FV-1 and Mac

[rockola]

I've not seen an assembly language that uses floating point before

Common in DSP processors. Did a DSP course where we used TMS320x processors back in the 90s. Had to write a pink noise generator in assembly. Don't remember much of it but I do remember there were lots of instructions for floating point arithmetics.

[ElectricDruid]

I've not seen an assembly language that uses floating point before

Common in DSP processors. Did a DSP course where we used TMS320x processors back in the 90s. Had to write a pink noise generator in assembly. Don't remember much of it but I do remember there were lots of instructions for floating point arithmetics.

Fair enough. Just shows I've been at the bottom of the DSP food chain and only seen integer stuff!

Any least that means FV-1 SpinASM is a step *up*! Lol!


Edit: Using a floating point DSP for pink noise generation is cracking a nut with a sledgehammer. Here it is on a 8-bit integer chip: https://electricdruid.net/noise2-white-pink-noise-source/

[pruttelherrie]

Hey guys, I packaged the pk2cmd with the Platypus tool ( https://sveinbjorn.org/platypus ). Platypus created a simple drop-app for flashing hex files. At the moment it only works with 24LC32A chips, that's hardcoded for now. Tested by patrick398 and myself, seems to work. Future work includes EEPROM-chip-selector. Maybe 

* Download here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qyj9vtmetj6s0m9/Pk2mac.app.zip?dl=0
* Unzip
* Right-click -> Open (since it's not a signed app)
* Drop hex files on window

That's it!

[bartimaeus]

if anyone else wants to program a 24lc32 on mac without a pickit2, i'll second vigilante397 about those $10 ch341 programmers on ebay. real easy once you have the libraries installed. worth noting that the pedalpcb fv1 flash tool is this free software from github, since you can find some extra info at the source: https://github.com/stefanct/ch341eepromtool

and thanks for sharing that tool, pruttelherrie! i'm planning to pick up a pickit2 to mess with, so i'm interested to see if that's even easier to use than the ch341 (which does require the terminal).

[patrick398]

if anyone else wants to program a 24lc32 on mac without a pickit2, i'll second vigilante397 about those $10 ch341 programmers on ebay. real easy once you have the libraries installed. worth noting that the pedalpcb fv1 flash tool is this free software from github, since you can find some extra info at the source: https://github.com/stefanct/ch341eepromtool

and thanks for sharing that tool, pruttelherrie! i'm planning to pick up a pickit2 to mess with, so i'm interested to see if that's even easier to use than the ch341 (which does require the terminal).

The programme pruttelherrie made is fantastic, really makes it so simple. Just just export the hex from spincad and drag it in the programme and it works like a charm every time

[DoppelM]

Hi all!

Just found this older thread when researching how to start tinkering with FV1 / SpinCAD-Designer on Mac.
I'm just not shure if I missed something - I understood from Larry's readme that you can run SpinCAD-Designer directly, and was able to launch it, but my Mac froze when I tried to load one of the patches that comes with the git

I wasn't shure if the Git build and commons-io-2.4-bin.zip and elmgen-05.jar are necessary on top if you only want to use the SpinCAD-Designer? For some reasons, the build didn't seem to work completely.

[Digital Larry]

I'm pretty sure you don't need to separately download those libraries unless you are planning to build the application.  Depending on the vintage of the spcd or spbk file there may be incompatibilities which cause the application to crash.

I just tried running the 1027 build on Big Sur 11.12.1, made a patch, saved it, loaded it in another slot, all good (didn't freeze my Mac anyway).

Check how to run the application in debug mode here:
https://github.com/HolyCityAudio/SpinCAD-Designer/blob/master/docs/running-spincad-designer-in-debug.mode.pdf

Tell me what you find out.  I don't promise to fix anything but I am curious.  I mostly use it on Windows but at least I have a Mac now to check.

[DoppelM]

Awesome, thanks Larry!
It actually froze also when I tried to build a simple in-out-patch, but will check again and try debug mode

[Digital Larry]

What do you get for your Java version?  It might want updating.

I get:

Larrys-MacBook-Air-2:~ larry$ java -version
java version "12.0.1" 2019-04-16
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 12.0.1+12)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 12.0.1+12, mixed mode, sharing)
Larrys-MacBook-Air-2:~ larry$

[Blackhawkamplifiers]

greetings pruttelherrie,
I'm excited to try your program but the file was deleted from dropbox. Are you able to share that again?
I'd really love to start programming 24lc32a eeprom chips witth my mac and not have to buy a windows computer

Brooks Blackhawk

Hey guys, I packaged the pk2cmd with the Platypus tool ( https://sveinbjorn.org/platypus ). Platypus created a simple drop-app for flashing hex files. At the moment it only works with 24LC32A chips, that's hardcoded for now. Tested by patrick398 and myself, seems to work. Future work includes EEPROM-chip-selector. Maybe 

* Download here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qyj9vtmetj6s0m9/Pk2mac.app.zip?dl=0
* Unzip
* Right-click -> Open (since it's not a signed app)
* Drop hex files on window

That's it!

[PRR]

Using a floating point DSP for pink noise generation is cracking a nut with a sledgehammer. Here it is on a 8-bit integer chip:

Even that *may* be overkill. There's a classic shift-register which we did with about a 7-stage counter and a mess of feedback. It was even made as a dedicated chip. Quasi-random with a 1.9 second repeat rate. I thought it was in Lancaster CMOS Cookery but I can't find it.

And there is the Zener plus amplifier. Or even a dual opamp boosting its own hiss. Probably there is a PIC cheaper than a TL072 (digital has better process yield) but it's down to pennies.

[PRR]

https://electricdruid.net/noise2-white-pink-noise-source/

The link to Scientific American omits the month?

"Martin Gardner's article:
Gardner, M. (1978). "Mathematical Games—White and brown music, fractal curves and one-over-f fluctuations". Scientific American 238: 16–32."

It is April (4).

[ElectricDruid]

Using a floating point DSP for pink noise generation is cracking a nut with a sledgehammer. Here it is on a 8-bit integer chip:

Even that *may* be overkill. There's a classic shift-register which we did with about a 7-stage counter and a mess of feedback. It was even made as a dedicated chip. Quasi-random with a 1.9 second repeat rate. I thought it was in Lancaster CMOS Cookery but I can't find it.

Yeah, the dedicated chip you're thinking of is probably the MM5837. It appears in quite a few synths and has a terrible repuation because the noise cycle is short enough that you can hear it (like the 1.9secs you mention). Hardware implementations I know about are the TR909, which uses 2 x 4006 shift registers, and the DR110, which only uses one.

https://electricdruid.net/tr-909-noise-generator/
https://electricdruid.net/analogue-drums-boss-dr-110-drum-machine/

And there is the Zener plus amplifier. Or even a dual opamp boosting its own hiss. Probably there is a PIC cheaper than a TL072 (digital has better process yield) but it's down to pennies.

It's more that you can get a much longer shift register so you can get a very long cycle time with a higher clock frequency. Plus analogue sources like zeners, reversed transistors, op-amps, whatever, all have poor noise immunity because of the gain, so mains hum is often a problem. Digital is cheap and reliable.

https://electricdruid.net/noise2-white-pink-noise-source/

The link to Scientific American omits the month?

"Martin Gardner's article:
Gardner, M. (1978). "Mathematical Games—White and brown music, fractal curves and one-over-f fluctuations". Scientific American 238: 16–32."

It is April (4).

Sorry, did I use the wrong citation style?!? 
I'm not even sure what style that is supposed to be, so I'm no longer sure what's supposed to be included. Issue number should be enough though, right?

[PRR]

did I use the wrong citation style?!? 

I am not a citationist. I just find publications.

Scientific American's web archive lists year and month, not Volume.

The Volume and Issue are on the masthead, but you have to click-through for that.

I am currently pirating most of the 20th century at SciAm so I know what I need to find an article quickly. Year and Month, maybe pages.

I -have- worked with citations (anal academics); here is the MLA:
https://libguides.heidelberg.edu/mla7/article

Magazine Article - Print
Magazines are cited differently than journal publications. See if you can spot the difference between the journal citations above and the magazine citations below.
Davies, Paul. "Are ALIENS Among Us?"  Scientific American Dec. 2007: 62-69. Print.
Citations from magazines for the general public, such as Scientific American, Time, Newsweek, or People, do not require volume or issue number, and the date is not placed in parentheses.

[ElectricDruid]

Thanks for finding it, Paul.

I've added the date to the citation, and linked through to the appropriate page on the Scientific American archive.
It might not adhere to strict citation style (before or after!), but it's much better, so cheers for that.

[taudio]

We have a Mac version of our open-source FV-1 programmer posted here:

https://github.com/audiofab/fv1_programmer/releases

Setup and installation video instructions are available here:

https://www.youtube.com/@Audiofab

(Sorry, we did them on Windows; however, the steps on Mac are similar ...)

It works with our USB programmer, available here:

https://audiofab.com/store/easy-spin-programmer

(The pinout for the programming cable is shown here: https://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=131255.0)

We've done "light" testing on Macs (we're mostly Windows users) and we'd be grateful for some feedback from Mac users.

[Digital Larry]

I downloaded the file.  What am I supposed to do with it?  I double clicked on it and it opens in a text editor, however looks like  binary file.

DL

[taudio]

Thanks for the feedback Digital Larry.

Apologies for our poor documentation on MacOS. We'll make some updates to the GitHub README to address this.

Once you download the file on a Mac, you need to make it executable. To do this, open a terminal window; then 'cd' to the directory where you downloaded the fv1-programmer. Next, type

chmod a+x fv1-programmer-macos-latest

Once this is done, you will be able to run the fv1-programmer from the command line by typing

./fv1-programmer-macos-latest

You'll likely see a warning about being unable to execute a downloaded app and it may refuse to run it. If you see this, you can enable app execution by going to Apple menu > System Settings, then click Privacy & Security in the sidebar and select "Allow Anyway" for fv1-programmer-macos-latest.

The app was built on Monterey (12.7.2) so it should run on this OS version or anything newer. We had reports that it will work as far back as Big Sur (11.7) but this may be someone getting lucky

If making the pre-built executable (fv1-programmer-macos-latest) work seems like too much hassle, you can always install Python (as per the README at https://github.com/audiofab/fv1_programmer) and then install using

pip install fv1-programmer

Finally, if you want to program the EEPROM with a hex file generated by SpinCAD Designer, you can just use:

fv1-programmer-macos-latest --load-file <filename.hex>

on the command-line.

Please give this a try and let us know how it goes.

[pruttelherrie]

greetings pruttelherrie,
I'm excited to try your program but the file was deleted from dropbox. Are you able to share that again?
I'd really love to start programming 24lc32a eeprom chips witth my mac and not have to buy a windows computer

Try here: https://possob.nl/Pk2mac.app.zip

I haven't used it in a while and in the meantime I'm on an M2 processor, no idea how well this works!