After some calling around,
I think I’ll wait until I get home to open it, though… I want to take step-by-step photos of the unboxing. For some reason.
Now, what to do with my Mario Kart DS…
Oh, and yes. That is
Well, the SIDbox / whatever MIDI problems are sorted. I’m also able to load apps and things like that… The problem now is that it’s not making any sound. I’m not sure why yet, but that’s okay. At least one half of the device appears to be functioning as designed.
No, my UK photos still aren’t uploaded.
Yesterday I took the time to (finally) plant flowers out front. I’d been wanting to wait until I returned from the UK so that I didn’t have to worry about finding someone to water them for me. I also planted the Chia Herb Garden thing which I’d had growing in the kitchen. I don’t know how well they will continue to grow outside, but it can’t hurt.
There are more photos of the flowers planted in 2006 here (photo gallery retired) if you would like to see them.
As a quick summary, I planted Vista Purple Salvia, Vista Red Salvia, Margarity Orange Portulaca, Liberty Lavender Snapdragons, and Regatta White Lobelia in the various flower holding spaces around my front porch. I also doubled the number of salvia plants in the rectangular planters on the front porch as opposed to previous years. Each box now has six plants, three each of red and purple. Hopefully they’ll grow well and provide some nicely mixed colors.
Now, back to more work… I just finished balancing my checkbook, which it was definitely needing. One and a half weeks of mixed currency charges, scheduled debits, and a few other things need a good bit of sorting out to handle. Fortunately I was sitting on a conference call for the better part of the morning, providing plenty of time to handle this.
Gur. rez.nuxx.net threw some SMART errors on /dev/ad10. I’m thinking that box needs some replacin’.
I mean, I would just replace the disks, but I can’t quite take the server down for long enough to replace them all.
My current thoughts are that a Supermicro 1U with four large SATA disks (in hardware RAID 0+1) would be ideal. Unfortunately, I don’t think FreeBSD supports the ICH7 raid stuff directly.
Hmm, I’ll have to do some digging on this… Definitely won’t happen within the next few weeks, though.
Ah! I finally came across this again… I’d been looking for it:
Yes, it’s a schematic of a NMI switch which fits into a PCI slot, and it’s provided by Microsoft. Quite nifty, in my opinion.
Also, add DWORD CrashOnCtrlScroll set to a value of 1 under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters to enable manual crashing when holding the right CTRL key and pressing Scroll Lock twice.
(This is documented for my purposes.)
Well, the SIDbox PCBs came in today, and thusly, I assembled one. Well, as much of one as possible… I’m still waiting for some more sockets to arrive tomorrow, and then I need to finish building a PIC programmer. But after that I will hopefully have a working prototype of a single board SID-based sound module.
For background, I’m using what are basically a bunch of different designs from the MIDIbox projects, implemented by me on a single PCB. It will also run the MIOS software which Thorsten Klose has so kindly shared with the world. The main project has a bunch of small ‘modules’ which can be wired together and fitted together in a case to make a synth of one type or another. Well, I wanted a specific type, build portions of a number of the different modules, so I made just that.
I’ve actually been thinking seriously about selling these as kits, and after asking Thorsten (TK) about it in the MIDIbox Forum, I’m seriously thinking about doing it. If I do this, I’ll be merging 5 or 6 of the MIDIbox modules (I can’t remember right now — but it’s a good bit more hardware than seen above) on a single PCB and sticking it in a single case. With my design it’ll be possible (just with the main PCB) to have 8 buttons, an LCD, and all the stuffs I mentioned before. I’m still not sure if I want to do this work, but… I may… We’ll see. :)
Anyway, this post was supposed to be about SIDbox (photo gallery retired) photos, so I’ll link to some specific ones here:
· Mmm. SIDs. A MOS 6581, MOS 6581R3, and CSG 8580R5.
· The nifty note sent byalong with some ridiculously generous SIDs.
· 600dpi scans of the finished PCBs. (photo gallery retired)
· Ahh, a nicely laid out array of six SIDbox PCBs.
· Ooh, and the SIDbox PCBs even fit in the enclosure. They fit a little too well, but that’s all right.
· Test fitting parts to be sure there won’t be any dimensional surprises when actually soldering. Everything looks good from here…
· Well, the power supply works. I was getting a solid 5VDC and 12VDC, which should be ideal for a MOS 6580 SID.
· The PCB with all parts fitted except for two sockets and all ICs.
· The bottom side of the SIDbox PCB, where one can see a hardware bugfix. After I ordered the boards I found out about a potential problem, and the blue wire should resolve that.
· The SIDbox PCB fitted with a PIC18F4620 to test on-board ICSP. It works.
· A photo which may look familiar to those of you who liked the laser printed board layout plus parts photo from before…
So, yeah. If I’m lucky I will have a working SID-based sound module either tomorrow or Saturday. If not, I’ll probably have a lot to learn… And I’ll be really upset with myself… We’ll see. For now, I’m pretty excited.
The SIDbox PCBs are here! Granted, these are considered prototype boards for the MIDIbox SID-LC I’ve been working on. Or… Maybe I’ll stop here. We’ll see later. :)
So my friend Jeff (for whom I host http://gallery.tehlunix.com) for is an avid biker. As such, he has a lithium ion battery pack for the headlight on his bike. Well, it exploded when he was charging it. Click here or on the photo above for images of the damage.
Also, you can digg the story here: Lithium Ion Battery Pack Explodes.
Oh, when at Gibralter Trade Center’s ‘Computer Show’ (to get the aforementioned DB25 cable) I was walking past a table of $25 laptops (old Zeniths and such) I heard the guy there saying to someone else “…oh, then you need a RAID. R-A-I-D. It’s what companies use. Have you ever heard of it?”
Yeah, it’s that kind of place.
Today I…
– Watched a pair of T-38’s take off.
– Watched other aircraft fly about.
– Went to the dirt mall. It’s full of dirty, trashy, awful people.
– Drove through Algonac, East China, and all other routes along M-29 between New Baltimore and Port Huron.
– Poked around beneath the Blue Water Bridge, likely raising the ire of the DHS. I’m sure there were lots of cameras pointing at me.
– Gazed longingly at the land of the more free (aka Canada).
– Visited Kate and Ben in Lapeer.
– Found a local place to buy Yves veggie products: Kroger
– Became frustrated at the PIC programmer I am building, as it doesn’t appear to be behaving properly.
