1 Reply by Telerophon

(18 replies, posted in Tutorials, Mods & How-To's)

I used one of these for a very long time until I got a Weller: Velleman Low-Cost Soldering Station

It was pretty decent and was also about $20 USD. I only ever really turned it up for working with Lead-Free, which I tried to use on anything I was building new as a best practice. It only really has the pencil tip available, but that was still better than some of the other irons I had used before.

I'm going to echo what some of the more experienced modders and fabricators in this thread have said: Start with a 15W or so iron. You want to develop good habits when you are learning to solder. You don't want to destroy vintage equipment. Since we've all done this a fair amount, we definitely have grown to like repairing and making electronics, so once you get "the itch" and you have a good technical understanding of the difference between crappy soldering (cold/dry joints, loose tin, etc) and quality work that's going to last and keep your toys ticking, then it's time to move up to a 50 or more variable/temp controlled iron.

Welcome to the club! big_smile

P.S. Any other quick tips I had to pass on are summed up like this: The soldering iron is just one tool in a workstation that enables your to make what you want to make. Even with a decent (or a great) iron, if you can't keep all of your stuff in place while you try to apply heat and tin, you're going to end up frustrated and with a sub-par end product. I think having a good mini vise / third hard is at least as important as the quality and wattage of whatever you're using to tin and solder things together.

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2 Reply by Telerophon

(8 replies, posted in Other Hardware)

A local guy here built what you are describing; he calls it the "Guitar Meister".

That reminds me, I need to email him and get samples of his drum machine… cool

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3 Reply by Telerophon

(21 replies, posted in Bugs and Requests)

stargazer wrote:
Telerophon wrote:

That's a valid point. I suppose one could say that those operating systems are similar enough to full-on modern PC operating systems that they don't need to be considered differently. That said, the end user experience is typically very different and it favors different creative processes. I haven't gotten to play with the MilkyTracker port for Android. Do you use a keyboard to track in it?

Regardless, I just wanted to discuss whether or not those platforms might merit their own discussion area.

I was actually trying to agree with you! As for tracking, you could get by without a keyboard but the mouse is awful. You really do need a mouse. Well I'm on a nexus 4 but maybe if you were on a tablet you could get by.

I think android has a ton of untapped potential for music apps. Its kind of frustrating I guess, but if you want to be artsy you need apple products. Or so I'm told.

Oh! Cool, man. big_smile

I didn't mean to be like that, sorry. You don't need an Apple product to be "Artsy," most of the good music software that's been written is available for both, and you have more hardware options for Android…

On that note, I don't know enough about Android to have an informed opinion, but how much of the audio latency problem do you think has to do with the hardware you're typically using it on? I bet if someone built a ground-up integrated Android DAW it wouldn't have that problem…

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4 Reply by Telerophon

(10 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

Send Oliver an email.

Oliver is a professional and takes care of his customers. You're better off dealing with him personally than asking us about it. I've never heard of anyone having a bad experience ordering from him.

This, of course, excludes not being able to because he is between production runs. wink

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5 Reply by Telerophon

(18 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

If you can tell the difference on a recording I will eat my hat.

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6 Reply by Telerophon

(59 replies, posted in Trading Post)

Fair enough. Any other thoughts I had on that are in my response to your PM.

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7 Reply by Telerophon

(21 replies, posted in Bugs and Requests)

I like it, but I am not good at tracking. hmm

It is a niche thing now, especially since the computers for OPL3 are getting harder to find. You can download every .a2m on ModLand and it's only like ~30 artists. sad

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8 Reply by Telerophon

(59 replies, posted in Trading Post)

If you don't mind me asking, where did you get those nice white enclosures? Who did the manufacturing?

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9 Reply by Telerophon

(59 replies, posted in Trading Post)

You could easily make this with any standard USB form factor you could buy panel-mount jacks for.

Mini-USB would be nice for EMS cart users, because then their flasher cable for the cart is also a power cable for the game boy…

Go to forum: Trading Post

10 Reply by Telerophon

(21 replies, posted in Bugs and Requests)

That's a valid point. I suppose one could say that those operating systems are similar enough to full-on modern PC operating systems that they don't need to be considered differently. That said, the end user experience is typically very different and it favors different creative processes. I haven't gotten to play with the MilkyTracker port for Android. Do you use a keyboard to track in it?

Regardless, I just wanted to discuss whether or not those platforms might merit their own discussion area.

Go to forum: Bugs and Requests

11 Reply by Telerophon

(21 replies, posted in Bugs and Requests)

I came to this suggestions forum to post a thread proposing that there be a forum for mobile devices / smartphones; something like an Android or iOS forum (perhaps one for each)? Those both have large and active development communities, but a proportionally small demoscene presence…

Based on this thread, which seems analogous, I'm not sure what the prevailing opinion would be.

Anyway, I'd thought if we were hitting a point that we had things like SunVox and Nanoloop available on those platforms, it might be time for that. I have a whole page on my iPhone that's just music software of varying sorts. Both sylcymk and BR1GHT PR1MATE have organized releases using iOS Nanoloop entirely. I think providing a sandbox of sorts for the smartphone operating systems could nurture our music culture as well as the development community for our music tools and the demoscene.

That said, do we have formal criteria for what merits a subforum? I don't think there's a 30+ iOS or Android thread.

Go to forum: Bugs and Requests

12 Reply by Telerophon

(4 replies, posted in Bugs and Requests)

Agreed. I don't know how feasible it is at all, but if there's a readily deployable implementation of ModPlug, AdPlug, XMPlay, or anything else like that, it'd be a really cool addition to the site. smile

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13 Reply by Telerophon

(18 replies, posted in Other Hardware)

Look through the forum for previous threads I've had about it.

That may already be an "LSDJ compatible" keyboard since it's PS/2; you just have to have a way to configure the wiring to connect to the Game Boy link port.

This is why I recommend the adapters like the one Apeshit stocks in this store: You only need one, and then you can test any PS/2 keyboard for compatibility to make sure it works. Take it from me, a guy who personally modded a keyboard that didn't work very well with LSDJ because of what was probably a serial clock timing variance.

Go to forum: Other Hardware

14 Reply by Telerophon

(8 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

n00bstar wrote:
SBthree wrote:

Anything else I should know about about chiptunes, famicoms, or just life in general?

chiptunes: look up famitracker
famicoms: look up famitracker
life: it's a bitch, then you die.

Facts.

Read the FamiTracker wiki too, I think it has one of the best primers on the expansion chips and what you can do with them.

Go to forum: Nintendo Consoles

15 Reply by Telerophon

(3 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

That's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how practical it is.

Lots of other ways to do this already exist, and most of them are simple and well documented; examples include Arduinoboy and the nanoloop to MIDI adapter. You'd be able to use either of those to achieve what you're describing much more simply.

EDIT: I don't know a lot about the MadCatz Camera cable, but I'm under the impression it emulates something like a printer or scanner on a parallel port—it's not designed to use the same sort of communication protocol as MIDI equipment.

(I have a bad habit of editing my posts to add secondary points, don't I?)

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16 Reply by Telerophon

(3 replies, posted in Trading Post)

Absolutely seconding Stargazer's post. That's how I do it. It's the $10 solution.

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