The happenings so far.

I have been keeping a log of whats been going on with trying to source parts. It was origionally just going to be a build log to keep a record of the time and money I had spent building these but thought I might as well keep a complete record, including all the painful dealings with Paypal and overseas parts distributors.

Heres what I had so far:

Midibox Build Log

15/09/08 Purchase 2x Mainboards, 2x Control Surface Boards, 200 green 3mm LEDs and 200 red 3mm LEDs from SmashTV for $100us + $3 handling and $33.87 shipping for a total of $136.87us

15/09/08 Won auction online for 3x E-boards from C64s with 8580R5 SID Chips. $49us. Waiting to find out the shipping cost.

15/09/08 Bought PacTec PT-10 Case from nz.farnel.com for $45.51nz +$10nz shipping. Total $55.51nz

16/09/08 Bought 10 new 6582A SID chips from ebay. £128.50uk including shipping.

16/09/08 Decided to build a standard single SID midibox SID with simple control surface as a test and to test the SIDs I have bought. emailed SmashTV to ordered the following from SmashTV to build this:
1 x 02 Core KIT with PIC18F4685. Pic header "0000000000000012" 1 x 06 DIN KIt 1 x 13a SID Kit

17/09/08 Got a response from SmashTV. He advised the best way to add to the order was to refund the order and create a new one The order was refunded but now have a problem with PayPal. Not able to complete and order on http://www.avishowtech.com/ now, I have contacted PayPal. 9 emails so far. No response. Was able to pay for the SIDs using PayPal fine.

18/09/08 Ordered 3x LCDs from http://www.crystalfontz.com/: CFAH2004ARMIJT: 1 @ $30.29 = $30.29 - Parallel Character LCD 20x4 - RoHS Compliant - Red LED Backlight - STN Negative, Blue - Transmissive -20°C - +70°C 6:00
CFAH2002AYMIJT: 1 @ $26.00 = $26.00 - Parallel Character LCD 20x2(CFAH2002A-YMI-JP) - (CFAH2002A-YMI-JT may be substituted) - RoHS Compliant - Yellow/Green LED Backlight - STN Negative, Blue - Transmissive -20°C - +70°C 6:00
CFAH2004AYTIJT: 1 @ $34.63 = $34.63 - Parallel Character LCD 20x4 - RoHS Compliant - Yellow/Green LED Backlight - FSTN Negative - Transmissive -20°C - +70°C 6:00 Waiting to hear back about shipping cost. Expecting it to be ALOT.

18/09/08 Called Farnell to fidn out what was going on with the Pactec PT-10. Was advised that minimum order was 24 units for this part and that there would be a 4 week lead time.

18/09/08 Added my name to a bulk order list on midibox.org for 20 red and 20 grey waldorf knobs

18/09/08 Ordered 2x PT-10s directly from PacTec on thier website for $62.61us including shipping

18/09/09 Made the order wtih SmashTV using Azzas Paypal account. Ordered:
1 CORE KIT, OP1=With PIC18F4685 9.95, OP2=0000 0000 0000 0000, SHP=New Zealand-Express Item # id02 $24.95 USD 1 DIN KIT Item # id06 $12.00 USD 1 SID KIT Item # id13a $15.00 USD 1 6582 BASE PCB Item # id72 $20.00 USD 1 6582 CS PCB Item # id73 $20.00 USD 2 LED3MMRED Item # id44 $10.00 USD 2 LED3MMGRN Item # id43 $10.00 USD
Amount $111.95 USD
18/09/08 Recieved the invoice for the knobs. Wasnt able to pay it due to the same PayPal error that I recieved for SmashtTV
19/09/08 Created a new paypal account, associated my credit card with it and test order to crash worked ok. Emailed Goblinz to ask him to send me a new invoice to that address. Paypal suck.

19/09/08 Got notification from Pactec that my cases have shipped ! Also got an email from Crystalfontz. Total including shipping is $135.92US.

22/09/08 Bought 3x c64 power supplies from ebay for $75AU including postage.

23/09/08 Paid 48.12 GBP for 30 Red and 30 Grey Waldorf knobs.

23/09/08 Bought 20 rotary encoders from http://www.voti.nl/ for $26 euro including shipping of 8.60