Batyra wrote:

Just received Ensoniq DB... Can't wait to try it.

Great find! You don't see these very often and I have been looking...

Not really retro but my oh my, it makes a huge difference in cleaning dust out of dusty builds (not laden with tar) and it only cost £25 free delivery using prime 😉 :

blurks wrote:

Not exactly hardware but I thought: better grab them while they're cheap...

omg yes. where did you nab these from?

I finally managed to buy Radeon X1900 Crossfire Edition with the external CF dongle. Both card and the cable is quite hard to get, so I'm happy to have it in my collection.

Running crossfire on Asus P9X79 board - X1900 CF + X1900 XTX.

Tecmar ARPA:

appiah4 wrote:

Predator99 wrote:

Anybody sees why I bought this one? 😉 Was the only photo.

There are three other nifty ISA sound cards in that lot that I can see, one appears to be a Vibra 16, the other is a rather large Crystal chipset card that I THINK may actually have an onboard wavetable. The third is pretty much unidentifiable from the back but gold plated connectors lead me to think it could be a pretty good card as well. Neither of them have a bracket, but that's kind of OK. I also see one SB Live and one Audio PCI in that lot, along with two PCI S3 cards. Pretty good lot.

My GUS lot...

...just arrived 😎 Its a 2.4 and looking quite good. Will test it tomorrow.

The other soundacrds are nothing special:

Then some graphics cards along with a Mach64 PCI, also nothing special...but have to check for the STB Horizon 64, never seen this card:

But I think for 50€ I made a very good deal for the GUS.

And no, I dont see what should have been unfair in this deal und I would do it again that way... 😈

Predator99 wrote:

...but have to check for the STB Horizon 64, never seen this card:
IMG_0197.JPG

It's based on the Sierra FALCON64 chipset, and probably the only card ever to implement it. I pulled one (still have it) from a P-120 box ages ago but have never seen another one. Would be interesting to see how it performs...

@Predator99
Excluding the OPTi, the rest the sound cards in that lots are potentially good ones too, nice work!

maverick85 wrote:

Not really retro but my oh my, it makes a huge difference in cleaning dust out of dusty builds (not laden with tar) and it only […]
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Not really retro but my oh my, it makes a huge difference in cleaning dust out of dusty builds (not laden with tar) and it only cost £25 free delivery using prime 😉 :

That blows me away.

Predator99 wrote:

The other soundacrds are nothing special:

IMG_0196.JPG

The ESS card is quite good I think? 😀

ESS AudioDrive (ES1868) - a surprisingly good ISA sound card

Predator99 wrote:

The other soundacrds are nothing special:

IMG_0196.JPG

Both the Opti and the ALS cards have cloned OPL3 chips so they should probably have authentic OPL3 FM Synth. They are also MIDI bug free so their wavetable headers are useful. ALS100 is usually a very noisy card so that may not be a great deal (but certainly worth keeping) but the OPTI one I would say is a very desirable ISA card.

As for the ESS, well, ES1688 and its variants (ES1689/1868/1869/1898 etc.) are my favorite SB clones bar none.

I think you got a great deal there even with these cards.

badmojo wrote:

@Predator99
Excluding the OPTi, the rest the sound cards in that lots are potentially good ones too, nice work!

The OPTi cards are not that bad at all. I own some of these as well. They do SB Pro 2.0, Adlib, WSS, and MIDI over MPU-401 just fine.

derSammler wrote:

badmojo wrote:

@Predator99
Excluding the OPTi, the rest the sound cards in that lots are potentially good ones too, nice work!

The OPTi cards are not that bad at all. I own some of these as well. They do SB Pro 2.0, Adlib, WSS, and MIDI over MPU-401 just fine.

The Opti cards are pretty sweet. The Opti 930 card with onboard wavetable card I had way back in the day and still have to this day was my favorite card for a long time.

The DOS support is awesome. I never ran into a game that wouldn't work properly with it.

In fact, I have now collected a bunch of different variations of the Opti cards with onboard wavetable. I even have one that doesn't include a real or cloned OPL3. The Opti FM synth is supposed to be horrible 🤣

I always find it funny how the general consensus on ISA sound cards is that the least popular, least desirable, least interesting cards with the least direct support from games are actually some of the BEST cards for playing actual games. Completely different situation than with early 3D accelerators. 😀

True. My most favorite ISA sound card is the OAK Mozart-16. This card has a very bad reputation, but with the correct driver, it's just great.

bjwil1991 wrote:

maverick85 wrote:

Not really retro but my oh my, it makes a huge difference in cleaning dust out of dusty builds (not laden with tar) and it only […]
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Not really retro but my oh my, it makes a huge difference in cleaning dust out of dusty builds (not laden with tar) and it only cost £25 free delivery using prime 😉 :

That blows me away.

It blew so hard (800W) it snapped off one of my case fans 🙁 my fault for bringing it too close, knoked it and snap. it blew so much dust out of the z77 computer, it looked brand spanking new afterwards. worth every penny.

derSammler wrote:

True. My most favorite ISA sound card is the OAK Mozart-16. This card has a very bad reputation, but with the correct driver, it's just great.

I'm always on the lookout for a new sound card to play with - what's so good about these would you say? I seen an OPL3 on there and some mention of OPL4?

I don't see a wavetable header though.

badmojo wrote:

derSammler wrote:

True. My most favorite ISA sound card is the OAK Mozart-16. This card has a very bad reputation, but with the correct driver, it's just great.

I'm always on the lookout for a new sound card to play with - what's so good about these would you say? I seen an OPL3 on there and some mention of OPL4?

I don't see a wavetable header though.

There are two main variants of the different cards. One with onboard wavetable and one without.

The one with onboard wavetable has OPL4.

The OPL4 wavetable apparently cannot be used for DOS games on the OAK wavetable card from what I could find.
See here for more information about the different cards with OPL4.
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/44-voice-midi-on-yamaha-opl4/

bristlehog wrote:

Tecmar ARPA: […]
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Tecmar ARPA:

Interesting. Can you tell a little more about it?

badmojo wrote:

@Predator99
Excluding the OPTi, the rest the sound cards in that lots are potentially good ones too, nice work!

I think the Crystal Semi card is maybe from Terratec, so PCM sound quality might be _really_ great.