AKAI PC-S56USB card full metal bracket: What's next?

 

Here is the continuation of my previous post...

So, I’m finding myself a bit stuck with this bracket situation. I decided to go with a different solution: a faceplate made out of epoxy that I developed using KiCad. This option will be much cheaper and just as functional, but it will require more work. That's because I need to implement a fastening system to accept a screw, and epoxy isn't designed for that.

In any case, here is what the printed circuit board that will serve as the bracket will look like:

 

 

Presented like that, of course, it doesn’t look like much. But anyway, it will look completely professional once mounted inside the S5000 chassis.

Also, something that doesn’t happen very often: a reader of my blog, who is interested in my card, offered to help me make this metal bracket. For now, I don't know what price will be proposed, but I hope it will fit within the maximum budget targeted for this project. In fact, I've set up a small poll that you can find on this page in the top right corner.

In any case, I had to get back into 3D design. I hadn't used FreeCAD for a few days, and honestly, looking at the main page again, I told myself I absolutely had to find another tool, otherwise I was going to end up having a nervous breakdown!

For the past few days, YouTube has been pushing SolidCraft on me. I hadn't given it a shot yet. A new, free thing? To me, that usually means "bug-ridden" and bound to be paid for in some roundabout way, like ads, registration, or even worse... But hey, since there's a web version, I figured why not finally give it a try.

And I did try it. Forget about the web version. It works, but it bugs out. Not necessarily SolidCraft itself, but I could definitely tell it was asking a bit too much of Firefox, which I was using at the time.

But after playing around with it for a bit, I quickly realized that we are on a completely different level in terms of interface compared to FreeCAD. And so? I installed the desktop version. Although the logic is pretty much the same as FreeCAD, there are still some differences. Where FreeCAD is just a very basic interface for the part, SolidCraft goes a step further and caters more to the designer, rather than the turner/miller who will end up actually manufacturing the part. That’s more what you expect from a software product: actual help, not just a simple interface. Anyway...

So, here is what the part looks like, first as a sketch and then in 3D. The sketch version looks impressive. I know, it’s like a peacock: it’s useless, but it looks fancy in a castle courtyard.

Just to point out that it’s actually not that cluttered, and all the dimensions are directly visible on the drawing. Just that, compared to FreeCAD....
 

 The 3D model is a lot more satisfying...

The magical moment: since I set SolidCraft to mm and I also use this unit in KiCad, I can check that this newly designed bracket fits perfectly onto the USB card:

I have to say that with SolidCraft and KiCad, going from a modification in SolidCraft to visualizing it in KiCad is almost instantaneous. It's still a manual step for now, requiring just 2 or 3 mouse clicks.

To make positioning this bracket easier, I placed a small alignment mark to line it up with a specific spot on the PCB. Because the main difficulty with this type of design is that it involves two different reference points. First, there's the positioning relative to the mounting holes on the S5000 rack, and then there's also the positioning relative to the mounting points and the USB port on the card itself. The risk of error is far from negligible. When you factor that into the equation, paying €300 only to receive brackets with miscalculated dimensions, well... Sure, it's "part of the job," but still!

Well, that’s all for now. I hope I’ll be able to make some metal prototypes, otherwise it’ll be plan B: using the PCB pieces.

AKAI PC-S56USB card full metal bracket?

Quite simply, way too expensive. 

I am going to make this part using a printed circuit board. Given the price of the metal version, I have no other choice, otherwise the final product will be way too expensive.

And now for something completely different!

While waiting to receive the printed circuit board for the MSX cartridge, I started working on making a compatible USB card for the AKAI S5000/S6000 samplers.

The reason is that I know someone who is developing a new version of AKSYS that works perfectly under Windows 10 & 11. It turns out that not all Akai S5/6000 machines were shipped with this card. That's a shame.

So I studied the card I own and looked into whether it might be possible to create a new version.

It turns out that it is.

On the one hand, a USB component compatible with the one on the original USB card still exists today. And on the other hand, I was able to retrieve the logic equations of the PAL chip that is on this card.

For now, these equations seem to be correct, since I was able to repair another original but faulty USB card using a GAL programmed with my equations. So I am hopeful that this will work, even though the decoding performed by the original PAL is quite unusual.

The card's schematic is also unusual. Without going into too much detail, some functions are implemented by first latching a kind of register — registers made out of resistors and capacitors.

In short, the read and write functions are not direct but require going through other operations first.

In any case, I have completed the schematic and then the PCB for this card :

So, I have no idea whether this new card will work or not. The only way is to test it and compare the signals with the original card if it doesn't work.

Next steps after the first tests....