shock__ wrote:I mean I don't mind reworking the SOP44 chips anymore since yesterday, but once you desoldered them cleaning up the pins to re-use them with my programmer is a major pain (it's a ZIF socket which needs the pins almost perfectly clean of solder - basically looks like this http://www.icunlock-mcucrack.com/socketadapter/sop44-1b.jpg)
Sorry about the hassle of all that re-work, I guess I will have to try and curb the number of ROMs I produce for testing. It's just that I can't stand having something that doesn't work, without even having a hint about why that is. There are still a few other things I am trying to figure out, but I guess testing will have to wait.
shock__ wrote:Target price for the ROM would be "anything below $5 per chip".
I am having a little trouble finding 5V DIP or SOP-44 (same thing as some others call 44-SOIC, yes?) parts, especially for a reasonable price, and they are often not stocked. Some other TSOP parts look like they might have the right pitch and package size, but are not 44-pin.
Was the latest recording from MIDITST0.ROM? While there is some improvement, it still sounds off. The other problem is that even with 8-bit patches, we can still only fit just over 40 out of 128 GM instruments and part of the standard drum kit in a 1 MiB ROM, if we're basing the ROM on the Pro Patches Lite set. Furthermore, unless the archive I downloaded has problems, some instruments are not part of the set (MARIMBA.PAT, a number of the synth pads, etc.), and a few don't seem to be valid .PAT files (CYMCRSH2.PAT, for instance). It seems they relied on the official Eye & I GUS classic set for the missing instruments, which hinders our ability to freely distribute a complete patch set. I would love to be corrected if a GUS user has all of these files as part of the distribution. Might we try getting the missing pieces from another free set, or try a different set? Suggestions from regular GUS users would be appreciated.
Also, there is the matter of the sines bank, for which the copyright chunk reads "SBOS waves Patch Information Copyright (c) 1995, Immersion Computer Technologies". Not including the sines bank would likely cause trouble with FM emulation, if SBOS works at all. Has this been given much thought? Shall we try excluding the bank on our next test ROM to see what happens?