Sunday, July 24, 2011

Casio CZ101 Backlit LCD Mod!



A client gave me a CZ101 with a dead LCD to work on. I replaced the former with a new backlit LCD from Sparkfun. They're cheap and come in a few different colors and being able to see the screen in the dark is totally key. The mod is super easy, just one note - the pads for the backlight power just need to be connected to the LCD power, and the rest of the wires go in the same order as the old display but the pads themselves will be on the other side of the board - i wired mine upside down at first. Get in touch if you want help doing this mod, or would like me to do it for you!

Friday, July 1, 2011

Voice of Saturn Sequencer clock IO mod


A while back I was syncing my VoS Sequencer to midi via the clock out of a Kenton Pro Solo and noticed that the clock was slightly off. I remedied this by using the gate out and shifting the notes of a midi sequence until it locked in but realized this was a problem. I discovered that the decade counter that is the heart of the sequencer is triggering on the trailing edge of the square wave of the clock instead of the leading edge. This means that if you try to either sync to an external clock or send clock out, the sequencer will be half a step out of sync. Granted, this can be kind of cool for off time stuff and you may want to do the following mod so it can be switched in and out. The idea is to put an inverter between the clock and the clock jack so the output clock signal is inverted. That needs to go through another inverter before it reaches the decade counter so the clock signal ends up as it was before. This 2nd inverter will also invert an incoming clock signal so things will sync up. I've done this mod on a few and it works fantastically. Attached is a schematic.

-T