First post, by RetroVixen2K
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- Newbie
The soundblaster 16 I've been repairing needs a new port. I tested the lines with a bunch of them pirate hook lookin probe thingies to see if it worked past the header, it does. The port is just crudded up with midi-cheese. (yeah I don't know how to properly describe that gunk or the tool names but I know how to use the tools and that's what's important)
If you are wondering about the gold recap: this was the board that mysteriously showed up in my shop "parts and repair" drawer unit looking like it suffered a tragic doorstop accident with the capacitors sheered off and it took half a year to painstakingly find/match/order/receive exact original value caps in gold. (either there was a shortage or they stopped making certain voltages. either way I wasn't gonna screw around even if some old guys on youtube say "its fine to go upwards" dad said don't screw around changing values and I trust him) The reason for gold caps? I remember the one I had as a kid sounded kinda crap and I didn't want to risk ordering the wrong type of cap. Gold audio grade make have been a dollar or two more for the convenience of not having to do more research than was necessary beyond basic values. My dad warned me about caps that may look exactly the same but do something completely different so gold caps saved me a lot of unnecessary risk.
I tested the sound and it did make a dramatic difference in channel peaking. smoothed out the sound in a way that made it far less violent and more melodious. This leads me to believe creative cheaped out as gold caps alone shouldn't make such a dramatic difference. My suspicions were confirmed when I saw the same brand OEM capacitors in a pair of crappy acer speakers from the 90s. this puts me in a bit of a spot because now I like it enough to want to keep it. I was not expecting that.
Also beyond the needed gameport, where can I get an ASP/CSP expansion chip for it? My dad had the voice software floppies from his sb16 from back in the day which had the expansion socket/chip. However he traded his for a gravis ultrasound from a coworker then found it was crap. I'd love to futz with the software and expansion, seems silly and stupid leaving that spot blank when it could do more. Moreover is there a better/high quality OPL FM chip I can drop in like a Yamaha? Or a DSP chip without hanging notes? The gold caps made hanging notes less noticeable and added a cool "fade out" effect on program exit so it sounds like it was meant to do it. But I dunno, I wanna see how many improvements I can make to this thing and push it to the limit. Plus having it fully decked out with ever type of expansion would make it more worth keeping around. Seeing as it was broken when I found it and its a "known issues" model I can't see much harm in going all the way with this thing.
"Okay. Look. We both said a lot of things that you're going to regret. But I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster." ~ GlaDOS