Category making things

Huh. So I just got off the phone with Shiva at PCBFABEXPRESS. After discussing the problem with him and explaining that four of the five boards appear fine and only one was bad, he understood that this is simply a manufacturing defect. He said that he will take a look around PCBFABEXPRESS’ backstock and see if there are any more copies of my board available. If one is, he will send it out right away for me to take a look at. If not, he’ll have another run of five boards made and will send those out to me.

This is looking a lot better. Of course, my PCBFABEXPRESS Review has been updated accordingly.

I was talking with someone who purchased one of my pieces of x0xb0x artwork, who is also building a MIDIbox SID, and who also is finishing up a 9090 and he pointed me to this site, entitled Anodizing Aluminum At Home. Seems pretty straightforward. H₂SO₄, NaOH, a 12V power supply, and a hunk of lead.

Well, PCBFABEXPRESS are being asshats. I don’t think I’ll be using them any further. In short, their website states that:

“If your printed circuit boards are not made to your specifications, we will remake them immediately.”

By this I would presume that this means defect-free.

Their customer service is refusing to provide a replacement board and has instead suggested that I repair the board myself. This is possible (and I have done it) but I would imagine that a company which wants to keep someone’s business would either follow their own policy or at least offer a credit towards future purchases.

Because of this experience and the (thus far) good experience I’ve had with PCBEX.com I’ve written up a review of PCB Prototype Shops which I have delt with on nuxx.net.

If you are curious about the problem or the email exchange with customer service (which I’ve included in full) this can be found at the PCBFABEXPRESS review.

Casio SK-1 MIDI Modification PCB v1.1 (Paneled)

Thanks to everyone who took a look at the schematic for v1.1, the hopefully not screwed up version of my version of the Casio SK-1 MIDI Mod.

Besides not feeding +5VDC into Vcc on all the ICs (doh) and shorting out the LM7805, I also replaced the resistors with 1/4W parts because they are easier to find. Things were cleaned up overall, too.

So, hopefully in a couple of weeks I’ll have these available. For now, I’m just adding rubber feet and using the defective PCBs as coasters.

Hey everyone… As I mentioned last night that I would have to do, I’ve redesigned a bunch of the Casio SK-1 MIDI Modification PCB. This was to fix some { big | fat | stupid | huge | absurd | inexcusable } mistakes made in the original design.

I think the design is now good, but I’m curious if anyone would be able to look it over for me. The schematic I made can be found here in PDF format, and the original which it was designed after (and should be checked against) is here as a PNG.

If you are curious about the board layout, a 300dpi representation of it (without ground plane) can be found here as a PNG.

As notes, the MIDI input section is different, mostly because the original PC900 optocoupler is becoming harder to find. The standard 6N138 is used instead. I also tossed a couple bypass caps near the CPU and ROM, just to help ensure that they are stable.

Thanks very much. :) I’m hoping to order these this weekend or Monday, if possible.

Yep. I fucked up another first run of PCBs. At least I know how.

Too bad it’s substantial enough that I need to order another run.

< sigh >

(I mis-read the original schematic and hooked all the ground pins on all the ICs to 5V. I wasn’t used to the style used in the schematic and I guess I read it how I wanted to, not how it actually was. I’ll fix it, then this project is on hold for a while. Probably until after the PCBs come in and I’ve finished stuffing the 9090 boards.)

Three MIDIbox SID-NUXX’s. Done.

They are done. Done done done done done.

More info will be posted later, especially once I finish updating the website entry. I’m just so excited that I wanted to post that now and say that they are finally, finally done. Yay!