zgba Posted October 13, 2008 Report Share Posted October 13, 2008 Hello everyone,finally after ages I decided to build a Midibox SID. I bought all the components, etched and drilled the PCBs (for the very first time), checked for shorts and soldered everything. First I made a PIC Burner that worked surprisingly well, then spent hours trying to program PICs. Finally I realised, that I should only write the bootstrap loader. And load MIOS via MIDI BEFORE I try to load an app... Yeah, it took me some time to figure this. But you know how it is when you want to see/hear the results of your work immediately... After uploading MIOS and SID app I finally saw a message on the display. I was so happy! I was proud, that I'm smarter than a machine, but... I checked and plugged SID module, played some notes, heard some noisy squarish waves, and the whole thing began to freeze and reboot constantly. After a few hours I realised, that only SID app causes this trouble. Then after a while I found, that I soldered the 1k pull-up for the CAN interface to Vss instead to Vdd. Now I have a working SID, but.... Suddenly my LCD said 'enough'. It's blank or when I send a message with MIOS Studio, it displays crap... Even when I load another app it behaves so. There is only a row of rectangles during boot, but later same sh*t. I'm seriously tired. I've read like 40 pages of this forum, but found nothing particular. Maybe someone smarter and more experienced than I sees the cause? And one more thing - my LCD (http://www.artronic.pl/o_produkcie.php?id=873) doesn't display some chars (like | { } and more) properly. For example instead of | it shows me 15. I noticed that it has cyrillic charset... Is it possible to correct this somehow?Hardware:Core - MBHP_CORE_V3Sid - 2x MBHP_SID_V2 stuffed with 8580PSU - Optimized C64 PSU.RegardsMateusz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nILS Posted October 13, 2008 Report Share Posted October 13, 2008 My guess is you're running the display in 8bit mode. Did you disconnect the D0-D3 lines? If not - do so. Immediately ;-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zgba Posted October 14, 2008 Author Report Share Posted October 14, 2008 Hi Nils. I wish it was so easy. But my LCD runs in 4 bit mode. And as I said, it has been running well for a while. What next?Regards Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stryd_one Posted October 14, 2008 Report Share Posted October 14, 2008 my LCD runs in 4 bit modeYou're sure that D0-D3 are completely disconnected from the LCD, right? As in, the wires aren't there? The charset is in ROM, you can't change it I'm afraid. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zgba Posted October 14, 2008 Author Report Share Posted October 14, 2008 Yup, there's no single wire at D0-D3. Only D4-D7 connected. I'll check one more time if there are any loose wires or joints, but I doubt if there are any. I haven't moved core pcb or lcd when IT happened. I'll write about the results.About that charset: is it then possible to remap the charset via MIOS? I.e. to swap a char with another available? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nILS Posted October 14, 2008 Report Share Posted October 14, 2008 Might be possible but I'd say it's definitely not worth the effort. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zgba Posted October 15, 2008 Author Report Share Posted October 15, 2008 As I said I checked for bad joints but found none. But now I don't think it's an LCD issue. When I plugged the whole thing in, I was able to jam for about 10 mins. I loaded some patches via midi, plugged midi keyboard and audio jacks and enjoyed playing for a few minutes. The LCD was OK. But after about 10 minutes CORE gone mad. Hung notes, frequent reboots and sometimes it even failed to load mios after reboot (boxes on display and F0 00 00 7E 40 00 01 F7 string over and over). I burned another PIC using PIC Burner, loaded MIOS, SID app, then played some notes and... You probably know what. Maybe it's BOR? I'm using C-64 PSU. To find this out I unplugged the LCD, and the results were similar:00000000007477 ms | Sysex message: F0 00 00 7E 40 00 01 F700000000002520 ms | Sysex message: F0 00 00 7E 40 00 0E 0B 00 F7Quick reboot and no response to MIDI, only sysex on midi out:00000000065931 ms | Sysex message: F0 00 00 7E 40 00 01 F700000000069915 ms | Sysex message: F0 00 00 7E 40 00 01 F700000000073900 ms | Sysex message: F0 00 00 7E 40 00 01 F700000000077886 ms | Sysex message: F0 00 00 7E 40 00 01 F700000000081872 ms | Sysex message: F0 00 00 7E 40 00 01 F700000000085858 ms | Sysex message: F0 00 00 7E 40 00 01 F700000000089845 ms | Sysex message: F0 00 00 7E 40 00 01 F700000000093831 ms | Sysex message: F0 00 00 7E 40 00 01 F700000000097818 ms | Sysex message: F0 00 00 7E 40 00 01 F700000000101804 ms | Sysex message: F0 00 00 7E 40 00 01 F7Reboot und noch einmal:00000000301013 ms | Sysex message: F0 00 00 7E 40 00 01 F700000000304996 ms | Sysex message: F0 00 00 7E 40 00 01 F700000000308981 ms | Sysex message: F0 00 00 7E 40 00 01 F700000000312965 ms | Sysex message: F0 00 00 7E 40 00 01 F700000000316950 ms | Sysex message: F0 00 00 7E 40 00 01 F700000000320935 ms | Sysex message: F0 00 00 7E 40 00 01 F700000000324920 ms | Sysex message: F0 00 00 7E 40 00 01 F7...Maybe it's a capacitor (naahhh...)? Because after a few hours I can repeat the whole procedure for some mins. Ah, almost forgot to say: my core module isn't stuffed with 7805, so no heat source. I have 3 PICs, one of them is normal 18F4685 and the rest 18LF4685 (tried both). So maybe I should lower the brownout voltage? Or? Any ideas?RegardsMat. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stryd_one Posted October 15, 2008 Report Share Posted October 15, 2008 Maybe it's BOR?Maybe it's a capacitor (naahhh...)? Because after a few hours I can repeat the whole procedure for some mins. Ah, almost forgot to say: my core module isn't stuffed with 7805, so no heat source.. So maybe I should lower the brownout voltage? BOR voltage is good where it is - if it's BOR, which is quite possible, then you should fix the PSU. Have you taken readings of the power rails during operation? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zgba Posted October 15, 2008 Author Report Share Posted October 15, 2008 Yes I did, but it was before i fixed the missing resistor and diode for CAN. Maybe I'll try to hook up a PC PSU to +5V and then see if something changes... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nILS Posted October 15, 2008 Report Share Posted October 15, 2008 Measure the voltages again - come back with the results :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zgba Posted October 15, 2008 Author Report Share Posted October 15, 2008 Ok. I plugged another PSU with a multimeter plugged in to core+lcd(+sid but with C64 PSU). It started once, crashed after playing some quick glissandos on virtual keyboard, reboot, then started once again, crashed and doesn't want to boot anymore (F0 00 00 7E 40 00 01 F7 every ~4secs over and over). Voltage on PSU pins, both Vdds and Mclr# - 5,07V +/-0,01V. Without LCD +0,01V more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zgba Posted October 18, 2008 Author Report Share Posted October 18, 2008 I think you guys are already fed up with my midibox;) Today I uploaded Sidplayer app to my Midibox. The software I'm using is ASID XP. I'm able to play some sids, and except too much noise, everything's ok. Some tunes seem to lock my midibox up - I can't hear anything, although core is responding to the midi data (changing titles on lcd). After a reboot everything works fine again. Some tunes (in comparsion with sidplay2w) sound really strange i.e. timing, strange sounds and other glitches. And the others just fine, and I can play them for hours without any problems. Maybe it's a ASID imperfection? But I still have problems with a SID app. Any new ideas? Maybe it's a crystal?:) It's really strange, that only this app won't work... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zgba Posted October 27, 2008 Author Report Share Posted October 27, 2008 I *THINK* I managed to force my midibox to work. I was tired searching for reasons why it still reboots, so I built another Core module, and so far it works. If it crashes I'm sure I'll be back here again ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nILS Posted October 27, 2008 Report Share Posted October 27, 2008 That's cool. Cause now you get to debug your first core :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zgba Posted October 27, 2008 Author Report Share Posted October 27, 2008 Winter comes, evenings are getting longer, so let the fun begin:) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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