The Picard Maneuver"Soundblaster" was such an 80s/90s name for a computer part.
MacN'CheezusGrandpa said nothing wrong.
db2The company name was Creative Labs.
Patapon EnjoyerI inferred that the “…” meant he was still talking and his granddaughter interrupted him
That’s the hairiest granddaughter I’ve ever seen.
Wow, there’s a template just like this one with a granddaughter and I didn’t even clock this is a different one
Sure grandpa, let’s get you to bed.
Wait, he didn’t even get to the part where you had to configure it!!
ThirdWorldOrderI thought 7 was the magic number
You’re both right! It started as 7 for the default and changed to 5 because 7 was also the default for the parallel port.
Seriously. And they also didn’t cover the part where the damn driver would randomly get corrupted every now and then
I have fond memories of these simpler times…
Admiral PatrickIRQ 5, I/O 220, DMA 01 🤘🏻
I was poor, so mine was typically running the “or SoundBlaster compatible” card.
BeigeAgendaReading those numbers it’s like I can hear the Duke Dukem intro.
Hail to the king baby!
Or Star Control 2 Hyperspace theme.
I missed out on that one
psvrhUgh…
How did PCs beat out the Amiga, Mac and ST with nonsense like that?
Because I could play the same copies of the same games on my Tandy 1000, the IBM PCs at school, and my friend’s Packard Bell. Standardized architecture was, and still is, a huge draw.
Phoenix BIOS/The BIOS Wars
ikiddOpen and documented APIs.
How did PCs beat out the Amiga, Mac and ST with nonsense like that?
I think you can ultimately blame Compaq. It was the first “pc clone” that showed the market that a PC not from expensive IBM was viable. After that even if you weren’t buying a Compaq your own generic clone was “good enough”. So You could access hardware and software built for a $4000 8088 IBM PC with your $1200 clone.
Amiga never was commodity hardware. It was always expensive. It didn’t get cheap enough fast enough. Amiga 500 came too late.
Volume
What you did there, I see it.
They couldn’t play Doom (until much later). Even to this day, the Amiga ports are lackluster. Hardware wasn’t designed for that kind of game.
They could play Wolfenstein and Doom…
lemmyngMost of the time it was IRQ 7 for me.
Yeah, IRQ7 was also pretty common for sound cards as long as you didn’t need to print at the same time. For DOS games, that wasn’t a big deal but if you were running Windows and multitasking with something that played sound (I was an early adopter of MP3s), you couldn’t use both at the same time.
My first Pentium PC was all kinds of awful because it used that IBM Mwave combo sound card /modem. You couldn’t use the modem and play sound at the same time or it would lock the PC up. It was also configured by default to use IRQ7, so if you were online, you couldn’t print either. At least I was able to work around the latter by setting it to IRQ5.
“Your sound card works perfectly.”
And if you kept pressing it, it would tell you off. Back when even installers had more soul than their games do now.
Sounds poor.
It was the early days of computers, so it’s not like that’s really saying much. Most of it was a mishmash of stuff
You had to use Voodoo to see the magic 3d graphics
Not the same thing, but I still have my old Voodoo 2 3D-accelerator card (not the same thing as a video card back then).
VESA local bus. It was the shit and nothing was ever going to be better. Until next year.
I had the original voodoo 3Dfx in 50lbs Alienware case with a 75 lbs 20+ inch crt… can’t remember the exact size. Wrong choice for university living at the time
HornedMeatBeastI miss my Voodoo 2 3000 AGP card.
I got an ABIT Siluro/ Geforce 2 MX400 after that and Diablo 2 ran worse, the frame rate tanked. I was gutted.
Back in the day I tried to play Morrowind but every time I moved my mouse the game would crash, I started removing hardware until I found out it was my soundcard giving me issues, was an old ISA slot. Got a PCI soundcard after that and no issues.
Those were the days.
Shitty days, but days nonetheless, when PC gaming was the Dark Souls of gaming.
It’s a good thing you held onto it.
that’s why I sold mine a couple years ago :)
Shit, I should check my bins
Wow, I have a bunch of old stuff laying about too that I figured was worth nothing. Original boxes, games, manuals etc which might help too. Hmm
Miss that era and wish that there were more options for PCI “premium” sound cards. All of the fancy DACs and audio interfaces are seemingly USB.
The inside of the PC is electrically hostile to good sound quality. Loads of electrical noise.
USB is an excellent use of a sound interface.
i had an internal creative soundcard some 5 years back. sound was pretty perfect with dt990 pro and sz2000. my current creative usb soundcard has more noise :(
What if I put foil all around it
You’d have to put it all the way around it, including near the connector. Obviously you can’t put it inside the connector, but that’s another avenue for noise to get in. Outisde the box of noise with it’s own box of insulation is a much calmer place.
khannieGot a second hand ISA interface SoundBlaster 64 at a computer fair in San Diego when I was visiting there for the best summer of my life in 1998. If I remember correctly it was $4.
Money well spent.
At the Scottish Rite Center in Mission Valley? There’s a good chance I was also there that year. My two most prized possessions I acquired there were a 3dfx Voodoo Rush, and a modded PlayStation 1 in a clear plastic housing.
Not there but (and I had to google maps this) it was at a place that I think is called “Pechanga Arena” now on the aptly named “Sports Arena Blvd” but I think the arena was called something else back then. About 2 miles from Ocean / Mission beaches and close to my apartment at the time.
Flippin’ LOVE San Diego.
Ah yeah, Pechanga Arena was just “The Sports Arena” in the era before sponsoring venues was a thing. They still to a swap meet in the parking lot of that place every weekend. Random other info about that place, they shot a scene from Almost Famous at one of the freight entrances there.
On Location - San Diego Sports Arena in Almost Famous
Pechanga Arena was just “The Sports Arena”
That’s what I thought! But it just seemed like my memory playing tricks on me for a place to be called “The Sports Arena”. LOL.
Random other info about that place, they shot a scene from Almost Famous at one of the freight entrances there.
WHAAAT!?!?! Love that movie and I only rewatched it there a few months ago not knowing that. That’s a cool little nugget. Thanks!
I’m still rocking an Audigy 2 on my main computer for that 1/4" jack on the front bay
thouartfrugalGreat card, got one in my 440BX retro rig! Plus an AWE64 Gold and a PnP SB16 with a real OPL3 FM chip. That’s just a bit of what’s kicking around here…
But you got the connector for a Joystick for free!
Ah, i remember might & magic 3. loved it, because it sent speech through the crappy pc speaker. So cool
SzethFriendOfNimiNot only that but they also had the serial input for joysticks.
So if you played some Wing Commander with a game pad or stick you probably had this card.
15 pin d-sub that could support TWO joysticks if you had the splitter cable.
Micro machines 2 : 4 player, with 2 gamepads into the soundcard, and one player using each side of the keyboard.
I still have a sound card, because I have a stupid sound bar that works great except it only takes optical audio input.
Your mobo doesn’t have optical? I thought that’s pretty standard on everything except basic models.
Surprisingly, it’s not even on some high-end boards.
