SynthModules

I am not a great solderer, or someone who looks at schematics and
reads them like I do music.  But, with a great deal of care and a few
days of "Ed Norton-ing," I managed to get this guy to run - so I
consider that encouraging when I was expecting to chuck my
non-operating attempt into a box to send to Doc Mabuse or Grant....

Is this what you received?  If it is, then all that is left is to
solder the wired panel connections to the main board.

You must use a very small soldering tip, preferably not very high
wattage - I have a variable wattage soldering iron, which I turned
down to the lowest temperature that would still melt solder.  You do
not want to overheat the pc board as to lift the traces off.  In light
of this, it would be a good idea to read this document and double
check the actual locations of each connection before beginning the
actual construction.

Of, course, this note is to help you figure this out - but, if you
mess up, don't blame me.  Anyone who finds error in these notes,
PLEASE SPEAK UP!!!


I found in the box -

1. bag w/front panel - led board, wires and grounds buses attached to
jacks and buttons. 

2. bag w/main pc board

3. sealed atompro processor

4. documents - PSIM-1 Wiring Diagram, Schematic, and copy of my email
confirming early shipment.

5. PSIM-1 program cd

6. serial cable


The only "design" consideration you must take is to consider the
practical lengths of the wires having a model helps in this regard (my
custom modules are wired differently, enabling the pc board to be
parallel-mounted to the front panel, so the wiring considerations are
different - I had to allow for enough wire so that I could pull the
board away to access all of the connections, whereas the
conventionally built PSIM has a permanent perpendicularly mounted
board configuration, which should be easier to wire - I had to wire my
serial jack by hand, for instance...)

For the sake of illustration, let's orient the board so that PSIM-1
reads upright in the BOTTOM-LEFT hand corner.  In lieu of an actual
physical board layout diagram, here are descriptions of where the
various connections actually lie on the pc board....

I.  The inputs and outputs are attached in two positions - the inputs
in the top-left corner (labeled J6), and the outputs on the bottom
edge of pc board (labeled J8).  The ground (presumeably all of the
grounds for the jacks are buss wired together, culminating in a single
wire to connect) attaches to the board  on the right side, the 2nd
hole above the Blacet connector on the right edge.  The START and STOP
jack wires connect to the J7 pads, located just left the J8 pads on
the bottom edge of the board.  The square pad is CONNECTION NUMBER 1.
(START connects to pin 1 at J7, incidentally). 

The remaining connections from the panel are rather cryptic to sort
out from the paperwork, but I traced them one at a time from my
existing PSIM, which took all of the mystery out of it.

a. The AUX connects to the J4 pad, located above the small white 4 pin
connection on the right side of the pc board (just left of the C4
capacitor).

b. The reset button connects to J10, found above the top left side of
the big CPU socket.

c. There are 3 connections for the START/STOP switches - the bussed
connection connects to the + pad, located directly right of the small
white 4 pin connector that I spoke of earlier.  The 2 individual wires
from the switches go to J12 and J13 respectively (START is J12).  This
pair of connections are centrally located below the lower edge of the
CPU socket.

II.  My led board was not attached to the main board, and there was
not documentation of how to do this - the 9 connections on the led
board 1-9 (remember, the square pad is 1) attach to the 9 pads labled
J9 at the top-right corner of the pc board.  I did this with ribbon
cable, which made it much easier.

Hopefully, this will give you a bit more confidence on where all the
connections go - it was certainly a relief to me that I could confirm
the actual locations before soldering.  The thing that I wanted to
avoid was making a mistake that would result in me having to apply
more heat to the board than necessary. 

gary