man, good luck. i was in vietnam for 3 weeks and the oldest pcs i could see for sale 2nd hand were core2. i asked around through some people to see if the could source some ISA based hardware... most of the people have never seen the older pcs let alone know what a soundblaster was. i can only imagine that it was the mid 00s that desktop pcs etc were mainstream due to the economy, before that it was just tvs and radios... or i'm wrong and they all love to melt the chips for metals/gold etc.

Yeah, it's a long shot, however, I don't recall Vietnam as a country being a major producer where they used to make this stuff. On the other hand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand used to be major producers of PC hardware back in the day (including mainland China, but I have no plans of going there any time soon).

So, I can imagine that there might still be something lingering around in a forgotten warehouse or something similar.

But again, it's a long shot...

All I know for sure is that both Taiwan and HK have recyclers that sell (unlike most of the recyclers here grrrrrrrr).

I would also find out if they have craigslist equivalents and post a message before going there with contact information. Especially in Taiwan you know there's someone with an attic full of late 80s early 90s stuff I'd die to get hold of (not really).

A lot of really interesting historical stuff came *out* of those places, who knows how much is left there... Mind you we're talking *very* small countries by our standards.

Apparently Shenzhen is pretty good: Retro Hardware Adventures in Shenzhen, China

Taiwan should have something similar in terms of electronics markets, but I have even less of an idea of what's there than China (have never been, probably will never visit)

Hmmmm. Interesting... I will convince my wife to do a day trip to "beautiful" Shenzhen... 😉