Bankstuck

[Snoozr]

Hi everyone,

First let me say that getting my Sid up and kind of running (making a bit of sound anyway) has been my technical accomplishment of 2008!

I’m stuck at the bankstick stage.  I have 3.  The first board I built has them numbered 1, 2, and 3.  Only #1 works (it now has the 128 presets in it). 

I checked the connectivity and wiring numerous numerous times, switched chips around, etc.  In frustration, I built a second board and wired up #4.  #4 does not work either (again with checks for voltage, connectivity, shorts).  The sid says “No Bankstick” when I try to switch in MidiOX.  Specifically, it says

E002|B001* Ld Chn. 1

1***|<No Bankstick>

My soldering is passable enough that I think at least one out of #2, #3, and #4 should have worked just straight out of the box, and testing indicates they should all work.  See pix below.

So do I need to upload something to the Core to inform it about the banksticks?  Tried a lot of poking around in the code and searches but was coming up dry.

Alternatively, perhaps I misunderstood the multiple-bankstick wiring instructions but checked this many times as well.  All wirings were the same for #1-#4 so can’t explain why #1 works and others don’t.  On the bigger board, you can see that I just used vertical columns as “conduit wires” which the individual chips tapped into.  This looks like the conduits on the wiring instructions (to me anyway).

Also, I have noise on some patches which I understand is likely due to a bum 6581 filter.  I understand the filter can be turned off somehow in the code but poking around in the code and searches again didn’t give me any leads (that I could comprehend anyway).

Thanks!

[frailn]

Curse that strip-board. I never was able to get the OPSU working on one of those and I rebuilt it three times. Sorry, I’m not much help, but I will tell  you that I’m new to building electronics to this degree and I struggled with the strip-board. I had better success with the proto boards that have each hole isolated and each hole has a metal pad.

[Snoozr]

Thanks - yeah I wondered about that and so that’s why I went to Board 2 with isolated holes.  I got the stripboard from Smash (so it must be Midibox approved  ;D ;D).

I found in the setup_6581.asm that it seems to indicate that 3 pins are connected to +5v.  So looking back at http://www.ucapps.de/mbhp_bankstick.html it seems there is some text which I could not quite read but must be +5v.   Problem hopefully solved  ;D ;D (at least the non-filter part).

[T.K]

What is the type number of the IIC EEPROMs? If they are manufactured by ST, the CS lines (pin 1-3) won’t work. AMD EEPROMS: Pin 3 won’t work. Only Microchip EEPROMs (24LC512) will allow you to use all chip select lines.

So - my assumption is, that you are using ST EEPROMs

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[Snoozr]

Hi TK,

Thanks for taking the time to reply.  Yes, they are the Microchip Serial EEPROMs 512k so I think it is just my eyesight that is the problem here

[Snoozr]

Signed, soldered, delivered.  Thanks gang!

Now I’m going to give my newly purchased Dremel set a spin and work on the control surface.  Wish me luck