I’ve been lurking this forum a few months and you seem to have a real nice community here. Congratulations!
I’m Chemical engineer from Sweden with a taste for electronic noise (and often plenty of distortion)
Anyway, I’ve just ordered my first Core/sid kit(s) from Smash so it won’t be too long now before I start asking silly questions, like what end of the soldering iron to hold onto… well, maybe not that one but I’m a complete newbe when it comes to PIC’s and assambler. I’ve done some electronics in the past like building a Gyraf SSL clone etc. But this is a bit different.
I’d just like to give you a little preparation of what to come.
My plan is to build a stereo SIDbox with 2 8580SID’s with a minimal control panel.
The first step is to just get one voice working.
Then a second voice for stereo.
When this is working, I’ll probably add a feedbackloop and create a nice frontpanel.
But, that’s the current plan, it may be revised later
And I’ll tro to post some pictures along the way as well.
Welcome aboard man I’m sure you’ll have no troubles, especially if you’ve done such a project before. You won’t need to know any ASM for what you mentioned, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to do.
A bit of lurking and a bit of searching and shouting out when you need a hand is all you need… Oh and hold the soldering iron the right way around… Oh and don’t kiss it when it’s on ;D
Ok, I received a box from Smash last week. Very professionally packed and lots of small bags for everything.
I’ve soldered my core board, a flat cable to my LCD and is now working on my optimized PSU.
However, I made a small mistake when buying stuff for the PSU, I’m missing the 220 Ohm resistor. Does anyone know if I can use a 390 Ohm one from the C64 main board insted? (It’s the resistor that is attached to the power LED on the main board ) It should only make the led a bit dimmer or?
Oh, some tips for future newbees.
Desoldering using a 18W soldering iron is not great for desoldering bigger components like the power plug. I ended up brutally carving away some solder and mainboard to get it off. :-[
.3V high is probably OK… Chances are, that’s an error with your meter
well, my meter was quite cheap so it is possible
I checked the LCD guide, the core description and also my LCD datasheet so it should be ok. I usually check my connection one extra time before connecting anything so it should be ok. However it is a PLED so we’ll see if I need to mess with the driver or not.
I will probably end up known as the slowest Sid boxer ever…
But at least it’s going in the right direction.
I’ve soldered my sid board and just did some voltage checks:
With only power connected to the Sid PCB (without IC’s) I got 9,07V on leg14 - leg28 on the SID socket.
Good!
Btw I did a silly misstake here, I switched my +/- 5V first causing my voltage to be only 7,37V. But I color coded my + and - cords so I could spot it rather quickly.
After connecting core and Sid board:
IC1: leg 14 - 25. 5,31V
IC2: leg 08 - 16. 5,31V
IC3: leg 08 - 16. 5,31V
Still a bit high, but my meter was very cheap
Next is to load some code into that PIC and see what will happend. I’m expecting LCD troubles (4bit issues)
(btw. I bought two so if one fails I have a spare, i hope won’t need it.)
//Cheers
i have the same LCD. i like it a lot. i’m having driver problems with mine though. it freezes after a few seconds or a few clicks from the encoder. i’m trying to figure out the .asm stuff to fix it. let me know if you figure it out. post the steps if you can. i’m reading like mad but i’m always missing stuff.
I’m sure you’ll have no troubles, especially if you’ve done such a project before. You won’t need to know any ASM for what you mentioned, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to do.
