-HOW TO- A different way to pause the CV

juice2839 · October 18, 2015

Today I decided to take a little time and make a pause mod for one of my CV's. I could have went with the same old lame rocker switch, but I wanted to jazz it up while I was at it. Jazz it up is another term for "Over Engineer" when it comes to my vocabulary, but at any rate here is what I wanted.

1. I wanted one momentary push button for the pause / run game switch (mostly because that is what I had around)

2. I wanted it to have an LED indicator that was lit when the games was paused.

3. I didn't want to have to hack the CV board in anyway.

4. Only use what parts I had in my parts stock.

So the first thing that came to mind was a flip flop circuit controlled by the momentary switch. I was thinking of using a 7474 flip flop, but then after looking at my parts bin I saw I had tons of new LM555 timers that I never used for some other project. The 555 has one flip flop in it so off I went......

After a few calculations and a test circuit I was in business. What follows is the Schematic, pictures and video if anyone wants to Jazz up a CV with this pause Mod. I went all the way by designing a pcb, milling it then assembling. I just need to make it pretty in the case.

By the way this mod only uses 3 wires. Plus 5V, Ground and one wire to pin 14 of the sound IC. How it works is it pauses the clock going to the sound IC and CPU. So with one wire you can do the same thing as the other hack pause mod that uses a double pole double throw switch.

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