usable light out of them with a reduction in current drain on my poor old C64 PSU. Oh well. I really wish all this info here was IN THE WIKI before I'd spend all this time waiting for my white LEDs. I mean.. reading that linked forum post, it sounds like blue LEDs (and white LEDS) are basically the work of satan - but if you read the CS construction guide and the parts list it even talks about how you **should buy** high brightness LEDS, and talks about high value resistors to manage the use of blue ones in particular... This is very frustrating. Oh well. Updated the WIKI to warn future generations of builders.

yeah quality control rejects come to mind for the explanation of so many bad ones. I've never had LEDs with such variance before, and these shouldn't be any different just because they are white..... and I don't trust the rest of them to have a long and useful lifespan. I might email the seller and see what I can arrange in a refund. From what I understand, white LEDs shouldn't have most of the problems associated with blue(which I agree are bad, hate the look of anyway, and would never use) because the "chemicals added" are there to absorb the direct LED light and then transmit a wide band of other light wavelengths (which is how they look white!) that your eyes should be able to deal with. I guess a bit of UV is not good, but coupling this with large value resistors to keep brightness down (no 220R voltage drop resistors here!) I'm not sure this is such a no-go, unless someone can give me numbers on huge levels of UV wavelength light coming from white LEDs.

I needed a bunch of LEDs for my 6582 build, and decided that white LEDs would look nice. I had a bit of a look around and decided that clear bright white LEDs would work, as long as I played about and picked a decent resistor value to limit the current to a sensible amount. so, I found someone selling them on ebay from china, and ordered 200 of them (and then 4 weeks later, they arrive..... d'oh!) Last night I finally had a chance to sit down and work out my resistor value to run these, but in the process I discovered they're really not consistent at all. I used my 6582's 5V supply, via the GND/5V pad pair on the panel connector line, I soldered a 1K and a 2K resistor to the 2 pads to make a pair of contacts with a set resistance I could quickly test each LED with... Then, I noticed that about only 75% of the LEDs are a decent brightness. The rest are really really dull, right down to completely dead. And even the ones that I flagged as basically OK seem to have a bit of variance across them... I think they seem OK enough looking at them one after the other, but I do notice variation between then, and think that next to each other in the matrix I am going to be very not happy with them! and with 25% being no good, I'm also a little worried about what will happen in the future - will the good ones fail too? So... I guess I need to get a whole new set of LEDs now. Anyway - is this a normal thing to expect with white LEDs? (I never used them before) or did I just waste 4 weeks of my life waiting for garbage to be shipped to me? I've never seen anything like this with any other LEDs I've ever used. I think I'm looking for an excuse to dispute the ebay transaction at the moment, and just move on and find new LEDs. but any reassurances from people who bought a similar batch of white LEDs from ebay with a big variance in testing and the good 75% ended up working great and looking fine in their midibox would be appreciated too... :-)

knobs received! thanks!!! great shipping job.

PM sent!