Serdaco CrystalBlaster C1 (Soldering the DIY Kit and playing different games music)
0Hello friends,
Serge recently released the Crystalblaster C1 DIY-soldering-kit, a tiny wavetable-module that features the Crystal CS9236 single-chip wavetable music synthesizer.
As i am a big fan of his products, i have ordered it and i like to show you how i have soldered it!
As background music for the video, i recorded several tracks that are played by the Crystalblaster afterwards.
You can assemble and soldering the kit quite easy with the help of the instruction sheet that you can download at the product page (link down below).
The module has a special and quite interesting sound thats typical for these low-cost wavetables from the mid- to late 90s. I think it depends on the track if you like it or not, i think it really fits the mood of the Doom, Duke Nukem and Rise of the Triad tunes! In more orchestral tracks like in Betrayal at Krondor, of course it can't hide its limitations.
The Datasheed doesn't quote the size of the internal waverom but i assume it is no more than 512kb. Other key-features of the CS9236 are:
- High quality General-MIDI sample-set including 128 melodic instruments and 47 percussion sounds.
- 32-note polyphony at 44.1khz rate
- independent chorus and reverb levels for each midi channel
- on-chip digital reverb and chorus effect engine
According to the datasheet, the CS9236 was released in 1997 by Crystal Semiconductor Corporation (Austin, Texas), so i assume the IC is new-old-stock.
If you are interested and like to get more informations or buy the kit, please visit the official web-page:
https://www.serdashop.com
https://www.serdashop.com/CrystalBlasterC1
Note: I made a mistake in the soldering process when i was in the flow soldering all components an the upside of the PCB. Of course, the interface-connector needs to be soldered on the downside of the pcb! I have not hide this mistake so this might help others to prevent this. Desoldering all these pins is not so funny you know :-) But finally i successfully soldered it and it works very well.
LISTEN - ENJOY - LIKE - COMMENT - SUBSCRIBE
Ernie
PC-SOUND-LEGACY