Last week I started on the front panel PCB for the Wilba MB-6582 SID synthesizer. As you can see this is also a very professional looking PCB. It will fit directly behind the front panel itself and holds all the front panel components. First thing to do is solder 50 1N4148 diodes on this PCB. Quite some work and of course you have to watch carefully that you don't make mistakes with the orientation of the diodes. The reason you have to do these diodes first is that you can lay the pcb on its back and it will press the diodes down so that they don't fall out while soldering.
After that the rest of the front panel components can be mounted. There are 15 rotary controllers on there. They look like potmeters but are actually digital in stead of analog. They also have no beginning and no end. So they are called continues. I also mounted 48 ALPS tactile switches. All these components must be tightly fitted because they need to stick through the front panel later on. The last thing to do on this PCB is to mount about 128 3mm leds. They also need to be perfectly aligned. I think this will become a challenge, because they need to stick out a bit to go through the front panel.
In the mean time I also got the PT-10 case for the synthesizer. I got mine from Mouser in the US. It is actually the same case that Elby used on the AVR32 Synth I recently build. But this will look a lot neater I guess later on because of the cool front panel. The panels also arrived already. In the picture on the left you can see that the back panel is mounted in the case already. There is a DB25 connector on there that is not really necessary, but you can use it to make external connections for you own use.
And here is a picture from the back of the synthesizer. There is a 40 mm fan installed as you can see. Wilba states though about this fan that it isn't really nessecary, but some airflow will help the power regulators to dissipate their heat. And he also states it looks cool ;) Well he is right about that. Further more there is the power connector for the C64 power supply, two midi connectors and the 4 stereo output jacks. I need to find out what the other holes are for. I didn't look into that. But it already looks quite neat doesn't it? But wait until you see the front panel :)
Looks great doesn't it? The rectangular hole on top is for display. I got mine in the mean time as well. I can't wait to hook it up. But first things first. This front panel is also made by Schaeffer like the MOTM style front panels I made for my big modular setup. As you can see they can also do colors :) I didn't know that actually. On the top left the will be a matrix of 64 leds :) This will be a serious piece of eye candy when it is done. I just hope that it will sound as good as it looks. Now I need to find a C64 power supply. If you have one left you want to get rid of let me know ;)
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