How some learned to stop worrying and love the spinchip

[Chankgeez]

This's all your fault, vidret, I'm totally blaming you.

[Chankgeez]

[Jwar]

well, for that I'll bet you and most others are too lazy to do that, unless already into it.

I have a buddy that does coding and he taught me the very, very basics of C+. I can learn it, but I'm not saying it will be easy.

I'll start here.

http://www.spinsemi.com/knowledge_base/pgm_quick.html

[Jwar]

The whole ethics thing aside...I wish the idea of the Console would have fleshed out. It seems Devi is the only one that came up with a feasible idea like this. I actually hated the idea when she first announced it but the more I think about it, the more I'm into it.

One analog brain (kind of like Chase Bliss) and a bunch of digital chips you can switch. Though not chips because chips are not sturdy enough to withstand being inserted time and time again. Hmmmmmm....Maybe someone should re-approach this? Didn't Devi make the files public at some point? I mean, the idea is pretty rad if you could easily switch things...

Oh and for the record, I will be trying this still, so I do appreciate all the knowledge and people experimenting. My issue was with the copying of other folks algos and coding mostly.

[D.o.S.]

Are you not aware of the ZVex Inventobox?

[Jwar]

Are you not aware of the ZVex Inventobox?

Yea but I guess I never understood it? I'll go look it up.

[Jwar]

OH but how many boards are available for that? It seems like a pain in the ass vs plug and play, which is what Devi was trying to do.

[UglyCasanova]

Didn't Line 6 make some consoleish pedal as well? If I recall correctly, Red Panda made a module for it soon before it died out.

Edit: So, maybe not completely the same:

[coldbrightsunlight]

Hmm after the thread explosion and teej and jwar's comments I can totally see it being fair for builders to do something to prevent this, not because I think there's anything wrong necessarily with the uc level of this (like burning a CD you own to a computer you own to play in your own house through a different system) but if he does that there's probably some dickheads who will copy chips and try to make money off it which is super uncool. Certainly don't want people hurting builders like that.

Anyway my board contains ZERO SPINCHIPS. Ethical quandaries quashed, nerds.

[UglyCasanova]

but if he does that there's probably some dickheads who will copy chips and try to make money off it which is super uncool.

Oh, I'm definitely not going to do any videos on that sort of thing. I just wanted to make this one, because I don't think swapping around chips in pedals you already own is bad. I'm back to doing demos again after this. If the NUX bend works out, I'll probably do a video on that too.

[D.o.S.]

OH but how many boards are available for that? It seems like a pain in the ass vs plug and play, which is what Devi was trying to do.

The FoxRox Zim 1 Is another similar concept:
http://www.foxroxelectronics.com/ZIMcards.html

[Invisible Man]

Red Panda had a bit crusher tone core module, yes. I assume most of the chippery made it into the BitMap (as I think it's called).

[AlexanderPedals]

I'll wade in here, to explain how this feels to me as a builder:

If you purchase a pedal from me, you're essentially licensed to use the program in the EEPROM with the hardware you bought. This is analogous to running an application on a single computer.

You're not licensed to use the EEPROM in another pedal, even another one of ours. However, I can't stop you from doing it and I wouldn't want to try to police that practice. I think that the stuff that guys like UC and Simon are doing is very cool, and I love the BitQuest!

What bothers me is the idea that people might read down these EEPROMs and roll their own pedals using the code that I spent time and money on. There are plenty of unscrupulous folks out there that might due this, and that ultimately can hurt the builders that you like. If anybody can make a Particle or an F.13 or a Generation Loss without spending the time and effort that Red Panda, Teej, or I did, where is our incentive to keep building and making cool new stuff? (Please note I'm not saying that I am a builder you like. Just using myself as an example. After all, I did invent modulation )

The one good thing about this is that it takes some specialized tools to actually change the code, so your basic bitch clone probably won't bother. A crafty thief might try to obscure the origin of the code, but it's harder to do than you might think. If there was ever any doubt I could read down the code of a potential clone and do a diff on my code va. the alleged copy. If they match, then I have a very strong case.

Here's some example FV-1 assembly code:

Code: Select all

RDAX ADCL, 1.0
MULX POT0
WRAX DACL, 0.0

That will read in the contents of the left analog-to-digital converter (input,) then multiply it by the value of POT0, then write it to the left digital-to-analog converter (output.)

Here is what you'd see as machine code:

Code: Select all

40000284
0000020A
000002C6

And now in Intel HEX format:

Code: Select all

:040000004000028436
:040004000000020AEC
:04000800000002C62C

It's not that hard to dump the HEX code from an EEPROM. It's harder to pull the CRC codes out and get usable machine code. It's even harder to know what code does what, and make enough changes to it that I can't figure out that it was mine to begin with.

To top this off, a lot of our stuff uses an additional chip or two to extend the functionality of the FV-1. If you put a Chesapeake chip in a BitQuest! you're going to be VERY disappointed since we do 90% of the heavy lifting outside of the FV-1 on that pedal. There are other pedals we make that use some tricks to get extra controls, different functions, etc. so that you might not get what you expect.

So here's the TL:DR version:

If you buy my stuff, you can use the chips we sold you in whatever you want. Please don't copy them, sell them, or use them in products that you sell or give away. Please don't ask me for replacement chips, either.

[UglyCasanova]

Sounds good to me!

[Disarm D'arcy]

Well put and informative