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mrspring

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Everything posted by mrspring

  1. Hey man..

    Reading Your comments in the MB TIA thread - i'm getting the same stuff in the Manager/MAX thing - greyed out and not working with any rev of MAX. Did you ever get this to work on a Windows system?

    1. Show previous comments  2 more
    2. mrspring

      mrspring

      Antichambre did some live support on this yesterday, and the issue was caused by an out of date MAX file, or a possibly corrupted one.. It's ALL GOOD now.. :)

    3. Antichambre

      Antichambre

      MAX Manager was fine, I checked and I refreshed the box firmware on September last year. Maybe you downloaded it before and it was out of date. Best

    4. mrspring

      mrspring

      Correction - it was the Cart .hex that had the issue I think - whatever .hex i was using, it was not correct. The MB TIA would respond in part to MIOS Studio keyboard, but the notes played were not in any logical tuning, but the device would not connect with MAX. Antichambre passed me the cart .hex directly and that fixed everything.. Fairly sure i only ever downloaded files from places in the official thread and the PM one, so i guess they got corrupted, or were non working early editions with the same filename. As of now, it's working, and i'm exploring patches!

  2. yeh, some nice drifty sync phasing there in that track.. and the lead sound sounds nice and wonky too.. Also: on the capacitor issue (it is the cap, right?) - that's not a problem to me.. Must be annoying to see it at this time for You Antichambre, but it's no big deal. In fact, let's start a rumour NOW that this early revision SOUNDS BETTER because of the orientation of the cap. Oh Yes.. There it is... ;)
  3. mmmm CNC satisfaction! got to love that nice clean finish on the plates.. looking good!!
  4. Ah OK, so there was some 'machine noise' caused by the MIDI and other processes - the digital cockroaches :) i thought You were hearing the audio channels crossing into each other on the TIA outputs, which is no big deal really for us PAL TIA people who have only 1 channel output anyway! Nice, and the audio clip sounds very clean - i cannot hear any whine or rustle going on in the opening part between the notes. When i turn up the gain here i hear the nosie of my amplifier. Hmm.. some nice clipping/glide from around 5'20"? Yeh this is all good. the patch used in this sounds animated, and you sweeping the EQ shows it's quite a rich waveform there, it should go very well thru' a nice phase-screw patch or a barber pole phaser..
  5. wow.. it looks awesum :) and no crosstalk between the channels now? outstanding :)
  6. Ahh!! Antichambre!! He lives!! :) Yes, i fully understand, life and REAL job take preference over things like this project. I also enjoy/dislike this situation. But, the job will enable You to be comfortable and do things the way YOU want to do them, then when You finish, You can look back without regret at what you did. So, take Your time, and keep looking forward to hearing Your machine in people's music. There is no deadline here. Also, I understand also 100% about making music, and never being happy because You think it is never finished. In the days of the indie electronic record business (1982-2005, RIP) We had a Label, A&R, budgets and deadlines. This was why projects were finished and sent out. This is not the case now. I know many people who make excellent music, but they over-think it, over-produce it and ruin it because they have no deadline or target, and they just keep messing about with the tune, never doing a final mix or render because they think it can be better, then they abandon it because it has lost the initial spark. Such a shame :( I say - be brave, if a tune makes You *feel* something - STOP MESSING WITH IT AND MIX IT DOWN :) How many tunes do You love after 10,20,30 years that are simple and raw? I bet many many. Also(2), Tanzania! Wow.. OK. well, greetings from Ireland, where it has been raining since 1989 :)
  7. RS have units that will work. well, they did a couple of years ago when i last went looking. If You still have the one that came with the sammich then you can bring it in to your RS store and the staff at the trade counter will be able to work out what You need, or at least tell You they do/do not do them anymore. worth a shot.
  8. The sammich is fairly bulletproof as long as it was constructed carefully in the first place, so the controls issue would be down to physical contamination of the switches or encoder, or more likely be caused by poor construction. Has it been gigged? How about in a smoky room? Could be dirt. If it's clean and smells clean, then You need to dismantle it and examine the boards, and all the solder joints. if any of them look like they have a 'ring' in them, as in you can see a contour line in the solder blob, or look matte or just plain crappy, then think about re-flowing the join. Just heat it up with an iron so the solder melts and goes hard again. Obviously, any tarnishing on the board itself is a hint that the builder was a little sloppy, and may have used a little too much heat, or had to fix a mistake. If You see that kind of stuff, be prepared to review the build properly. As for the SIDs sounding different - that's SIDs for you :) But, if a SID starts off from cold fine, and then goes out of tune or looses a waveform as it heats up, it's probably just faulty. You can try attaching some stick-on low-profile heatsinks to them, as in the cooler kits for the Raspberry Pi, which might swing things, but they are very far from stable even when they are "good" chips - this is why the sound so excellent when ganged as a stereo signal.
  9. Has this project gone dormant? Still think this is the 'missing link' in chip-synth history, along with the STERN and WILLIAMS 80's sound boards..
  10. Yes, Synthcart (etc.) is a nice toy, and a really great project, but You end up sampling the sounds and cutting them up to make them useful.. Gone is all the lovely buzz and fortitude of using the TIA itself :( The steps in pitching and the limited few tempos are understandable, but they don't help. Also the sound palate is so limited you really get tired of it fast. I did make a MIDI - Joystick interface for Synthcart using a highly Liquid board, but it was alot of effort for not really any better results then just sampling some 2600 games in play. MidiboxTIA is a great project, another computer bleep chip gets the full-midibox-jacket.. ;) I even have a PAL 2600 ready waiting to donate it's TIA I found a TIA in my spares box that is of excellent vintage - check this out: Also: TU for watching the video.. You can tell i like to torture my machines ;)
  11. yes.. ofc, this looks like the next MIDIBOX i want to try to build.. Previous synth applications using TIA were on the 2600 itself, meaning 'interesting' but not real use for making music.. This frees it..
  12. I just had this problem, an idle noise in the background, using a TRACO TXL 035-1212D - a quite high end PSU for this application in fairness. Cured it totally by moving the sleeve of the audio outs to the - on the PSU rather then the one on the Core as i was doing previously.. No need for caps or whatnot, this is a total solution!
  13. Wilba just did a mailshot announcing batch #4 of the sammichFM! :phone: also some disturbing news that there are FAKE OPL3 chipsets on ebay.. anyone any more info on this? how to recognize them etc?
  14. I also emailed Jason some months ago, having serious munchies for some FM sammich action.. From what i remember on the sammichSID batches, We will hear news when the numbers are looking good i guess..
  15. I need to update on my previous utterance - the death of the ebay brick was most likely down to the 220->110V convertor i was using before it, as this didn't test as stable when i got 'round to testing it out.. so, i'm not saying the bricks are crappy, but i am saying they aren't very robust is all.. i'm sure if You have native 110v AC power, or a quality 110v convertor then You'll be fine.. I did my splice of the 2 wallwarts, and they worked like a dream! my mb6582 is happy now with an 8580, 2 x A4 and a straight 6581, 1 in each bank for mono output. OF COARSE i managed to get an ill-fitting LCD, which has to be mounted under everything as it's too large, so that looks pretty naff, and to top it off, the backlight died quite quickly.. So, i'll claim my warranty on the LCD, and get a backlit one in there first, then maybe go looking for one that will fit flush (ish) to the faceplate later on.. But, as far as the power issue is concerned, i'd totally vote for just sorting a pair of wallwarts out and hooking them up to the correct DIN plug when building as Type B.. i can't hear as much as a tick on the audio from the PSUs, and they don't heat up much with 4 sids going full-tilt. I guess if you wanted, you could gut the wallwarts, and mount them in a nice case, with a fan on it, and a single AC input.. yes, i think i'll try that if i find a suitable case ;)
  16. I picked up one of these, it worked fine for the early testing of the main board, i saw the right voltages etc., but a week+ later when i tried to use it on a nearly completed mb6582 with 2 sids on board, it heated up and started to smoke.. I opened it and was unimpressed with the unimpressive contents being covered in foul smelling liquid.. Oh, FYI: these boxes contain a small AC/AC single op tranny, and a small 5v board, both seem removed from their previous enclosures for this new life of service. I'm not even going to start investigating how (it) or what went wrong, it's a shame is all, cos it looked great from the outside. Obviously i'm going to have to stick on the 'a-team' theme tune (not the one with ron jeremy in it...) and just use 2 separate PSU wired into the c64 DIN plug and be done with it. I suspect alot of the people wanting a proper PSU for their (type B) mb6582 are looking for a nice handy (pretty) desktop box - me, i care not for this and will bravely splice a 1a 9vac ex-modem wall blob by US Robotics, and a nasty iPaq ITE type B 5vdc 2A switcher into service and see how we go..
  17. This is where we are at.. Shot of it's guts, with DIN and AY board mounted on the walls, Core 3 with external pots for the LCD, classic ebay cheapo LCD etc.. here's the CS as of now.. yes, it's not very neatly drilled, but that's because i am not a neat person... the 12 buttons on the left have LEDs built in, which seemed like a good idea, but the quality is poor, despite them costing nearly 3euro each - they sometimes trigger without touching them :( I now have a working system.. was stumped with no audio out, until i grounded the AY board, now it's full of win.. this is 2 'stock' voices testing - check out about 5 mins in for lol chipsound glitchtime.. http://mrspring.net/3/B14h27m53s31jan2012m.mp3 to do: bankstick, led matrix, second audio board & switching for stereo out.. Thanks to Lemonhorse for the PM guidance and the project, oh and Mike for the boards ;)
  18. OK, well they are all quite old, they were sorted by intended model, these were for oric and amstrad. I remember th oric DID have a noise generator, it had sound effects commands in it's basic, and one of them was EXPLODE (or something) which made a whitenoise burst with some sub square mixed in for a nice rumble.. IDK, i may be wrong. and the 2 'used' chips are actually newer then the unused ones, and definately different - they have no 'taiwan' mark on them, while the 30+ all do.. I also found 3 x YM2149F in the Atari ST section.. So they should be OK even if the others are duds.. OK for a test, PM me Your mailing address and i will send You 2 of the 8912 - 1 of each style/batch - for a test..
  19. Yup.. All microchip i'm afraid ;( on closer examination there are 3 distinct groups here, with different styles of printing on the surface. about half of them are White microchip logo AY38912/P9032CEA with centered print, and nearly half are with thinner print offset downward, and there is a used pair of AY38912/P9043CEA with a black (reversed) microchip logo. They all came from an amstrad/oric/msx service rack.. So they could all be useless? LOL.. easy come, easy go!!! I got my parts for the midibox AY2 today, but i don't think i will get to build it till January to test them.. unless there is a fast way to test You know of?
  20. I found 33 x AY38912/P in my stash, all unused, all from the same batch.. I guess they should all work.. Boards on order, can't wait to get stuck in to this!!
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