My new SID

MIDIbox of the Week
1

Hi, heres my new SID - it’s a stereo version using smashTV boards (these are excellent quality) and 8580R5 SIDs. The box is a cheap aluminium project box from Maplins that I had lying around, the display is a cheap 4x20 blue with white character backlit from ebay (£5!) and the panel is laminated laser printed paper. I had zero problems putting it all together (apart from drilling a hole in the wrong place - oops!) and frankly, I am amazed at the sound of this thing - I think it is up there with some of the best analogue synths in terms of raw oscillator and sync sounds, even the filter has a lovely phasey quality to it. I chose the display because it was cheap, so I was very pleased to see native support for 4x20 LCDs in the latest upgrade. All in all, this is one of the most satisfying things I have ever built. Kudos to Thorsten, SmashTV and the whole midibox community.

Cheers, vout

sid.jpg
sid.jpg1024×768 330 KB

2

Hi Vout and welcome aboard. Congratulations on your build. Your sid looks very clean and tasteful. I like you used Greek letters. Are you from Greece?

Edit: if you make some better quality pictures, please post it.

3

Moved this to MBOTW, even if the photo does look like you made it in the year I was born :smiley:

4

Haha isn’t that the point? That photo rocks!

5

Great work!

Blogged :slight_smile:

Btw.: for the 4x20 LCD you could activate a special configuration in your setup_8580.asm file, so that all 4 lines are used:

        ;; number of LCD lines (supported: 2 for 2x* LCDs and 4 for 4x* LCDs)
#define DEFAULT_LCD_LINES 4

        ;; LCD line -> cursor offsets
#define DEFAULT_LCD_LINE_Y0     0x40
#define DEFAULT_LCD_LINE_Y1     0x14
#define DEFAULT_LCD_LINE_Y2     0x00
#define DEFAULT_LCD_LINE_Y3     0x54

        ;; 1: LCD cursor will be set to current parameter position (clashes with bar graph which is enabled with DEF
AULT_LCD_LINES >= 4)
        ;; 0: disable this feature
#define DEFAULT_LCD_PRINT_CURSOR 0
[/code]









(requires the latest RC23 release)







Best Regards, Thorsten.
6

Good work… Was it hard to install the headphone amp output and do you have a link to the schematic?

7

head-fi is a good spot for high quality headphone amp schems…

8

DEEP PURPLE is my favorite colour after AC/DC sure(i am becomed professional guitarist since 30 years(1978)cause a guy called Angus Young  genious one…very original sid,yes!!!as i try to finish mine…with my "famous "wall psu…your tips are welcome…good work Stryd!

9

Hi, Thanks for the comments everyone. I should have said that was my first post, but I’ve been lurking here so long I actually didn’t realise it was! So, hello to all :slight_smile:

Anyway, apologies for the picture quality, but my camera is very cheap and nasty! I will try and post some better ones in a few days (I’m actually on holiday right now, just found an internet cafe) About the headphone output - I found that the SIDs output is enough to drive my Technics headphones directly, so it is just wired across the audio outs, it works quite well, but could do with a bit more volume (looking at the circuit, there is a transistor on the SID audio output - I wonder if it is possible to increase the output gain here so I could add a volume control?).

The greek lettering was by accident (I’m not Greek) - I was just trying different fonts out and found a greek one on my system - thought it looked good and a little different. The panel is actually black but the lamination was a bit uneven and it has a mottled grainy look to it - I am going to add an audio feedback control and switched filter capacitors so I will redo it anyway, probably with matt surface laminating film, should give a better look. Anyway, thanks for making it Midibox of the week!

Cheers, vout