bankstick switching

MIDIbox SID
1

I sort of found some info on this here, but it was a dead link, anyone have this backed up?

http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=387.0

Otherwise, here’s my problem:

I have 2 external serial ports on the c64 case: 2 extenal banksticks in serial1 , and serial2.

I have the potential for 8 bankstick eeproms internal…

How to get the external ones hooked up?

I have 2 ideas:

-1- add a 3way switch to switch between serial1, serial2, and one of the internal banksticks. 

pros: i have full internal storage (8 eeproms), and I can use either of the 2 external serial ports.

cons: I have to flick a switch depending on which location I want to write to, complex perhaps…

-2- remove 2 internal eeproms (for 6 total internal), address each of the external ones differently,

pros: they all work in harmony…  both external serial ports can be plugged in at once.

cons: I have less internal storage…  and one of my banksticks would be at a “non standard address” - Consequence of this is that I couldn’t expect to plug this nonstandardly addressed bankstick into a friends mbSID… (since its address may conflict with one of theirs)

Questions:

1.) Am I making this more difficult than it is? 

2.) which option would you recommend above?

3.) do I really need 8 internal, is 6 enough? 

3b.) (but having 2 differently addressed external sticks sounds like a bad idea too, in terms of “standards” would you agree?)

4.) If I were to do switching, how would you wire it?  I was thinking of trying to wire just the +voltage for each chip, basically powering up only the chip I want to be active… 

2

1.) Am I making this more difficult than it is? 

Probably…

Externally swappable BankSticks are (were) most useful when the MB-SID app could only use one BankStick.

Now that it can use 8, it’s only really useful if you need more than 7 banks of 128 patches at any one time (you can always store patches via SysEx dumps or a patch librarian). It’s 7 because one BankStick is used for Ensembles.

2.) which option would you recommend above?

I’d probably use 8 internal BankSticks and use the serial ports on the side as an “expansion port”  ;D Maybe some analog inputs, or analog outputs…

Or… I’d wire all 8 pins of the 24LC512 to 8 of the pins of the connector, so the BankStick didn’t have a fixed address. Then wire the two ports as the 6th and 7th banks. You could set pins of the socket to ground/+5V to give the chip  power and an ID, and then connect the two IIC wires to both sockets from the master Core.

3.) do I really need 8 internal, is 6 enough? 

The 8th one is used exclusively for Ensembles, so that one should be internal. Ensembles with someone else. So… 5 internal, 2 external plus 1 for Ensembles is MORE than enough.

3

hmm.  mostly, I just wanted to support the concept of bankstick,

I thought it really cute to use the serial ports as oldschool “usb memory sticks” 

and since i had the 2 ports just sitting there, i thought why not… :slight_smile:

Also, I can always repurpose the serial port to some external device, if I ever find the need.

maybe i’ll do 1 external bankstick with a switch between serial1/2 ports, so both chips can have the same address, so 6 internal 1 ensemble, 1 external…    or, i can rely on the user (me) to be careful, and only insert one at a time… hahah!

thanks for the ideas, I’ll chew on that for a while before i go drilling the case for toggle switches. :slight_smile: