Super
Stereo, My Portable Rockman
This sound toy comes in an almost empty green/ red plastic case in the
shape of a small ghettoblaster. It has a white silicone (rubber) keypad
and plays many rhythms and sounds. At the front it has a green pseudo "CD
lid" with the label "dynamic sound"; behind it was a deck of tiny picture
cards for children.
main features:
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flashing light bulbs
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tiny plastic loudsqueaker
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lousy silicone keypad with 16 small buttons.
All buttons are sensed by 6 lines those react on VCC (=+4. 5V). Instead
of a matrix, this awful hardware senses combinations of multiple simultaneous
input lines pulled to VCC as different key inputs, though each rubber key
presses against multiple contacts, i.e. when a key is pressed too weak
(or contacts are dirty), the wrong(!) sound is played. (This kind of keyboard
hardware seems to be also quite common in toy mobile phones.)
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8 buttons for piano keys, switchable for OBS demo melodies
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very coarse piano waveform sample with envelope
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7 low- res percussion/ animal samples
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3 animal sound buttons {dog, frog, bird}
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4 drum pad buttons {low woodblock, high woodblock, laser, whistle}
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"on/ off" button switches to rhythm mode
In rhythm mode a standard rhythm pattern is running continuously and
any press of a "drum" or "animal" button plays 1x an alternate rhythm pattern
depending on the pressed button. All alternate rhythms and demo melodies
play in a loop when their button is held down.
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8 rhythms available
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8 short, single voice piano melodies
modifications:
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cinch sound output, speaker mute switch and AC adapter jack with regulator
added.
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speaker replaced against a real one. (I toasted the headphone- like original
plastic squeaker when I halted the CPU clock.)
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pots for volume control, distortion, pitch (CPU clock) and click effect
(from lamp output) added.
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reset (rhythm stop) button added which interrupts the CPU supply voltage.
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8 switch DIP switch block + enable switch added to permanently select a
rhythm pattern. (Rhythm otherwise falls back to default when a button is
not held down.) Also the click effect is switched by a DIP switch to avoid
distortion when off.
(For the DIP switch I had to wirewrap a bundle of very thin wires to
the fragile PCB without destroying the tiny, tinned PCB contacts for the
silicone buttons. Due to the buttons respond bad (wrong sounds) I tried
to solder some diodes on the tiny PCB to remove the need of connecting
multiple contacts for each button, but it hadn't much success (possibly
due to the voltage drop of diodes).
Beware: The conductive layer of these silicone buttons is extremely
thin, though by the abrasion of multiple assemble and dismantle cycles
and my attempts to clean the badly working contacts (by rubbing etc.) I
finally destroyed the layer completely (Arrg! 8-[ ). In
the shop where I once had bought the toy, they only had left a single,
bleached out specimen with broken "CD" lid. Fortunately I managed to transplant
its silicone keypad to my circuit- bent instrument.)
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"drumroll" pot added, which makes a feedback from the lamp output to the
DIP switch with an electrolytic cap and though re-triggers a pattern again
and again with each n-th flash by simulating fast button presses. (This
function behaves a bit unpredictable when other pots are turned, but this
makes it also interesting for experimental music.)
The resulting instrument can make quite versatile, grainy tekkno rhythms,
and the sound CPU can be ridiculously overclocked without crashing until
the rhythm turns into a continuous beep.
The same sound CPU is also used in the walkman shaped sound toy "My
Portable Rockman", but this one has the key buttons placed in random order
(no continuous tone scale), which makes it extremely difficult to play
melodies without modification.
removal
of these screws voids warranty... |
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