Letting the smoke out

Picked up male and female dsub sockets and a socket case to build a bankstick. Checked out the very simple schematic and wired it all up but when connecting it oo the core module its not detected.
Checked the wiring, which I thought I may have gotten wrong. Swapped around a couple of the wires and tripple checked it, it now matches the scmematic exactly.
Plugged it in and nothin.......... until there was a pretty identifieable smell and the Dsub case got very hot.... and smoke came out....
Opened up the D-sub case and it had gotten hot enough to melt the solter on the EEPROM pins... thats hot.
Quadruple checked, yep, its all wired up exactly as the scematic, its only 5 wires to ground and then 3 more than are actually in use so its not like its complex.
I have a feeling that the eeprom is well and truely fried now anyway, I have got another 8 but they were supposed to be for the MB_6582 but I guess I can get some more.
Just picked up a couple of IC sockets for the EEPROMs so I can build one with a socket rather then soldering directly to the EEPROM, so will see how that goes.

Also, the LCD arrived from Crystalfontz USA, in like 3 days! They sent it international priority at thier cost, which is about $35US, so awesome service.
Wired it up and it worked a treat, looks great too..

Sweet!

Well I got a response from Crystalfontz USA, they have sent me off the correct LCD at thier expense, now THATS customer service!
I have recieved my order from Volti for the rotary encoders and EEPROMs so as soon as the new LCD arrives I can get started with building the basic control surface.

Not so stupid after all

Well, I have been looking through the datasheets for the LCDs and I can find no mention of negative contrast so I deceided to wire up the red LCD to see if it fired up, and it did.
So I wired up the origional one that I thought was negative contrst and I get the 2 bars that you usually get when they boot, but it stays on the screen.
This leads me to believe that this LCD is munted.
Considering the fact that Crystalfontz actually sent me the wrong part, as I had ordered a 20x2 not a 20x4 and the one they have sent me doesnt even work, I am emailing them now to see what they are willing to do about it.
My bet is nothing considering I am all the way over in NZ but worth a shot otherwise I have basicly blown money.
Heres the sexy red one.... looks alot better than in the pic.

And heres the busted green one

It lives!

Well I wired up the non negative contrast LCD and hooked it up and bingo! Loaded on some LCD test apps and we were away.
WIred up another ribbon cable to connect the SID module and then a power cable for the sid module and realised that the placing of the power connectors on the optimzed power supply board werent.... optimal... so resoldered the headers into a more useful configuration.
connected the SID module to power and the Core module and powered it up. Tested the power comming to the SID IC socket and it 8.98v, which is pretty much perfect. Wired up an audio out socket and connected that to the SID
Popped in the SID module and uploaded the Sid test software, powered it on and there we go, a pretty high pitched saw wave.
Uploaded the Midibox SID software and rebooted. Using the Midi Keyboard in MIOS studio the midibox SID is working perfectly!
I dont have the EEPROMs for the bankstick yet so theres only one patch available and I dont have the rotary encoders for the control surface as yet so its pretty limited but the base is functioning !

Click below for pics

It lives! But its blind

Well, worked out all the problems and have solutions for them all !
nILS sugegsted it was the bridge rectifier that was dropping the extra volt out of my 5v DC. He suggested that I connect the power to J2 rather than J1 as this bypasses the power regulation part of the circuit, which I dont need because Im using the optimized power supply. Does mean that becuase there is no bridge rectifier that you HAVE to get the polarity round the right way though :)

So I did as nILS suggested and I then connected up the core to my Mac using the USB-Midi interface I bought. Had a few problems with working out MIOS Studio, mostly because the the archiver utility thats comes with MacOSX decided that what I wanted it to do when I double clicked the downloaded .ZIP file of MIOS Studio was to unzip the .ZIP file and the unzip the .JAR file it contained, giving me the contents fo the .JAR file in a folder, which I took ages to work out what to do with (which was delete it and use Stuffit to unpack the .ZIP)

So difficulties with over zealous software aside, I managed to get the expeted string upon boot when monitoring the midi ports in MIOS studio, which means its alive!
Uploaded a couple of test apps and they uploaded fine.
Also worked out that I had mis-read the LCD wiring schematic and it was backwards :) De-soldered and re-soldered that and now I haev LCD backlight ! But no characters, even when using the LCD test in MIOS Studio and when using any of the LCD test apps.
As it turns out 2 of the 3 LCDs I bought from CrystalFontz are negative contrast, meaning they need -5v to control contrast. Oh dear.

Fortunatly I have tracked down a schematic to create an inverter that will take between 6 and 12v AC and turn it into 5v+ and 5v-, which is whats needed here. So, another trip to Jaycar required this weekend to build this up, also, I am goign to attempt to add external pots for contrast and brightness control, which will be a nice feature to have.
In the meantime though, I am going to wire up the LCD that isnt negative contrast just to get this going. Its one I plan to use for my green MB_6582, which is the last one I am building so will need it wired up to a plug anyway.

Oh and the rare parts kit for the x0xb0x arrived yesterday.

Now the tricky stuff

Well, my package arrived from SmashTV with my MB_6582 baseboard and CS Board and also the Core, SID and DIN module kits, so a-soldering I will go.
Soldered together the core kit pretty quick, took about an hour and a 1/2, only annoyance was that one of the resistors in the kit was wrong. I had an extra 2.2k ohm and was a 1k ohm short, so I had to buy one from Jaycar. I tried Dick Smith Electronics, but they have all thier resistors in bins that are labeled with the colour bands, not the values and they dont have a guide there. Idiots.

Also soldered up the SID and DIN kitt, they were even quicker, did the both of them in about an hour and a halk, getting pretty good at soldering, all of the solder work is nice and clean and pretty uniform.

Also, soldered up a ribon cable for the LCD so I can see if I can get anything out of this badboy.
So hooked the core up to the optimised power supply, which is putting 5.12 volts out, checked the voltage on the IC sockets for the PIC and for the octocoupler andwas only getting 3v. With some investigation I foudn that I have to remove the voltage regulator from the Core module if I am using the optimised power supply. Did that and soldered a bridge between the 1st and 3rd pins.

Now Im getting a bit better, but still only just over 4 volts. Not too sure whats going on here but figutred that too low a voltage cant kill anything so thought Id give it a go.
Popped the PIC and the octocoupler in the IC sockets, connected the power supply and the LCD aaaaaaaand...... nothing....

I dont have a midi cable to connect to MIOS studio so I cant tell if the core just isnt booting or if there is soemthing wrong with the screen. I have just gone over and over the schematic and thankfully IM using rainbow ribbon so its reasonably easy to identify which wire is which. As far as I can see I have got the LCD wired up perfectly fine. I will double check the datasheet to make sure that the pin out on the LCD matches standatd but Im pretty sure it does seeing as its a Crystalfontz one.

Could also be that the voltage is just oo low, I am going to have to ask the great oracles of nILS, wilba and SmashTV on the midibox chat server.
Will get some midi cables today and then at least I can see if the Core is booting up.

Clean x0x

Was looking around on the x0xb0x forum and it looks like even though there are more kits comming soon for the x0xb0x that the waitlist is about a year, so decided to have a look at self sourcing the parts.

Downloaded the x0xb0x BOM parts list and had a look over it, can get just about all the non rare parts from Mouser in the US on a single order and found a guy selling rare parts kits on Ladyadas forum for $96us including postage. Guy is in Oz, I ordered one so hopefully that will arrive quite quickly.

The parts kits for the MB6152 dont seem to have a date on them so I will probably end up getting the x0xb0x finished before the MB6152 :)
Can get the PCB and panels from adafruit and already have a pactec pt-10 so shouldnt be difficult to get my hands on all the parts.
In the meantime, just waiting on my order to arrive from SmashTV so I can get started on the simple Midibox.

Eureka!

Found the problem! Well, found that there wasnt really a problem, the problem had to do with the way I was measuring the voltage.
Thanks to a conversation with SmashTV on the midibox.org chat server today I worked out that to get the 5v you connect the 5v+ and the 5v ground and to get the 14 v you connect the 9v positive to the 14v+ out and the 5v+ to the 14v + out, resulting in 14v !
So anyway, I now have a working optimal power supply, which is good because I also got a notification from SmashTV that he has shipped my order today. It was sent express so hopefully it will arrive quickly so I can get on with building the midibox.