There we go, the three MIDIbox SID-NUXXs which I’m assembling.

The top one is ‘s, and is fully setup and working using one of the SIDs which was nice enough to send me. I just have to drop ‘s SID into it and it’ll be ready to go. Oh, and maaaaybe change the resistors, depending on how the LEDs look with those. (The LEDs will generally be brightness matched to the LCD.)

The other two are mine, with the top one being a 12V version for a 6581 SID, and the bottom being 9V for an 8580. Neither of these have been fitted with their socketed ICs, and I also left out the resistors which control LED brightness. Of course, this means that neither of mine have been tested, but they should work.

With any luck I’ll have a pair of OLEDs to play with sometime within the next few days. Provided these work as expected, they are what I’ll be using to display things on my MIDIbox SID-NUXXs. ‘s will get the CFAH2002A-RMI-JP which can be seen here, not set right, and very overexposed.

< smile > This is finally all coming together.

Yay! Leave it up to me to screw up yet something else on this synth project…

1) The black screws from McMaster-Carr are a bit larger than I’d figured, so they won’t sit quite right in the holes on the front panel. And since I want them to match on both panels… Well… I need to try and cancel the orders tomorrow, then resubmit them.

2) I ordered a $9 bag of 4-40 bolts with captive lock washers. Not bad… Except I needed 6-32. I must have clicked the wrong fscking thing. :\

Ah well…

I have just ordered the last of the parts needed for building the first MIDIbox SID-NUXX. Provided everything goes as planned I will simply have to wait for the parts to arrive, then assemble the synth. If that goes as planned, I can build one for Bryan, a second one for myself, then determine what will be done with the other two PCB sets. :D

Oh, I had to pull a weird hack to order the front panel PCBs. It will require me to cut out the center of each board, but that shouldn’t be too difficult.

Now I’m going home. :D

Paper models of the front and rear panels and associated PCB for the MIDIbox SID-NUXX.

Making paper models of the mechanical parts for things is really handy. For example, the bottom two ones up above there helped me identify a problem with the alignment of the LCD and pushbuttons. Takes about 20 minutes to make, works out really well. Those bottom two are the front panel itself, and the PCB which is sandwhiched between the LCD and the front panel, in order to hold the LEDs, rotary encoder, and pushbuttons.

Oh, and yes, this project is starting to wrap up. As soon as I finalize the design for the front panel and order the parts, it’s all a matter of waiting. Then provided the parts all fit together, it’s all then a matter of final assembly and documentation and the MIDIbox SID-NUXX will be complete.