baszor Posted March 17, 2012 Report Share Posted March 17, 2012 Well.... that didn't go without any bumps... Just finished the build of the sammichSID. Got the kit in the mail last week, within 2 weeks from wilba. And bought a stabilized powersource from conrad (voltcraft usps-1000) Did the soldering in two parts, 2-3 hours on a wednesday evening and the rest on thursday evening. A total 4-5 hours. Then the trouble started! A little trouble is always nice... It would be no fun when things go as plannend :) Got a high power backlight with the kit an fired it up with the brightness setting at two o'clock. As described in the build pdf. Too bad i did not have the sid's in the pcb drawing current, so the backlight stopped working after 30 seconds :( I should read wilba's mails better in the future! The mail i got with the packages told me not to set the brightness past 6 o'clock. Now there's a new screen underway from china. Hopefully it will arrive soon. Thank god the screens also work on low light, i was able to continue with the broken backlight. Without the sids i started checking the midi communication with mios studio. powering on the sammich got me a upload message in mios studio, but no feedback from the sammich when querying. Nothing at all... First I thought it was the midi compatibility of the Novation SL25 Mk2 i was using as USB-2-midi interface. (Set the correct routing on the onboard setup menu of the sl25, Midi to U1) With the use of the Troubleshooting manual and 2 hours later, I found out that the track on the pcb between the 1.2K resistor and pin6 of the optocoupler ic was broken. Checking the voltages going in and out of the PIC helped a lot. I found out that only 0.5V was entering the rx contact of the PIC. Telling me the optocoupler being broken or the 5v through the 1.2K resistor wasn't flowing. A little extra soldering and a nice repair wire on the backside of the pcb fixed this! Connected again with the laptop and the mios studio, one click and the connection was up! great :) SID software uploaded flawless after trying 2 times with mios studio. Uploaded the presets and the sammich was ready to rumble! Thanks guys for creating such a nice Kit! It sounds great with two 6581 SID's! Even the basic presets sound great and dirty :) I notice some irregularities: The sammich won't power up straight away, after powering off with the switch on the backside. I have to wait and remove all the cables to be able to power up again... Anyone else noticed this? Bastian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nILS Posted March 18, 2012 Report Share Posted March 18, 2012 Glad you like the kit :) The sammich won't power up straight away, after powering off with the switch on the backside. I have to wait and remove all the cables to be able to power up again... Anyone else noticed this? That should really not be the case. And I'm not exactly sure how that would happen. The current draw is typically at it's max when you power the sammich on, and your PSU might not like that. What do you mean by "all cables"? Removing the power should be enough. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bastian Posted March 18, 2012 Report Share Posted March 18, 2012 (edited) Glad you like the kit :) That should really not be the case. And I'm not exactly sure how that would happen. The current draw is typically at it's max when you power the sammich on, and your PSU might not like that. What do you mean by "all cables"? Removing the power should be enough. I have to remove the midi cables. Or the sammich won't boot. I'm also a bit confused about the backlight setting. Since yesterday the backlight of the unit isn't working anymore. I ordered two kit's and tested with the other display. The backlight of this one isnt working at well in the built sammich. Those are the negative green screens witch are supplied by wilba. The voltage rating setting sais 5v on the backlight. But the build manual sais i need to set 12v on the pcb for high power backlights. Can anyone tell me witch is the correct setting? And How can i check if the backlight is still working outside of the sammich? When i measure the voltage on the two backlight pins (b- and b+) I read 4.82v (jbl to 5 volt) and 11.90v (jbl to 12v) is this correct? Thanks! Edited March 18, 2012 by Bastian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bastian Posted March 19, 2012 Report Share Posted March 19, 2012 It's Two steps forward and one step back... Solved the booting error with midi cables attatched. The error at boot was caused by a setting in my midi controller. Some kind of loopback happened caused by the MidiTo setting in the novation sl25. It should be set to u1 only, no m1 or m2 with this. I noticed a spit out of hex code in the midi monitor on the laptop. And thought of changing the setting on the controller. Works fine now. Beside that with all the the checking and measuring, I forgot to shut the power down before removing the top pcb with display. Now there's only a block on it... probably fried the display interface part of the PIC. When I switch PIC's with a fresh one the screen is online again, but still no backlight :( ...man i really need to start thinking instead of moving parts around... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bastian Posted May 30, 2012 Report Share Posted May 30, 2012 (edited) So! after a couple of transport troubles everything is on the road again. Replaced the T1 transistor and the pic after frying the display interface on the pic. It's alive again! sammichSID users: don't turn up your brightness further than half the potentiometer track! Thanks Wilba! for sending spare ones! Edited May 30, 2012 by Bastian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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