mam@gvgspd.GVG.TEK.COM (Mark A. Matthews) (06/28/90)
Has anyone heard about the status of the SID hardware kits? Are they ready, soon to be ready, very late, or what? -- -Mark (mam@gvgspd.GVG.TEK.COM -or- ..!tektronix!gvgpsa!gvgspd!mam)
mikec@wheaties.ai.mit.edu (Mike E. Ciholas) (06/28/90)
All orders received before June 14th were shipped this morning (no kidding!). The delay was due to one supplier who decided 4 weeks after I ordered a part that I really didn't want it (it even appeared on their invoice, then they charged me for it, then they said they won't provide it! ARGHHH!). Anyway, I've learned a lot about doing this sort of thing (including how MAD people can get at the post office when they are behind you). I have made arrangements with a person I know to do the bookkeeping and shipping, so things will be much smoother in the future. I also discovered how much it really costs to ship things. Boxes, conductive foam, poly bags, laser printer labels, padded mailers, tape, staples, etc. It added up to an impressive amount (average about $5 a kit!). Easily the most expensive part of a kit! I figured out I made something like 67 cents an hour doing this. This is great! I didn't lose any money! Things should start improving as now the development costs are paid for. Currently, I can't fill orders received after June 14th for a backordered part that should be in early next week. (yes, its the same supplier :-( ) All orders were shipped first class (air mail for foreign orders, mucho $). If anybody is unhappy with the current state of their order and would like to cancel, you may do so at anytime until I ship. No problem. Trying to do this right... Mike Ciholas mikec@ai.mit.edu
blm@6sceng.UUCP (Brian Matthews) (07/04/90)
In article <9255@wheat-chex.ai.mit.edu> mikec@wheat-chex.ai.mit.edu (Mike E. Ciholas) writes: |All orders received before June 14th were shipped this morning (no kidding!). I received mine a few days ago. It looks very nicely done. Now I just need to find the time to put it together... -- Brian L. Matthews blm@6sceng.UUCP
gshapiro@wpi.wpi.edu (Gregory Neil Shapiro) (07/05/90)
>>>>> On 4 Jul 90 03:01:29 GMT, blm@6sceng.UUCP (Brian Matthews) said:
blm> I received mine a few days ago. It looks very nicely done. Now I just
blm> need to find the time to put it together...
I got mine and it took about 4 hours to put together (my first time
ever soldering circuits so it may take less then that for a seasoned
person). It works great.. A friend of mine is making me a lucite
enclosure so you will be able to see it and still have it protected.
Has anyone found a source for the better chip to replace the ADC831C
chip?
Greg
____________________________________________________________________________
Gregory Neil Shapiro Gregory Neil Shapiro
gshapiro@wpi.wpi.edu (130.215.24.1) Worcester Polytechnic Institute
husc6!m2c!wpi!gshapiro 100 Institute Road, Box 1397
America Online/GEnie: GShapiro Worcester, Massachusetts 01609
____________________________________________________________________________palmer@gap.caltech.edu (David Palmer) (07/05/90)
gshapiro@wpi.wpi.edu (Gregory Neil Shapiro) writes: >I got mine and it took about 4 hours to put together (my first time >ever soldering circuits so it may take less then that for a seasoned >person). It works great.. A friend of mine is making me a lucite >enclosure so you will be able to see it and still have it protected. I put mine together last night, about 3 hours. Here's an important hint about something that didn't catch me, but could have: Capacitor C16, 10nF, marked 103, looks exactly (except for a single digit difference in the markings) like capacitors C2-7, C18-23, C27 and C28, 100nF, marked 104. Since there are so many 104's that look alike, that mistake would be easy to make. (I probably had to desolder and exchange those capacitors in over half the parallel universes.) My problem is that it when it's plugged in, it sends out data and so prevents the CPU form working because of interrupts. (A Mac SE/30 runs very slowly (~100x slower), and motion on an SE is imperceptible.) I can digitize with it plugged in, and then unplug it and play back the sound and everything's fine. Since other people don't have this problem, it is something wrong in the one I built. It is my understanding that when the digitizer is not sampling, it is suppowed to be unpowered. Is my understanding wrong? mine always has 5 V available. If that is not how sampling is turned on and off, how is it done? Please mail me instead of posting. If there is general interest (which I doubt) I will post a summary. Thanks for the help. -- David Palmer palmer@gap.cco.caltech.edu ...rutgers!cit-vax!gap.cco.caltech.edu!palmer I have the power to cloud men's minds -- or at least my own.
dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) (07/05/90)
In article <palmer.647118138@gap> palmer@gap.caltech.edu (David Palmer) writes: > My problem is that it when it's plugged in, it sends out data and so > prevents the CPU form working because of interrupts. (A Mac SE/30 > runs very slowly (~100x slower), and motion on an SE is imperceptible.) > I can digitize with it plugged in, and then unplug it and play back the sound > and everything's fine. > > Since other people don't have this problem, it is something wrong in the > one I built. I don't think there's anything wrong with your unit. Mine has a similar behavior, but only on the two Mac SE machines I tested it with at work. The SE locks up (its cursor won't track) for as long as the SID is plugged into the serial port and the SID Test Utility is running. When it's unplugged, the cursor jumps to where it "should have been". The same SID II works perfectly with my Mac II at home. Mike Ciholas tells me that he tested the SID II design with both the II and Plus, and that it works correctly... but that he didn't have a chance to test it with an SE. His best guess is that the HearHere.c code isn't properly disabling all of the serial port interrupts on the SCC when it puts the SCC into high-speed-clocked-data mode. As a result, the 22 kilobytes/second coming in from the SID causes the Mac to swamp itself with serial port interrupts, and the mainline code never gets any time. I've looked at the SCC-twiddling code, but can't figure out why it's not working... I don't have any documentation on the Zilog chip, Inside Mac isn't at all helpful, and the code is somewhat opaque. It _looks_ as if the code is intending to turn off the SCC interrupts... but I could very well be wrong about this. I suppose it's possible that the SE and SE/30 have a different SCC chip than the Plus and II... or that there's an error in the HearHere.c code which is only exercised when running in an SE-style architecture. Beats me, though. Anybody got a Mac Family Hardware Manual handy? I suppose that it would be possible to rewrite HearHere.c so that it actually configures the serial port only when it's about to digitize... and turns off all interrupts, first. It might be necessary to throw away the first tenth-of-a-second's samples, when this is done, in order to give the digitizer time to stabilize itself. > It is my understanding that when the digitizer is not sampling, it is > suppowed to be unpowered. Is my understanding wrong? mine always has > 5 V available. If that is not how sampling is turned on and off, how > is it done? The digitizer is powered from the differential transmit-data lines, which are always enabled (one way or the other); it's always digitizing and sending data. I believe that some other digitizers (e.g. the Impulse) have a green status LED which is tied to the Mac's handshake-out line (the one which is usually connected to the DTR pin on a modem), and will light the LED only when the serial port has been configured to receive data from the digitizer. I don't believe that this controls whether or not the digitizer is sampling and converting data... it just shows the user that the port is in use. > Please mail me instead of posting. If there is general interest (which > I doubt) I will post a summary. Thanks for the help. I don't think you're going to be the only person in this situation... hence my posting.
yossie@marque.mu.edu (07/06/90)
Werll, it arrived a few days ago and I assembled it earlier today. It doesn't work, sigh. The problem may be something simple and I am hoping that one of you can offer some useful help before I lug up an osciloscope and go to work ... Simply put, I start up SID Test Util (from the original SID package) and the mouse freezes once I get by the startup dialog. If I unplug the SID, the mouse unfreezes and I can work normaly. If I plug the SID back in, freezup again. If I am in finder, the SID has no effect on the mouse, pluged in or not. The serial port is still healthy (I am using it to type this) so the problem is elsewhere. Any ideas? Please send responses to this account AND to yossie@lakesys.lakesys.com as marque.mu.edu is very very sporadic at receiving mail! Thanks in advance - Yossie P.s. one thing I may not have mentioned is that I am running with a MacIIci and System 6.0.5. There are also tons of INITs in use.
bayes@hpislx.HP.COM (Scott Bayes) (07/13/90)
And my SID fails to get past the startup in the Utility. It's at home, but as near as I can remember, it gave an error like "SID not responding". I didn't get past ground 0 debugging (pun intended). I am a reasonably good solderer/assembler, but don't really know how to debug H/W. We're gonna' beat it up again this weekend, with a scope. Scott Bayes