It's beautiful

Wow! That's the prettiest sound card I've ever seen!

How are you handling the placement of the QFP and SOIC chips? This isn’t by hand? I’m assuming you have a pick and place machine?

Everything by hand 😀 Two people from our project team are brilliant at soldering (not me, though).

All this can be soldered at home with good solder iron and flux, fun/pain starts with BGA chips...

Could this be made as a kit?

Keatah wrote on 2020-10-17, 21:36:

Could this be made as a kit?

No. It will come in two flavors - assembled/tested product, or a naked PCB with a bracket.

P.S. However it's up to you guys if you make a group order of parts according to the BOM that will be provided later. The community is always welcome to assist in making kits available for the public!
The bare PCBs with brackets and BOM will be there.

Following this thread. Looking forward to one or more of these.

Questions:
When I assemble bought loose PCB, should I get the CT4520 elsewhere?
Then I'll have to go find the CT4520 card. 😀

Yes, if you opt for a loose PCB, you should get yourself a donor CT4520.

Are there any mid-way options? That's a lot of precision soldering and while I do have a donor CT4520 I don't fancy my chances of doing that much SMD without a mistake/bridge etc.

We are not considering any other options as of now. Only assembled/tested boards and loose PCBs+brackets.

I understand why. And presumably CT4520 are not rare enough for it to be worth the trouble of sending you them in. At least for now 😀

Maybe by doing this you'll push the price right up and I can sell my CT4520 for a bit more!

Lots of compliments for the fantastic work. I hope to be able to buy one of these magnificent boards (already soldered version .. they don't do the small soldering for me 😉. I await your news on how to book / purchase. Hello and congratulations again for the fantastic work

I keep watching for this! I put my entire retro-PC project on hold, waiting for this card. I'll add a dream blaster to it, and run it in Tandem with a Sound Blaster Live! and a Roland MT-32in order to cover everything from 1988 to 2000. This card is like a dream come true. I hope that this project inspires people to build new SVGA cards with Windows 3.x drivers. My AWE32 died and I had to go with one that lacks OPL chips and now Solar Winds locks up as a result (confirmed with 86box that S.W. doesn't like non-OPL.)

Also, with things in the world as they are right now, I also want to put a modem in my retro PC and build a BBS. I think we need to bring back bulletin board services.

Scythifuge wrote on 2020-11-11, 23:33:

Also, with things in the world as they are right now, I also want to put a modem in my retro PC and build a BBS. I think we need to bring back bulletin board services.

There are several BBS servers that are accessible over the Internet. You could use a WiModem232 or PiModem to connect a serial port on your old machine to your home's network to access them. Maybe host your own this way? Though a direct Ethernet connector may be better for higher bandwidth to support more users.

https://www.cbmstuff.com/proddetail.php?prod=WiModem232

http://podsix.org/articles/pimodem/

SScorpio wrote on 2020-11-11, 23:45:

There are several BBS servers that are accessible over the Internet. You could use a WiModem232 or PiModem to connect a serial p […]
Show full quote

Scythifuge wrote on 2020-11-11, 23:33:

Also, with things in the world as they are right now, I also want to put a modem in my retro PC and build a BBS. I think we need to bring back bulletin board services.

There are several BBS servers that are accessible over the Internet. You could use a WiModem232 or PiModem to connect a serial port on your old machine to your home's network to access them. Maybe post your own this way? Though a direct Ethernet connector may be better for higher bandwidth to support more users.

https://www.cbmstuff.com/proddetail.php?prod=WiModem232

http://podsix.org/articles/pimodem/

Thank you for the information. I will definitely read into this! However, access to these BBS servers may be able to be severed, I would think. As a back up, I am thinking of getting an old-school landline.

Hey guys,

Good news so far - the Release Candidate board has been assembled, briefly tested, no problems so far, so now it's already with the tester who does pre-release QA tests.
We expect to release the card very soon, it's now a matter of days. Stay tuned.

Nice project guys! Keep up!
Might be pointless, but have you also consider adding an IDE CD-ROM controller to it?