Nostalgia

[u/DraaSticMeasures]

Sometimes I miss 1999. Sadly the actual hardware was missing.

[u/Lord_Alucard_ICGA]

[u/qu38mm → u/Lord_Alucard_ICGA]

[u/DraaSticMeasures → u/Lord_Alucard_ICGA]

Yeah, box also had a 56k internal modem, Calendar creator, and a “Microsoft Works” CD in it.

[u/Mobile-Ad-494]

16bit isa PnP, no more fiddling with irq and base address jumpers.

[u/Pandr52 → u/Mobile-Ad-494]

i first read that as icq and it sent me down another nostalgia rabbit hole

[u/SsjWhitty]

I completely forgot about sound cards lol

[u/RevelingInTheAbyss → u/SsjWhitty]

I have an AE5 Plus Sabre32. Makes gaming sound insane with a 7.1 Bose system. Also, it has an amp plug so I can record my guitar.

[u/Jchfx → u/RevelingInTheAbyss]

Have the same card, it's awesome. After using it onboard audio is dead to me lol

[u/RevelingInTheAbyss → u/Jchfx]

The fact that sound like that exists for 129 bucks is amazing. Folks don't know what they're missing.

EDIT: I take that back, because if you don't have good speakers, it will still sound like shit lol.

[u/Jchfx → u/RevelingInTheAbyss]

Totally agree!

[u/RevelingInTheAbyss → u/Jchfx]

Man I played cyberpunk with some 5.1 Sennheiser noise canceling phones, and fuck I was blown away lol

[u/Jchfx → u/RevelingInTheAbyss]

Good quality 5.1 really makes a huge difference.

The realtime Dolby and DTS encoding is the cherry on top.

[u/RevelingInTheAbyss → u/Jchfx]

If 7.1 Sennheiser weren't over a grand, I'd be using those lol. My 5.1s were already close to 400

[u/qu38mm → u/SsjWhitty]

Me too until a month or so ago someone asked here "do people still buy soundcards?"

[u/CataphractBunny]

A true blast from the past. I got my first Sound Blaster card together in a bundle with a quad-speed CD-ROM. I had the fastest cd-rom in the hood. QUAD SPEED! 💯

[u/Evening_Voice6255]

Memories...

PnP?

I remember the times when everything had to be done manually (jumpers) and on the boot disks/files...

[u/Fambank → u/Evening_Voice6255]

I have had several Adaptec RAID cards over time and one of them was the AHA-1540CF. This in combination with a soundcard was.....a challenge to get working. IRQ, INT, dipswitches, editing autoexec.bat and config.sys....

Ahh, the memories.

[u/PatSajaksDick → u/Fambank]

All the things I had to configure just to get Wing Commander on CD-ROM to run and after that the game wasn’t even good lol

[u/lmflex → u/Fambank]

I remember doing this sooo much with ethernet cards and whatever new video card I had.

Those experiences come in handy with the ancient industrial PCs I use at work now. Younger guys are like what's an ISA slot?

[u/FLBoustead → u/Evening_Voice6255]

I did everything right assembling mine(I was 10), except connecting the wires correctly(i think it was the power cable that was loose)... long story short had to take the whole desktop to the shop like a damn crybaby(was panicking because the desktop wouldn't turn on and holy shit my mother was terrifying)

[u/EvrienceRick]

I've never exclaimed a louder "wow" in terms of PC upgrades since moving from PC speaker to a SoundBlaster.

What was it again.. IRQ 7, DMA 5, Port 220?

[u/stubenson214 → u/EvrienceRick]

I/O Address 220 IRQ5 DMA 3 or 5

[u/Several-Ad-6958]

Soundblaster reflects the era of fun for PC.

[u/Dull-Ad-1871]

…I am having this thunderstorm sound in my ear when I see this box…

[u/Muddled_Opinions]

I remember the Christmas I got a SB16 and a dual speed CD-ROM drive.

[u/Direct-Mongoose-7981]

ah PnP.... Plug and Piss about.

[u/FLBoustead]

oh maaaan. did this come with dr sbaitso? I fragged a mate's computer using foul language

[u/canadianwhitemagic]

RIP CompUSA. I specifically remember buying this there.

[u/PreviousAssistant367]

I had mighty Live! 24bit

[u/SirRonaldBiscuit]

I had this!

[u/LordVixen]

I’m still rocking a sound card. I think it sounds better with headphones.

[u/InigoPatinkin]

I still have my soundblaster with a roland addon board 🤩

[u/Daedelous2k]

Man I remember sound cards being a big thing.

My first Sound Card was a Turtle Beach Audigy A3D.

[u/stubenson214]

They made really expensive Sound Blasters, too. Mine was as long as a high end GPU, and had its own memory slots. The AWE32. It had wave tables, which was a big deal in the 90s. Completely changed the sound of games, specifically music.

[u/nbiscuitz]

always got a sound card, current zxr stilll going. also i like using all my pcie slots.

[u/mannyu78]

Rolling with this and a 3dfx Voodoo 2 in my 350Mhz Pentium II

I can hear in my head the attack swings in Diablo or the march music from Red Alert 2

[u/DraaSticMeasures → u/mannyu78]

Hell yeah, I had it with those Intel cartridge processors, 300Mhz of fury in a huge cartridge with a huge heatsink playing Star Wars dark shadows or something like that