Roland TR-808 Bass Drum Breadboard Project

It appears our usual advise that you can’t recover a corrupted sketch is incorrect. I just started with your original sketch and deleted all the wires in all the views (including the breadboards, because they create virtual wires when things are connected to them). That eliminated all the rats nest wires (which we didn’t think could be done). It wasn’t easy, as there were several wires that were very hard to see, I ended up using autoroute in pcb to create a wire so I could see what component had a connection, and then discovered a close to invisible wire in breadboard that I had missed! That sketch is here:

roland-tr-808-bass-kick2_no_wires_or_bbs.fzz (22.8 KB)

Then using the above sketch I added the two breadboards back in from core parts, and unlocked all the components and moved them so that they connected to the breadboards. That creates this sketch which has some problems already:

roland-tr-808-bass-kick2_bb_in.fzz (28.9 KB)

The only change on this one is that the 2 breadboards have been added back in and the components unlocked and moved so they connect on the breadboard. If we now switch to schematic and look at the rats nest lines the connections create we see why the problems occur in the original. Some of the rats nest lines match the wires on the original schematic, but some do not. For instance if we look at the base of transistor t5 on the left, we see the rats nest line from breadboard is connecting to the bottom of resistor R20. In the original schematic there is a connection from the bottom of R20 to the ground just below it. That however if done, will create a short between the base of T5 and ground. To correct that R20 in schematic needs to be rotated 180 degrees so the currently unconnected pin of R20 points towards ground, so when the connection to ground in schematic is made it will match the connections already made in breadboard rather than cause a short as it will now. R33 on the emitter of T5 should be eliminated and replaced with a wire (I did that on the schematic I made). One end of R21 is connected (in breadboard) to the ground end of D2, with a connection to ground on the cathode of D2 there will be a short on one end of R21 that shouldn’t be there. This indicates there is a placement / connection error in breadboard view that needs to be corrected. C9 connects to the anode of D2 in breadboard (which it shouldn’t) again indicating there is a connection error in breadboard view that needs correcting. Similarly the base of T2 connects to the emitter of T4 which should connect to ground in the schematic and which will cause a short. That needs to be corrected in the breadboard layout by moving the components so they don’t connect incorrectly. You need to go through the rest of the connections and move the components in breadboard until the rats nest connections in schematic match correctly (or start with the competed schematic and make sure the two views match. Starting from here should let you use most of the original layout in breadboard (once you correct the parts that have problems either in schematic or in breadboard which ever is easier). Note you probably want to replace the current op amp with the tl082 to get the sub parts to be able to move them around as well.

edit: as promised, I just uploaded a part for the ±12V converter I mentioned above to parts submit in thread:

While making it I discovered the input voltage range is actually 2.5 to 5.5V so it will run off 2 AA cells if you want your device to be battery powered.

Peter