A little help needed programming the slave cores

[renepela]

Hi everybody,

I have builded a 4 sid version of the midibox sid. It's all wired and ready to be programmed.

The first core is programmed with MIOS and the sid application and is working perfectly. Great sound !! Thank you TK.

Now I want to program the other 3 cores.

I don't have the controll panel yet so I can't press the upload button. I do have a display however, so at least I can see what I'm doing.

I read on the ucapps site I have to send a sysex string to enable the midi upload link.

Here begins my problem.

I can't send sysex with mios studio, I can only send hex files.

With Midiox I can send sysex. I sent the string and hope the midi upload fuinction is enabled. Is there anyway I can see that on my display?

I guess I have to send the mios application now in a few seconds, just like the first core.

I don't know how to do this. I simply don't have enough time to send the "enable midi link" string, than load the mios sysec and upload that in just a few seconds.

I tried to load the mios sysex data in midi-ox and type te midi upload string in front of it.

I just can't tell if this is working.

How can I upload MIOS to my remaining cores, without the upload button?

How do I test my slave cores/sid? Is it enough to set my keyboard to midi channel 2, 3 and 4? Is this something I can see on my display?

I tried to get jsynthlib running, but I can't figure out how to use this.

Please help,

Thanks in advance.

Rene

[TK.]

Hi Rene,

since some weeks I'm thinking about a new "HowTo" page for the SID setup procedure, but the problem is, that I haven't found the "newbie-friendliest" solution yet. For somebody who has worked with (some!) MIOS projects before, it's easy to understand what has to be taken into account in this special MIDI wiring which is used by MIDIbox SID (e.g., since the MIDI Outs of the slaves are not connected to the PC, the "don't use feedback from core" switch in MIOS Studio has to be enabled. Another point: the slave needs a reset pulse for uploading MIOS via 1st level bootloader, this can be done by tipping ground to pin 1 of the slave SID).

At the end I think the newbie-friendliest method to setup the slaves which doesn't require much explanations is: don't follow the comfortable, but the easiest way! Unplug the PIC from the master module, plug the PIC which is used as slave into this IC socket, and program MIOS and the application from there. Thereafter the PIC is ready for use and you can plug it into the slave core socket again.

Since you've programmed the master core successfully, doing the same for the slave shouldn't be that difficult anymore (check the device ID!). It doesn't require any knowledge about how to enable the MIDI merger without a Link button (beside of the SysEx string, you could also send a MIOS_MIDI_MergerSet function call via MIOS Studio), it is less error prone (because who knows if the slave module works, and that master and core are linked correctly?), and you have the LCD in order to check if the application is running.

Please let me know how long it took to setup the slaves based on this method. If it works without problems, I will change the documentation at the csB page.

JSynthLib: take care, the official JSynthLib release has a bug in the MIDIbox SID editor (which wasn't my fault...), a modified version can be found here: http://www.midibox.org/jsynthlib/JSynthLib-0.20.0_midibox_mod1.jar.zip

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[renepela]

Hi TK,

Thanks for your advice. I think I programmed three of the four cores succesfully with MIOS and the sid app. The only core that gave me problems was ID01.

It looks like that PIC is broken or the bootstrap is not on it. Tomorrow I'll try to put the bootstrap on it again and then try to programm that PIC with MIOS and the SID app. If that doesn't work I'm afraid my pic is broken.

But the good news is it worked for three of the four cores.

I could not do it with MIOS studio, but used midi-ox instead.

I first converted the mios hex file to sysex with the following command: hex2syx.pl mios_v1_8.hex  -device_ID 0x01 -os_upload

It resluted in the mios syx file for my ID 1 core.

I put the ID 1 core in my main core socket and uploaded this file. After that I could upload setup_6581_slave1.syx to the core.

Can you confirm this is the way to set the right ID in the syx file?

I repeated these steps for core 2 and 3, but used -device_ID 0x02 and 0x03 with the perl tool.

I hope I did it all right. It sure looks like it's working except core 1.

But, how do I test if it's working? How can I make core/sid 2 and 3 make sound?

Thanks for all the help so far.

Rene

[TK.]

Hi Rene,

if you start the "convert.bat" batch file, all these .syx with the appr. device IDs will be created automatically (read the .bat file in order to see, which commands are used).

In principle you've done everything correctly. I'm sure that you will be able to find out, why the upload to Slave1 didn't work (based on your descriptions it's hard to find this out).

General hint: the upload with MIOS Studio is more secore, since it notifies you if a block hasn't been uploaded correctly.

Now you are at the same point like Wisefire, so just read this thread: http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=5277.msg35621#msg35621

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[Davo]

JSynthLib: take care, the official JSynthLib release has a bug in the MIDIbox SID editor (which wasn't my fault...), a modified version can be found here: http://www.midibox.org/jsynthlib/JSynthLib-0.20.0_midibox_mod1.jar.zip

Do you know what's going on with JSynthLib's development?  It looks like absolutely nothing has happened for a bit more than a year.

[TK.]

Brian stopped with his developments long time ago, and since some months there is no sign of life from Hiroo anymore. I wrote him a mail, but never got an answer :-/

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[renepela]

I finally managed to program the last remaining core. The first three were already programmed thanks to TK's advice.

The last core turned out to be broken indeed. I bought a new one and it worked.

Unfortunately the only comes sound from my main sid. The other three only produce a popping noise.

Any idea what might be the issue here?

Thanks in advance,

Rene