I'm a fan of the occasionally obscure in DOS and early Windows era soundcards and try to an eye out for oddball examples that come through the e-waste places I partner with along with the usual "fishing spots" for retro collectors via estate / garage sales and marketplace websites. I've seen my share of Media Vision, Gravis, Creative, Roland, Ensoniq and other gems... but I've never run into an example like this before, so I figured I'd throw up some photos and info for those who are interested in such things like I am. Either my search-fu is terrible or there just isn't anything about this card out there.

According to the box, the card was produced in the USA by the "Crystal Computer Company" out of San Jose, CA who produced their own ASIC for the card. It seems particularly well made without any electrolytic capacitors and an interesting compliment of components, though I can't find a lot of information about the specific Samsung synth + soundbank chipset combo or the utility of the SIMM upgrade option for, presumably, user uploaded soundbank support. It's proudly advertised as the "first on earth plug and play (pnp) wavetable sound card" featuring the 32-voice Omniwave Stereo Synth, up to 48kHz stereo sampling and playback, IDE controller, Roland Sound Canvas GS, General MIDI and Sound Blaster Compatibility with totally jumperless and "automatic configuration and installation."

I haven't gotten it installed yet, but it's complete in the box with manuals + software and indicates DOS, Windows 3.1, 3.11 and 95 compatibility. It certainly looks the part of a mid 90's ISA PnP sound card that was designed to compete with the AWE32 and other Wavetable equipped cards of it's day complete with SIMM slots for soundbank upgrades that are notes as a "future" enhancement in the manual. Notable is the presence of a legit Yamaha YMF-262 / OPL3 FM synth chip in addition to the Samsung KS0161q Omniwave Synth (claims Roland SC GS Compatibility with 6/7 drum sets) plus a Samsung KS0171-2m masked soundfont ROM. This example has the CS4231 DAC and a Crystal Computer CC3000 ASIC. Looking forward to building up a Windows 95 era machine in which to test this out over the weekend, assuming I can get it working I'll drop some observations and recordings here. I'll also archive the floppy driver discs and relevant manual scans for the next person who comes across one of these since there's nothing out there on Archive.org or the Vogons driver DB for this card.

I'm mostly expecting this to be a hot mess to deal with given how bad early ISA PnP was, but perhaps starting with low expectations means I'll be pleasantly surprised.