I worked some more on the Wilba MB-6582 SID synthesizer. The first thing I did is making the cable for the LCD display. On the Wiki there is a link to an example for constructing this cable. My display had 16 pins just like the one in the example, but I decided to look up the specs heet to make sure the connections were the same and actually they were NOT!! So be careful when you are going to construct this yourself. Always look at the documentation of your display. I guess you can seriously damage your display when you hook it up in the wrong way.
Then it was time for some testing. I hooked up the LCD to the header connector of PIC1. Here you also have to look out carefully what pin 1 is. It is very easy to make a mistake here. When I applied power I saw nothing. The backlite lid up but no text, so I was a bit scared that I make a mistake after all. Then I remembered that there were some pot meters on the PCB to control the brightness and contrast of the LCD. And when I adjusted them a nice 'Ready' text showed up. After I booted again also the MIOS version showed while booting. So I guess this works alright. I seems though that the synthesizer doesn't hold the software it is supposed to run. I guess I'll have to upload some code to it, but I'll look at that later on.
The next thing to do is to connect both PCB's together. This is done by using some thicker flat cable. This stuff is very tough, so stripping is quite a task. But after screwing up two cables I found a good method for this. I think actually that this is the most challenging task in constructing the whole MB-6582 for me. I never used this cable and they all have to be the same length of course as well. Well I finished four of them and I still have four to go, but I was fed up with it after a while, so I'll continue this another time. I'll keep you posted as always!
I worked some more on the Wilba MB-6582 SID synthesizer. The first thing I did is making the cable for the LCD display. On the Wiki there is a link to an example for constructing this cable. My display had 16 pins just like the one in the example, but I decided to look up the specs heet to make sure the connections were the same and actually they were NOT!! So be careful when you are going to construct this yourself. Always look at the documentation of your display. I guess you can seriously damage your display when you hook it up in the wrong way.
Then it was time for some testing. I hooked up the LCD to the header connector of PIC1. Here you also have to look out carefully what pin 1 is. It is very easy to make a mistake here. When I applied power I saw nothing. The backlite lid up but no text, so I was a bit scared that I make a mistake after all. Then I remembered that there were some pot meters on the PCB to control the brightness and contrast of the LCD. And when I adjusted them a nice 'Ready' text showed up. After I booted again also the MIOS version showed while booting. So I guess this works alright. I seems though that the synthesizer doesn't hold the software it is supposed to run. I guess I'll have to upload some code to it, but I'll look at that later on.
The next thing to do is to connect both PCB's together. This is done by using some thicker flat cable. This stuff is very tough, so stripping is quite a task. But after screwing up two cables I found a good method for this. I think actually that this is the most challenging task in constructing the whole MB-6582 for me. I never used this cable and they all have to be the same length of course as well. Well I finished four of them and I still have four to go, but I was fed up with it after a while, so I'll continue this another time. I'll keep you posted as always!
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