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Danchenka

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  1. Hi. Thanks for your reply. Even though you have no interest in buying it, I'm glad to have the chance to address the issues you bring up. First of all, I'm sorry that I don't have the time to follow what goes on in the midibox community. I didn't even know that there was an upcoming batch of kits, nor did I have much of an idea of what sammichSIDs go for these days. The best I could do was browse a few other ads here. Most were in the same general price range as mine. At least one other for $500 exactly, and that person wasn't asked to justify it. I know it's not an entirely fair comparison as mine has minor internal issues which I was completely forthcoming about. I read the licensing agreement back when I bought the kit, and although I don't remember all the fine details of it now, I am well aware of the fact that Midibox stuff shouldn't be sold for profit. I'll give it another readthrough to be safe. If I wanted to "blatantly flout" the licensing agreement though, I wouldn't be doing it here of all places. When I bought the kit, the exchange rate was 94 yen to the U.S. dollar, as of today it is 120. What I can buy for 60,000 yen (I.E. $500) now, I could have bought for 47,000 yen then ($392 at today's exchange rate.) I bought a brand new Dave Smith evolver around the same time as my sammichSID kit for 55,000 yen, and it now sells here for 95,000. So regardless of whether anyone wants to buy it at that price, calling it "for profit" isn't as simple as you may want to make it out to be, and I don't think anyone has any grounds to be calling me "rude", "disrespectful", etc. I may be asking a little more, but that doesn't make it for profit. My asking price is in yen, not dollars. $500 was just a figure I threw out for the convenience of others since I figure most people don't follow the exchange rates that closely. I'll have to look over the licensing agreement again to see how expenses incurred over the course of trouble shooting and repair are covered, but considering all the money I spent on transistors, display units, ac adaptors, and train tickets to go out and buy these things, I don't think it's unreasonable for me to try to recoup these costs if there is someone willing to pay. Honestly, I probably should have made this more clear in the first post, although I am willing to ship anywhere in the world, buying from me would probably only be advantageous to someone in Japan. Anyway, I said how much I "hope" to get for it, and that's exactly what I meant. I realize it's a little high, and I might not get that much, but in my experience, as soon as "or best offer" is invoked, what should be a simple sale turns into an auction being run out of my e-mail box, I don't have time for that. I will consider reasonable offers though. And last of all, I'm all for respect for the people who made this possible. While we're at it, how about a little less snarky cynicism too? Having to justify myself like this reminds me of why I never post anything anywhere anymore. None of us here knows who is making a killing flipping DIY synth projects and who is just down on his luck and has to sell his goodies to pay for his kid's school. Just something to think about.
  2. I am selling my sammichSID with two 8580 SIDs installed. The case is black. The LEDs and display are green. The display is a low-power type, so it's not quite as bright as some others, but it is easily readable in any lighting. It actually looks much better than in my photos. The filters on both SIDs work as they should. The painting of the logo and text on the case is pretty clean. This was my first kit, so the soldering isn't professional-looking, but it's not bad at all. There are two minor issues which the buyer should know, neither of which affect the operation in any way, provided you have no intention of opening the unit up and modifying it from its current configuration. First issue: This only affects the unit when the jumper is set for a high power display. With the low-power display installed now, it is a non-issue. When using a high-power display. The current into the base of the transistor that drives the display backlight is not limited. This causes the transistor to get fried within a few minutes of the first power up. At a time when I knew nothing about electronics Wilba was very patient in helping me troubleshoot the problem, but in the end, it never got corrected. The base resistor is the correct value, so it seems there is a short somewhere. Since this was my first kit, the most likely culprit would be my soldering, but I have looked at the board over and over, and I can't find any problems in that area, so I can't completely rule out the possibility that it is a problem with the board itself. Eventually, I soldered in a socket to to hold the transistor since constantly resoldering it every time one gets fried would damage the pads. I recommend just leaving it as it is and using the low-power display, but if anyone wants to try to fix the high power display setting, I can send a few extra BC337s and an extra green display. Second issue: Not really much of an issue at all, but for the sake of full disclosure I think I should say it. During the course of troubleshooting the first issue, I removed one of the SIDs, and one of the pins came off. (I don't remember which SID, but the pin was at the corner, so 1, 14, 15, or 28.) I soldered a piece of a resistor lead to it, and it fits into the socket fine and makes a good connection. It doesn't affect operation at all. You can't even see it. It's just something to be aware of if you need to take one of the SIDs out of the socket (which I don't recommend). In short: It looks good and works perfectly as it is, but I don't recommend trying to change anything if you don't have to. I'm willing to ship anywhere, but shipping will be from Japan, so depending on where you are, it could be a considerable amount. To save shipping fees, and hassle, I'm not including an AC adapter unless the buyer is in Japan and requests to have it. I can accept money orders and wire transfer for sure. I'm currently in the process of making a paypal account and relearning how to use it since I closed my account years ago. I think I can probably take paypal though. I'm hoping to get 60,000 yen for it. As of today that is almost exactly 500 U.S. dollars. If you're interested, send me a message and we can work out the details.
  3. It's a displaytech that I got from Wilba himself. Dozens of people have used them with no trouble. I doubt it's the LCD. (And just to be sure I tried a second (high power) LCD and had the same problem.) I'm not sure if my problem is the same as vintagestar's or not, but it does sound somewhat similar. We are both using high power LCDs and the backlight worked at first and then after awhile stopped working. In my case, replacing the BC337 will get it up and running, but after about half an hour the backlight goes out again, and the only thing I can do is replace the BC337. I think I've already gone through 7 or 8 BC337s. Its behavior is pretty consistent. It's not the LCD that's getting cooked. It's the transistor. Wilba has gone to pretty great lengths to help me troubleshoot the problem. Regardless of whether my problem gets solved or not, I owe him some beer just for his time alone. Sorry if I'm hijacking vintagestar's thread, but does anyone have any idea what could be causing my problem? And vintagestar, have you tried replacing the transistor?
  4. I've been having a similar problem for months now. I wonder if it's the same cause. I hope we can both get our sammichSIDs working perfectly:)
  5. I replaced the BC337 and that fixed it.
  6. Hi everyone. This is my first post here. I got my sammichSID last week and just finished making it yesterday. For the most part, everything works as expected, so I'm quite happy about that. But, it isn't quite up 100%. The one part that needs to be fixed before I can say it works perfectly is the LCD. It works fine on powerup, but after a few minutes it starts flickering at random times. Sometimes it just dims for a few seconds, or sometimes the backlight goes off completely. It always comes back though. I think it's probably a fairly minor problem and shouldn't be that hard to fix. Anyway, before I open the sammichSID up again, does anyone have any ideas about things I should try? I'm going to try turning down the brightness a little, and I'm going to check my soldering around the trim pots. Other than that, I don't really have any ideas. All shunts are placed correctly. I checked about a half dozen times over the course of two days. I'm using an unregulated 12 volt 1 amp AC/DC adaptor. All voltage checks seem normal. The 12 volt readings showed up as 10.9. It's a high power backlit green LCD. The transistor near the trim pots. (I don't remember the number off the top of my head. I think it's something like BC337) is getting very hot. Is this normal, and could it be related to the LCD problem? I'm wondering because I had some concern that I might have damaged it when I built the sammichSID. (When I bent the third lead back, it seemed to suddenly give much less resistance to being bent than I expected, so I worried that I might have broken something internally. It looked fine on the outside though. So without an extra transistor handy, I figured I might as well try using that one.) Anyway, that's all I can think of for now. I'm posting at work, and the sammichSID is fully assembled at home, so I can't check anything else for awhile. But if anyone has any ideas about things I could try to get the LCD working, or things I should check when I disassemble the sammichSID again so that people can get a better idea of what might be wrong, please let me know. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
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