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I've looked at getting boards fabbed directly a fab-houses (such as 4pcb) and they do charge an extra fee to test the boards. Or did the last I checked, anyway.

I think this thread as long since been a bit vicious - I'm just not sure it's fair to direct it at the Chip Maestro just yet. He at least provided an update to what's going on. Could have just taken his money and spent it on cocaine and hookers.

He sent out a small update yesterday. Not much news in there but it sounds like the code is pretty well solid at this point.

I, too, missed out on the Kickstarter, but he did say he will likely sell more after the completion of Kickstarter, so you can still likely get your hands on one.

As I said above, I wouldn't change the type of cap if it were me. Different cap types have different characteristics - noise, ESR, responsiveness, durability, frequency rejection. Without knowing the purpose of each cap, it's hard to make a decision on if another cap may might be more appropriate. It /probably/ won't hurt anything changing caps so long as they are spec'd our properly (especially if you use tantalums, which are known to catch fire if subjected to voltages higher than their rating) but, as I said, if it were me, I'd go with high end electrolytics if I was concerned about it.

There is no need to replace the resistors that I can say. Only the electrolytics dry up and cause problems as a result. The resistors on the board are likely in spec and I don't see things improving substantially by replacing those (say with ones that have a higher tolerance or something).

The voltage doubler stuff would be around the LCD. As I also said, if in doubt, just replace them all It's inexpensive to do and you can have all the caps swapped out within an hour.

To elaborate a bit more, the electrolytic caps are what we are talking about specifically. They are based on a liquid electrolyte which slowly seeps out and evaporates away. How fast is a factor of build quality, temperature, voltage, etc. In some cases, their capability to hold their rated capacitance can drop significantly in as little as 5 years.

The best example I can think of is with an old arcade monitor. When the electrolytic caps are no longer providing enough capacitance, you will start to see color issues, lack of contrast and picture wobble or waves. In the audio realm bad caps will usually cause AC hum, lack of good response to transients (say a huge bass-bomb right after a quiet part as an example, or a huge cymbal crash).

For the GameBoy, the difference isn't as significant as it was for the NES in my case. But replacing the caps made a difference in both, and if your GB is old, or you suspect you're not getting the sound quality you should be, can't hurt to give it a go if you are comfortable with a soldering iron. Even if it doesn't improve the sound, it may be adding live to your GameBoy by making sure your caps are back into spec and the circuits can get the proper power they need.

Ah, well then you might be right about needing to setup the filter. I got an e-mail update for this post so hopefully the whitelisting does the trick!

If it is, it's inconsistent which is why I have had trouble catching it. If it's getting filtered, it's by the mail server, not my client, since it doesn't even hit my SPAM folder. Just in case, I have tweaked my whitelist. Hopefully that does the trick.

It's alive! Boards finally came in yesterday so I stayed up late last night putting together my latest version, found below:

http://victimcache.com/wp-content/uploa … Action.jpg
http://victimcache.com/wp-content/uploa … ck-040.png
http://victimcache.com/wp-content/uploa … IO-020.png

After having physically put the thing together, I found a few parts that can/should be flipped to the opposite side of where the silk says to place them. I also was not able to test MIDI OUT since I thought I had an extra DIN connector. Doh. But otherwise it works like a champ!

I don't have a prototype of my panel yet but since this design seems to work, that will be the next step as well as getting some mounting hardware to keep the thing more secure. The board layout has options for MOLEX connectors, but I just use SIL pin headers and will probably just use hot glue to keep the connections secured since crimping MOLEX connector-pins appears to be a rather big pain in the ass.

It's also the first board where I used a power plane in addition to a ground plane. Didn't notice really any difference, other than things working as they should (and using a power plane made routing easier).

Anyways this is what I've come up with. Should work well in a 1U format as well as a Eurorack (maybe with a few small modifications).

I will write an article soon up on our band website about it with the schematics and things, but if you want those sooner, just let me know and I can put them together sooner.