[macroman]

Okay, I've found schematics for soldering one bank stick and for soldering eight banksticks in serial, but how about only two or four banksticks? Can I just follow the eight banksticks schematics and solder only the A0-A1 or A0-A3 and forget the rest of it?

[julienvoirin]

yes !  ;D

[Wilba]

Note for MB-SID V2, the "ensembles" are stored on the 8th bankstick. You should consider this when making the board, as it's much more useful to have "ensembles" than an extra 128 patches.

[sineSurfer]

So...
Wilba, how about having just two banksticks but wired as A0 and A7. one for patches, one for ensembles?

[TK.]

Quote

Wilba, how about having just two banksticks but wired as A0 and A7. one for patches, one for ensembles?

this will work

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[marioguzzi]

Quote

Note for MB-SID V2, the "ensembles" are stored on the 8th bankstick. You should consider this when making the board, as it's much more useful to have "ensembles" than an extra 128 patches.

does it depend on the actual number of bankstick or on the pinning?
I mean, could i connect less than 8 banksticks connecting one as A7 to have ensembles stored?

[Wilba]

Quote

does it depend on the actual number of bankstick or on the pinning?
I mean, could i connect less than 8 banksticks connecting one as A7 to have ensembles stored?

It depends on the addresses of the 24LC512 (or 24LC256). You do not need to have 8 chips, you can have two, one with address 0, the other with address 7 (see A=0 and A=7 below):



The difference is in the A0,A1,A2 pins, for A=0 they are all 0V, for A=7 they are all +5V.

[Shadyman]

Oh! So THAT's how it works! I was beginning to wonder. Pin-based addressing!  ;D

[macroman]

I've put 8 pieces of 24LC256 chips to Mike's board. Since I have only one SID connected, I defined

#define DEFAULT_ENS_BS_CS -1

Now the core tells me that A-H banksticks are available, which is 8 pieces, correct! BUT, each of them gives me only 64 patches instead of 128? Is this normal or is it because of the pinning on the 8-banksticks-pcb? Earlier when I had only one bankstick connected, I got 128 patches.

Although I'm planning to add those banksticks behind a switch, so if this is caused by the pinning, it's solved later on..

[TK.]

See http://www.ucapps.de..._manual_hw.html

search for "banksticks" or "24LC256"

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[macroman]

"Both, 24LC256 (32k) and 24LC512 (64k) are supported BankSticks, but 24LC512 are recommented, as it can store 128 patches."

So 24LC256 stores only 64 patches? And I was absolutely sure that I got 128 patches when connecting only one of them :-D Perhaps that was hallucinations...

Thanks for the clarification!

ps. I guess there's no easy way to connect two 32k banksticks as one 64k by putting in serial? I find it annoying that core tells <no bankstick> after 64 patches. One solution is to get few 24LC512s..

[TK.]

The firmware is already complicated enough, from MBSID V1 and MBFM I learned, that such extra BankStick partitionation options only causes a lot of additional effort at my side.

Initially I planned not to support 24LC256 at all - search in the forum to find out, how many times people missed the info about the different number of patches, and the resulting side effects (e.g. during a bank upload). I really don't know, where to put this information so that people are aware of this. :-(

But there is also a practical reason why two BankSticks cannot be combined: because the first patch slot is always used as storage for internal informations (Magic bytes, and future extensions) - so, in fact a 24LC512 only stores 127, and a 24LC256 63 patches - the remaining patch (Patch #1) is always stored in internal EEPROM, and it's the same for all banks (A001, B001, C001, ...). So, combining two 24LC256 to a single bank would result into 126 patches - don't want to know, how many times I would have to answer questions about such strange side effects again and again to clarify, that this wouldn't be a bug?

So, please believe me: it's easier to use seperate banks for each BankStick than combining two BankSticks to a single bank.

Once the SysEx editor and patch manager is available, it will be possible for you to split the presets over different banks

Best Regards, Thorsten.