The chip/card is broken in a way that makes the PCI bus unusable.

^
Also, did you check if the main chip has 2 or more pins sticked together ?

Several pins have been shorted on the sound card for the simple reason that the pins make use of the exact same signals on the YMF724. I notice no such shorts on the Rage 128 Pro.

There was a capacitor that broke on the YMF724, but even with a replaced capacitor, it doesn't work. Could faulty capacitors on the sound card cause problems?

I was talking about something like this, not about the pins using the same circuitry. Those pins appears fixed in the photo, but before they were stickied together, and this LAN card prevented every machine to boot. That was why I asked.

Also, if the capacitor is vital enough, yes, I think it can prevent the card from working. Also, if it was working long enough with that capacitor faulty, again, depending how vital it was, it could have rendered the card inusable.

About the only way the capacitor would've caused a problem is if it caused a short. Which isn't entirely unlikely. More importantly, though, the broken capacitor indicates that the card was mishandled, so there's no telling what else may have happened to it. There could be other physical damage, or there could be damage from static, or any number of other things. Depending on what's wrong with it, there's a distinct chance it's not doing any good to the motherboard you plug it into, either.

Not knowing what's wrong with it, I'd say the best move would be to replace the card. It's not like they're rare or expensive anyway.

In my area, it's pretty difficult to find decent sound cards. Hell, I've only recently started finding a bunch of SoundBlaster 16s and AWE64s in my area and have only found ONE Yamaha sound card. Besides, if something's broken, I'm the kind of person to do whatever I possibly can to fix any broken hardware.

If there's no way to fix this card without making it obvious it was tampered with, I'll return the sound card and get it exchanged for either a SoundBlaster AWE32, SoundBlaster Pro(the original one with twin YM3812s), any sound card with a YM3812, another Yamaha sound card or if I find either of these: Ensoniq SoundScape or Gravis UltraSound.

EDIT: Wow, that network card looks pretty damn bad. But there's nothing that badly bent on my YMF724.

EDIT 2: Seems to me like this sound card was killed by static. There's nothing broken or shorted on the board aside from that capacitor. I'll just go and get another one or the earlier ISA-based YMF719. Or an AWE32 if I find one with the CT1747 chip.

Say, does anyone have an AWE32 with the CT1747 chip? I'd like to know if that chip outputs the exact same FM Synthesis as a real YMF262.

Every time I look on ebay Germany I get jealous of all the Retro stuff they have. This week a Sound Blaster Pro 2 went for 1.50 Euros. Complete with box and accessories.

That's impossible in Australia. I haven't seen such a card all year 🤣

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Every time I look on ebay Germany I get jealous of all the Retro stuff they have. This week a Sound Blaster Pro 2 went for 1.50 Euros. Complete with box and accessories.

That's impossible in Australia. I haven't seen such a card all year 🤣

WHAT? Now I've seen everything! *Bang* 🤣

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Every time I look on ebay Germany I get jealous of all the Retro stuff they have. This week a Sound Blaster Pro 2 went for 1.50 Euros. Complete with box and accessories.

That's impossible in Australia. I haven't seen such a card all year 🤣

I've only found 3 SoundBlaster Pro 2.0s for sale on eBay Canada, none of which were actually in Canada. The SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 I got(a friend bought it for me as payment for some repair work on two of his game consoles) came from somewhere in Washington state in the US. At one point, I did find a SoundBlaster 2.0 for sale a few hours away from me in Quebec City. Never saw another SoundBlaster 2.0 since then.

The two SB Pro 2.0s I also got from the US. Not the cheapest but the seller had a few, they are both the latest revision (the rare SB Pro 2.0 OEM) and he had combined shipping...

I just bought a SB Pro 2.0 last week here in Argentina. I paid U$S 6 for it, was it a good deal ? There was also a deluxe edition complete in box with manuals that was selling for U$S 12, and there's another one OEM for U$S 7. I decided for the 6 dollar one because I don't have space for more boxes. The model I got is the CT1690, with the Sony interface.

I found one of the bigger SoundBlaster 16s lying in a computer containing a 486 Overdrive at the flea market today, but I left it behind for two reasons:

1) It's big(I don't know if it will fit in any computer I have)
2) It has a discrete YMF262 rather than the CT1747 combo YMF262/*something* chip(I wanna see how good the CT1747 is)

Since I have a SoundBlaster Vibra16 that's considerably smaller and has a discrete YMF262, I left the other SoundBlaster 16 behind. Tomorrow, I'll go back to the flea market where I bought my faulty YMF724 and working SoundBlaster Vibra16 to exchange the YMF724. Hopefully, I'll find a good SoundBlaster AWE32, a SoundBlaster AWE64 Gold(or a SoundBlaster AWE64 with a RAM module already on it), a YMF719(or another YMF724), a SoundBlaster Pro with twin YM3812s or any other sound card with a YM3812 on it. I'll inform you guys of what I find tomorrow.

@unmei220: You certainly got a better deal on the SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 than me. Well, I got mine for free, but my friend had to pay $20 Canadian for it. You got a better deal at $6 US.

Sounds like Argentina is a good place to score some Retro gems 🤣

Yesterday I saw another German auction. An AWE32 with memory and it went for 1.50 Euros. Bargain...

Posting is usually the "real cost" so to speak. That's why I like to buy 2 or 3 cards in one go. Better price per item and also just in case I break something.

Heavy items I get locally though because shipping is just too expensive. Only exception was my Roland gear. Cost me a lot to get it over, but oh well you only live once 🤣

^ Mostly because people has no idea what the hell they're selling...
You can get 486 boards for U$S 2... ISA sound cards are all around U$S 5, doesn't matter what chipset they use...

Want to read something funny ? Around 2 weeks ago I was the highest bidder of an auction (here in Argentina, in our own eBay-like site) consisting on 7 motherboards, all complete with memory, CPUs and coolers. 2 were Socket 370, 2 were Socket 3, one Socket A and another 2 SS7. Seller was selling them 'as is' because he "didn't have the time' to test all that stuff. I took a chance and decided to participate in the auction and finally won it. When I reached the place to get the stuff, it surprised me that all the stuff seemed to be in mint condition... and also, he didn't mentioned this, all the mobos were in their respective boxes, complete with manuals... I took all and run out of there before he realized what he was selling...
When I reached my home, one after the other, ALL the stuff worked. I was completely shocked...
Oh, did I forgot to tell how much this all cost ? How high was the bid that let me won all this ? U$S 5.

Very nice!

So this is outside of eBay right?

Yes. Unfortunately, the majority doesn't want to ship internationally, it's all between Argentina. They're also in Brazil, Uruguay, etc (http://www.mercadolibre.com/) <- in this address there's the american flag which links to the former eBay site.
They were once affiliated with eBay, but it doesn't seem to be the case anymore, as none of their logos shows the eBay one anymore.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/IBM-PC-XT-8bit-ISA-Sou … =item518b7c74cf

🤣

^ That wiredforservice/newsgroups guy is all-around fail. All his listings are crap like that. He's one of the primary reasons I wish eBay had a method for completely excluding sellers from search results.

Hey, I think I saw that SoundBlaster 2.0 yesterday while browsing eBay for sound cards. I'll be on the lookout for that sound card when I go exchange my faulty Yamaha YMF724 in a few minutes.