Dead minimum Sidbox size? iPod case?

[tibbon]

I have a broken (dead hard drive) iPod 4G. I am thinking of building the Sidbox anyways, to replace my Sidstation (sold) and suppliment my Prophet 64 setup. I'm wondering... has anyone attempted, or put any thought into how small you could make the whole package if you re-layed out part of the PCB, etc...?

Of course the iPod also has some nice little stuff like a screen built in, a headphone amp (or at least use the audio-out jack), a multipin connector (hook it up to the power supply, etc..), and the scroll-wheel/buttons, and even potentially for use- a battery. It seems that it would take some work, but if you could manage to fit in the whole thing in there and make it run... that would be pretty amazing. Any thoughts? I'm going to go take a look in my iPod again and try to figure out a few things.

We would either have to cut a hole in it for a Midi in jack at least, or (better idea?) use the power/sync cable to carry Midi I/o and power, and make an adaptor/breakout cable for it.

[ris8_allo_zen0]

I have a broken (dead hard drive) iPod 4G. I am thinking of building the Sidbox anyways, to replace my Sidstation (sold) and suppliment my Prophet 64 setup. I'm wondering... has anyone attempted, or put any thought into how small you could make the whole package if you re-layed out part of the PCB, etc...?

Referring to my little experience, you could try to re-design the whole schematic with SMD. But:

- need to have good experience and tools for soldering SMD;

- replacing components would be extremely difficult, especially if the victims are ICs;

- need to find SMD equivalent of all ICs and components. You couldn't find some bigger capacitors; SID has no SMD version, and it's not wise to solder directly on PCB because it's not so easy to find another one if you blow it!

- the heat produced is the same; in the small space of an iPod, heat depletion is more difficult;

- the PCB must be double-sided to better exploit the space;

Of course the iPod also has some nice little stuff like a screen built in

Has anyone managed to connect an LCD iPod to a microcontroller?

[...], and even potentially for use- a battery

I don't think the SID chip and the whole MIDIbox thing was design with power consumption in mind...

I'm sorry I'm so pessimistic about your idea, but I think it's VERY difficult to realize and I explained you why. Don't hate me  :D

I know it's not what you're dreaming, but what do you think about this? http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=8416.0

Best regards,

Enrico

[tibbon]

I had this idea a while back, but actually seeing the Woody made me think harder about it.

Yea, this is something that's probably unlikely without some MAJOR work, although it would be cool to get off the ground. Maybe in 20 years! I'm sure that if you had called Commodore in 1984 and asked them how possible they would think it that a Midibox/Sidstation/etc... was to be built they would laugh and say it's not possible. Maybe I'll get around to it be 2027, then it would be combining TWO vintage computing products.

I did as much Googling as possible yesterday to try to find a microcontroller for the iPod, but finding "iPod hacks" that aren't just spraypainting your iPod is hard. Searching for iPod signal flow diagrams, or schematics was a loss and only yielded me finding people building external cables for their iPods. What people will count as a hack these days... The closest I was able to find was a Linux driver for the iPod display, which is from some Linux-On-iPod project. cool, but not it.

I was thinking about a few of the problems. Finding SMDs of all the components (except the 6581 of course) wouldn't be too bad, with the exception of a few things like the capacitors. I'm thinking that without the hard drive, battery, and exisiting circuitboards there's a 'bit' of room in there for one or two larger caps, and for the 6581 in a socket.

As for the heat issue, I'm wondering if the fact that the rear 75% of the iPod is metal could be used as a small heatsink?

Scrap the battery idea. Just use the iPod connector on the bottom (or one of the other I/O sockets) to provide all power/midi/audio connections. You're right, this project (nor the 6581) was really built with an iPod battery in mind, and that additional real-estate would be valuable.

I realize this is probably a 'never-going-to-happen' thing, but if someone wanted to work on this a bit, I'd be willing to ship them what's left of my iPod (or at least make measurements on the inside at first!) so that they would be able to get some stuff together.

The largest problems that I can see is that SMD stuff is a bitch and a half for me. Not very DIY friendly. I know some people can do it with their eyes closed, but my hands aren't that steady (I some days wonder if I have parkinson's or something as my grandmother did...)

Anyways, I still might pull out the Mouser phonebook later and see how many of the parts I can find equavalents of in SMD form.

Does anyone know if the iPod's (4G) encoder would be at all suitable for controlling the MIDIbox, or would a microcontroller need to be built to interpet what it's doing?

[Lall]

Indeed the SID and its support will be really the limiting factor here. Compared to the height of SID+support, I believe using SMD capacitors won't be an issue even if electrolytic ones are used.

For the rest, I'm pretty sure you can find everything you need in SMD package, there's nothing fancy used here.

For the power consumption, I don't know if it would consume that much because you will only have a PIC, a SID and an optocoupler basically. I guess it's out of the question to scavange this poor iPod with buttons, leds and the usual stuff we use to connect to DIN and DOUT. So big consumers like LCD, Leds, ... are out and the power should go down. Even if the LCD of the iPod is used I suppose it's made for battery operation so should not consume too much. So in the end, there's maybe not really a problem of heat dissipation in the box but I also doubt it would run for long on battery.

Anyway the idea is cool (even if maybe not doable), it would be soo sexy to have a SID in an iPod  :D

Note that it would be much easier from space utilization point of view with the Midibox FM as the synth/DAC chips are already SMD  ;)

Best regards,

Lall

[Sasha]

Hi Tibbon, welcome aboard.

I understand your needs to recycle iPod. I love to recycle, but sometimes fitting all parts in perfect recycled box involves too much energy and work that is better to make custom box from scratch.

Apple`s design is great, but I`m sure you can make better looking box for SID than the look of iPod if you spend some time designing panel and hunting "perfect" parts. Big percentage of time I spend just drawing and reorganizing panel layout. Once You are satisfied you have most of the job done and you can make your panel or even whole box using laser cut acrylic (cheap) or aluminum CNC milling. Fitting everything together, once you have got all your machined parts in front of you, is pure fun. Wiring is something else, but for step A CS, you don`t have much of it.

[audiocommander]

heya,

if it's possible to replace the HD, I wouldn't try to put an MB inside, I'd just search for some alternatives. Last year I saw one (japanese?) artist who ran Linux on his iPod and programmed a Scratching Application. You want to search http://2006.cybersonica.org for this. Linux is OS, so there must be some sources available...

Keep us updated!

Cheers,

Michael

Edit: Here's the link ;)

http://2006.cybersonica.org/artists/full.php?id=130

[SLP]

I think i've got a 20gig IPod hdd lying somewhere around.

I don't need it anymore so I could sell it.