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toneburst Builds An MB-6582


toneburst

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I've killed another LCD :(

I must be one of the most inept MIDIBox builders out there, I think...

I put the connector on the wrong way around. Just like I did the last time (when I trashed my really expensive red 20x2 I bought via a friend in the States....

Ordered another identical unit on eBay. Next time I'll try and make a neater job of the soldering, too.

a|x

You can't be the most inept, I've killed an LCD and somehow a SID module.  ;)
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Incidentally, I discovered a while back that it's possible to change the colour of an LCD pretty effectively by simple sticking a coloured film on the front. Depending on the start colour and gel colour, you may find you loose some brightness, but if it's bright enough to start with, it should still be perfectly readable. I tried this with my broken white-on-blue last night, and managed to make it into a red display. Of course, it was still broken, sadly...

This might be a cheaper option for some wanting red displays for their MB-6582s. I've gone and changed the divider colour on the frontpanel of mine to blue, so I'll be sticking with blue LEDs and a blue display, but if I'd remembered about this trick before, I'd have stuck with red.

a|x

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Incidentally, I discovered a while back that it's possible to change the colour of an LCD pretty effectively by simple sticking a coloured film on the front.

Yea, I was playing with that the other day (Same as you, blue screen, red clear plastic) and I was surprised how good it looked.. I thought it would look crappy / purple / hard to see etc, but it was pretty good.

Regards

Mike

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If you could prise apart the casing of an LCD, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of coloured film stuck on there, already. I know the backlight LEDs of my blue/white 20x4 are white, anyway. So maybe a more elegant way would be to replace the original gel.

I've also read you can turn pos. displays into neg. ones by removing the polarising film and replacing it with some new film that's orientated in a different direction.

Maybe I'll try that with one of my broken ones. I really like the negative LCDs, but they tend to be harder to find and more expensive.

a|x

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Thanks for the kind words Wilba and Goblinz.

Do you ever do bulk-orders on red 20x4 LCDs? Last I looked, they were hideously expensive. Looks like there's a glut of cheap white-on-blue ones out there at the moment. I got mine from a UK eBay seller for £7.99.

a|x

A bulk order was run a while back. There is a supplier doing them at $25 each, or the blue ones are $15. I'll contact them and see if they can do a price break and will also see what else I can find. I can feel another knob order coming on so may run them together.

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My postbox yielded a bumper harvest this morning:

8x 6582A from Wilba

Replacement 20x2 LCD from eBay

Replacement transistors

components_230109.jpg

I also picked up a packet of M3 screws for the CS PCB corners from my local hardware shop, though, annoyingly, they didn't have any washers.

Earlier in the week, my pre-cut ribbon connectors to connect mainboard and CS arrived from DigiKey. The order from the US was amazingly quick- it only took about 3 days!

They look really cool, and I'd definitely recommend them for anyone who, like me, finds stripping ribbon cables a royal pain. Am hoping I manage to make a better job of the LCD cable on this attempt...

a|x

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  • 2 weeks later...

DAMN!

Having spend several hours this afternoon soldering the LCD cable, I've just now broken my last remaining 16-way IDC connector....

I'll have to order another one now. Very annoying.

On the plus side, the four corner screws to old together the panel and CS PCB seem to be well stuck now. I will do the second gluing pass tonight, then I can finally start soldering the CS components.

a|x

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I had one of the screws pop off the first time when I went to test fit into the pac-10 case set me back another 24 hours in order to re-do that one screw...........I am guessing perhaps the jb -weld blob was not big enough in that corner.

My advice is to be somewhat liberal, it will be hidden so it doesn't have to be pretty!

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Hi chimchim,

I suspect I haven't been liberal enough either. I've just done the spacers, and am going to leave it until tomorrow night, but I've a funny feeling not all the spacers are going to be properly stuck. We'll see though. The corner ones seem OK so far though. I managed to get them to fit through the holes in the top of the case OK, anyway.

a|x

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I am so liberal with the JB-Weld for the corner screws that I need to widen the mount holes on the PT-10 case, sort of making them countersunk. This is easy to do and will not affect anything because sideways movement is restricted by the recessed edge of the PT-10 case front, and you can add a washer between the case mount and the nut holding the panel onto it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

It's been a while, but I've finally made a tiny bit of progress on the MB-6582. I've got my replacement LCD working.

working_lcd.jpg

I'm going to try to get hold of some red lighting gels from work, and see how they look in front of the display. I think I could probably make this more or less any colour I like.

Still waiting for my LED order to turn up- it's been more than a week now, and it's from a UK supplier, so it really shouldn't take this long. Following a long-running thread on the forum re. the evils of blue LEDs, I decided to go for either green or red. Since they're so much cheaper than the blue ones I had ordered before, I got a full set of each, and I'll see one appeals most when I've seen them in action.

a|x

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Don't forget Yellow LED's and orange LED's are not hard on the eyes.. (Orange are a little harder to get)

I used the exact same LCD screen for my SID, and played with some lighting gels to change it's colour etc, and the red looked very good.. I still think that some red perspex / plastic would be the best, as it would also offer some protection as well as change the LCD's colour..

Regards

Mike.

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I still think that some red perspex / plastic would be the best, as it would also offer some protection as well as change the LCD's colour..

Good thought. I've been thinking about this, too. What I'd really like is a shaped piece of perspex that fitted exactly into the hole in the front-panel, so that it's flush with the top of the panel. I'd then put my gel between the bottom of this and the display.

a|x

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Beware brightness loss. If you filter all but the red light out of a blue lcd... that ain't much light....Depends on lcd etc etc blah blah....

True, true. It's a pretty bright LCD though, so I think I'll be OK, and actually, it might increase the contrast, since more of the blue background will be filtered-out that the white characters, which is cool.

a|x

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