Crystal Chip Review
 

Many of you are already aware of the Crystal Chip and some of its feature, but I wanted to expand upon this chip some more as I don't believe its getting the recognition it deserves.

First off you can find this and more information about the Crystal Chip at there official home page here http://crystal-chips.com

The Crystal chip is loaded with features that I won’t cover here as it will just make this post even longer then it’s going to already be but you can go here for a great break down of everything http://crystal-chips.com/index.php?page=prod_cc1

The Crystal Chip (CC) is about the size of the Matrix Infinity so this makes it just as easy to locate a good spot for it on the motherboard as the Infinity, unlike the DMS4. It has its own on-board oscillator which I have always liked chips to have, for one this means one less wire to solder and two you can keep from having to drag a high frequency wire across the motherboard that can bleed noise into the motherboard. On V9 and later versions there is no tray out (TO) point (similar to reset point) to have to solder. The CC has 4, yes countem 4!!! Ground pads to solder to making it very easy to find a good short ground point on the motherboard.

I could go over a large list of what it booted, but I’m not because this thing boots damn everything! I tested it on a V9 PS2 ands it even booted Spyro3 which is an anti-mod PSX game and it got past the mod protection which currently only a handful of chips can do.

Many of you may have heard that the CC is a home brew only chip..... well your right, kind of. It comes from the CC team flashed with a bios that will only boot home brew applications. This however can be over come by re-flashing the chip with a “hacked” bios for the CC that can be very easily found on the net.

One of the most innovative features of the CC is it “Boot Manger”. The Boot Manger (BM no not bawl movement you sick-o’s) is an application that you install to your memory card that acts some what like a hacked Xbox dash in that the BM will boot up before anything else allowing you to select what you want to do, screen shots are to follow that will show it all. With out the memory card and the BM the chip will still boot back-ups with the hacked bios, not only that but it auto detects just like the Infinity. The BM and homebrew apps can’t be installed to the HDD at this time; maybe in the future they will develop something like this.

Here is what the install looked like click here

Boot Manger Screen
Notice the blue disc in the upper left of the screen, the BM will show you what type of disc you have in the DVD-Rom, very cool indeed!
http://www.norcalmods.com/graphix/cc/cc-bm.jpg

Application Browser
This feature boots apps right from the memory card, and yes it will boot HDloader from here as well.
http://www.norcalmods.com/graphix/cc/cc-ab.jpg

Configuration Screens
The following 5 shots are of different configuration screens with a sh*t load of options.

http://www.norcalmods.com/graphix/cc/cc-config.jpg


http://www.norcalmods.com/graphix/cc/cc-config1.jpg

http://www.norcalmods.com/graphix/cc/cc-config2.jpg

http://www.norcalmods.com/graphix/cc/cc-config3.jpg

http://www.norcalmods.com/graphix/cc/cc-config4.jpg

http://www.norcalmods.com/graphix/cc/cc-config5.jpg

Cool Sticker
And last every CC comes with a cool raiser vinyl sticker just like this to stick to the out side so everyone that sees it will know you have a bad ass chip in your PS2.
http://www.norcalmods.com/graphix/cc/cc-sticker.jpg

Ok well I’m sure there is stuff I have left out that I will be adding here, but for now this is a very good overview of the awesome features of this power house of a chip!

Nice work Spedmetal.

Indeed! And thank you for the review.



Tyler!

Hmm...ok i'm not to technical yet so maybe i'm missing something here. But if you get the crystal chip you have to reflash the bios just like the darn dms4? The matrix infinity comes flashed and doesn't need to be reflashed...the flashing seems to be the biggest trouble with everyone? So why not stick with the matrix infinity still?

Well we can only hope the Infinity remains this way, read my post here http://fileforums.com/showpost.php?p...0&postcount=16

Ok so if i'm following this post spedmetal...you're basically saying the Infinity is gonna go to the same thing...and the crystal is the way to go? I don't get what you mean by home-brew vs. non home-brew?

I'm not saying that they will, this is just my assumption.

Hopefully this link will make it brutally obvious in regards to what home brew is http://ps2dev.org/

I've just ordered one of these to put in a V7. I'll let you know what i think. I may even have to get one myself ;)

Well, the install was really quick and easy, and with the latest Hacked Firmware, backups worked flawlessly 100%. The chip is well made and I LOVE the XBOX style Dashboard when BMan is installed :D

If you're looking for something a little different from an Infinity with all the features then look no further. I can't recommend high enough...

LUFCfan :)

Cost?
Might get one instead of Infinity if their that good :)

Check out the news for December 21st and 20th about the CC here

http://crystal-chips.com/index.php?page=news

The diode fix being included with all purchases is very cool.

Look here from prices www.foundmy.com

Yeah, I saw this last night. Where I purchase chips, they're a pound cheaper than an Infinity @ £28.99 :D:D:D

Here is the CC in a V12.

http://www.norcalmods.com/graphix/v12-cc.jpg

I didn’t do any type of laser fix to it and its working good for now. I'm going to test it more and see how the laser holds out. There have been a lot of people posting that they haven’t had to do a single thing to the v12 laser and its still going fine for them. The v12 laser issues may have just been a matter of poor lasers on the initial release of the v12.

The new type of laser that are in the v12's as starting to surface with a few of the PS2 parts suppliers. Its also been posted by a few that some of the v12's that the lasers fried on, all that was needed was to replace the laser and its working good again (if this applies to all situations I cant say). So it doesn’t appear that this issue is like the v9/v10 when the laser would go so would the LA chip. The v12 has a different type of driver and like I stated others have been posting that if the laser does go in some cases all that’s needed is a simple laser replacement.

This is leading me to believe that it might just be a situation with faulty lasers on the initial release of the v12.

The diode fix that the Infinity team has come up with is a good idea and a good safeguard but I'm concerned that over time as the laser starts to wear the laser won’t function as well as a worn laser without the diode fix. I could be wrong though. Also the PIC fix isn’t really a fix but a fail safe scheme that simply shuts the PS2 off if the mechacon hangs. So it’s not really doing anything to address the problem but simply powering down the PS2 before any problem can happen.

There are many other proposed fixes that are circulating. Which one is the best no one really knows at this point. But if no fix is needed at all this would be the best of course, so hopefully this unit will hold up.

We will see over time what happens.

Did anybody get to go online with this chip?
Not with an original game but iwith a backup.
I've read some guy having problems with it that it's not going go undetected trough the DNAS servers.

Well this kind of problem someone posts with EVERY chip at some point. And normally its because they patch the DNAS wrong or something stupid as that DNAS stuff isnt a perfect science and as you know your not suppose to be playing back-up online anyway. People always jump to blaming the chip instead of the fact that Sonys not stupid and has probably already banned his DNAS ID that he is useing.

Where did you hear this? Link?