Soekris 1021 DAC

I made a little adapter.  One side of the adapter is a 9 pin female DB9 that plugs into the ATEN.  Then about 6 feet of wire to make it easier to connect, and then some pin sockets that plug into the pins on the DAC.

This adapter needed drivers installed.  Drivers for this adapter are here

Aten drivers

Go towards the bottom, and click Support and Download

There are drivers for Android, Linux, Mac and Windows, so pretty much anything.

To install drivers on a MAC, I needed go to Settings, Security and Privacy, and then allow it to install the driver because it didn't like something.

For windows, I also used extraputty for my terminal program

extraputty

I looked in the windows Device Manager page to see what the serial port number was.  Go to Control Panel, System then select Device Manager (this is for Windows 7)

Find your adapter in Device Manager, select the adapter then Properties, then setup the comm port as follows:

• Baud rate: 115,200 (This is pretty fast. Use a good, short cable)

• Data bits: 8

• Stop bits: 1

• Parity: none

• Flow control: none

Open extraputty from programs, then click Serial, and put in Com3 (or whatever you com port is) and set the speed.

I also saved it as dac, so I could recall it later.

Select Open, and it will start a terminal session.

Turn on your DAC, and you should see some stuff on the screen.

Type "+++" (three plus signs) to enable the interface.

Type "?" to get a list of commands.

You can get firmware 1.04 or 0.99 from here

104 firmware

or newer versions here

Soekris download

At the extraputty screen, type in

download

On the top of the extraputty screen, select Files Transfer, then Xmodem 1k, then send

then find and select the skr file to send

You should see this screen

When the download is complete, type

update

then y when it asks are you sure

You should see this screen now

Filters

First time I tried the dac, I had upgraded to the the firmware, and then tried old filters, and the dac didn't work.  That's because you need to use 0.99 filters for 0.99 firmware, otherwise the dac won't receive data, and the led will just blink.

You can find filters here

moredamfilters latest filters  EDIT:  I think this link is now broken

New filter link

I downloaded the partypak.

Within the partypak, there are 4 banks of filters.

Type +++ at the extraputty screen,

Type download, and download the partypak skr file

To select the filters, in play mode you type: F4 or F5 or F6 or F7 (not the function keys!) for selecting one of the 4 filters

When you go into the uManager (+++) you type:

set filters = Linear

or

set filters = Mixed

or

set filters = Minimum

or

set filters = Soft

Linear, Mixed, Minimum, Soft corresponds to F4, F5, F6, F7

Linear selects bank 1of the filters

Mixed selects bank 2

Minimum selects bank 3

Soft selects bank 4

I set to soft, for bank 4 the new NOS filter

If you set the filter in umanager, it will remember over a power cycle, if you use F4-F7 in play mode, it will not.

I currently using the NOS filter from the partypak, and am quite happy with the sound using this filter.

Mod information is here

soekris r2r dam dac modding

MAC Setup

Install the driver

Drivers for this adapter are here

Aten drivers

Go towards the bottom, and click Support and Download

There are drivers for Android, Linux, Mac and Windows, so pretty much anything.

To install drivers on a MAC, I needed go to Settings, Security and Privacy, and then allow it to install the driver because it didn't like something.

Reference info

Tried zterm but it crashed when I tried to do a xmodem transfer, so I gave up

Then I tried goserial

Connect the USB-232 adapter

open zterm, then on top Settings > Modem Preferences and select your USB-Serial device as the default modem, UC-232AC for my adapter.  See pic below.