If I look at how Creative's card did evolve, they just give me this feeling of them knowing that ISA was pretty much history back in 1996.
They knew were things were going, buying up companies, trying to implement PCI technology in their lineup. Stuff like that.
And as a result, they might have ditched the OPL chip in their entire lineup of new products. That's what I see.
However. The Gold might have been their way of squeezing the last bit of money from the aging ISA technology, still widely in use.
As a result. We see a lot of late ISA cards from creative, were they just have ranted OPL as an outdated unuseable feature.

Yeah... Would have been THE ultimate card, if they have included a real OPL chip. And I have a chilly thought back in my head.
That if they really have meant something higher with the Gold, then they might have included OPL chip on the Gold.
You know.. To say: "Here... This is the ultimate best we can give you, because we salute the dying ISA cards."

Because the OPL chip is missing. I just think of the Gold as one of the best ISA cards. Not as people say, "last hurray" for the ISA.
Not saying this is a bad choice. This card is absolutely great. The best if OPL and GUS in pure MS-DOS are NOT needed.
With this I mean that if the only 2 dos-games you want to play is Doom2 and Duke3D, and the rest are Win98 games.
Then the Gold is the absolute best choice, because of the RCA plugs. Beats anything else, only because of quality of the output signal.

I would still not choose the Gold, when games are MS-DOS only and not having Midi/AWE compatibility. Then the Gold fails.
Just in another way then what makes the Gold stand out.
To bring my statement down to a more eadable way of saying. Games before 1995, choose something with an OPL Chip.

As an example, I have an SB16 CT2910 in my P133, paired with the GUS-ACE.

Gold is a piece of crap compared to Turtle Beach cards in terms of audio quality.
Tahiti audio quality is mind blowing.

Couple thingies today...

Two Commodore 1084S, one 1084 and one 1085S. Haven't tested them yet

AvanceLogic AV9401, propably 512 kb ram? It doesn't work but took it for the cause...

schlang wrote:

I can follow your explanations, however my AWE64 Gold sound just so much different in every game compared to my SB Pro

Some AWE32 and all AWE64's use CQM, Creative Quadrature Modulation. It doesn't sound exactly like OPL3 because it's a different implementation of FM synthesis, that tries to sound reasonably close. Some people can get over it, so the AWE64 cards become a very interesting card to use in retro builds. I only use it for its EMU8k synth which is interesting and quite capable actually. Surprisingly after starting to use a mixer i've found that even the AWE64 Gold have higher analog level output noise than my YMF-718 cards. But if you use it's SPDIF output it can give a very rewarding audio experience. 😎

The YMF 71x chipsets also use a lower power OPL3, the YMF289, which adds some enhancements when compared with the YMF262.

All of you and your fancy ISA cards :p The best retro card I have is a basic Sound Blaster Live! 5.1, and most of the time I'm battling laptop soundchips...

tokroger wrote:

AvanceLogic AV9401, propably 512 kb ram? It doesn't work but took it for the cause...

It looks like it has 2x512KB chips on so probably 1MB

I picked up a Packard Bell Multimedia 730. It has a Cyrix MII, 40MB of RAM, 24x CD, and a 4.5GB HD. It looks like it has a built in S3 Virge and Crystal Audio Chip. I had to cut the QA seal to open the case so I'm assuming it has never been opened. It's a fun little system to mess around with and I already had the keyboard, mouse, and monitor from this time period.

I had to save it from "gold-scrappers"

They are all brand-spanking-new ^^
I am always interested in trading 😉

Wow, I've never seen a box like that before. 😀 My HP Vectra has one of those PIIIs in it.

That's just wonderfully amazing. So these have sequential serial numbers?

...only semi-related -- I selected the particular DX I used for my ISA-486 because it was a USA make, and had the nicest inspector's signature. What were the last chips to have inspector's signatures?

Wow why did they sell a box of 10 processors? And how much did the box cost new?

Thank you for your comments 😁
I have never seen this box before, either! That is why I had to jump on it 😀

They are all SL37C and some of them have consecutive numbers.
I have no idea how much this was new but I guess 3000 dollars is a safe number 😁

How much are these worth now? What do you guys think?

--should I open a separate thread?

@Lukeno
They were great cpus! Back then I was stil stuck on an overclocked Pentium MMX @ 200MHz / 64MB EDORAM
I wish I could travel back in time with those 😁

carlostex wrote:

The YMF 71x chipsets also use a lower power OPL3, the YMF289, which adds some enhancements when compared with the YMF262.

Is there any way to surgically upgrade YMF262 to YMF289? 😀

Arctic wrote:

Thank you for your comments :D I have never seen this box before, either! That is why I had to jump on it :) […]
Show full quote

Thank you for your comments 😁
I have never seen this box before, either! That is why I had to jump on it 😀

They are all SL37C and some of them have consecutive numbers.
I have no idea how much this was new but I guess 3000 dollars is a safe number 😁

How much are these worth now? What do you guys think?

--should I open a separate thread?

@Lukeno
They were great cpus! Back then I was stil stuck on an overclocked Pentium MMX @ 200MHz / 64MB EDORAM
I wish I could travel back in time with those 😁

I did a little looking and according to cpu-world over here: www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Pentium-III/Inte ... 512E).html

Claims they went for $496 each new. So if you have 9 of them, that would of been... $4464 retail.

I wouldn't think they're worth much today though.

EDIT: On ebay one seller has several used for $6.10 total each with shipping, and there's one new one and it's going for $12.32 So market used price is about $54.90 for the whole box, or if you went by the one new listing that would be $110.88 for the whole thing.

RacoonRider wrote:

carlostex wrote:

The YMF 71x chipsets also use a lower power OPL3, the YMF289, which adds some enhancements when compared with the YMF262.

Is there any way to surgically upgrade YMF262 to YMF289? 😀

Wouldn't be much of an upgrade. The main difference on the software side is, you can read back from the on-chip registers with YMF 289 and 71x. YMF262 does not allow this (and this could be considered a good thing in some cases).
The main "hardware" difference is the sampling rate, which is much lower in YMF289, so I assume it would sound worse. Or at least, "different".
YMF262: 49716Hz
YMF71x: 49516Hz
YMF289: 41000Hz

joe6pack wrote:

img
This is not my image, I found it online. It's point to point as was said, and it's a nightmare in my opinion, though some may prefer the way they did things back then.

Yeah I don't like this style either. Although I must say yours looks quite tidy. I have one that looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/zNSc5oj.jpg

HighTreason wrote:

I got it on eBay, do you want links?
Yeah, I did galnce at that but was busy at the time. Nice system, I might look for one myself at a later time actually. Can't help wonder if the "docking" port is for those boxes, looks like it, do you have a chassis option in the Power menu in the BIOS? As for the card slot on the side, that's for the modem, the little connector to the right of it is maybe a LAN dongle? Different dongles would offer RJ45, Co-ax or Thick Ethernet I guess, otherwise maybe an external floppy.

Link would be appreciated! If they're not too expensive I'm getting one, would be cool to add a sound card or something to it 😀
The ethernet port is called "AAUI" apparently, also used by Apple. Dongles for rj45/wifi are quite common on ebay (but US shipping is way too expensive).

Haha - those PIII's look like a box of chocolates with one taken out! Pretty cool.

Arctic wrote:

How much are these worth now? What do you guys think?

Well, the box is the thing, isn't it. Collectors get funny when they want bragging rights. If the non-sequential numbers are at least closely grouped, probably you've got a trade item worth squirreling away - it'll only get more valuable.

Packard Bell Versa E400 - perhaps one of the nicest examples left in existence. Everything works bar the main battery, it runs quietly and coolly for a 1.5 GHz Northwood Celeron. Screen is in very good shape, so is everything else, and there are only a few cosmetic issues.

It seems to have last been in regular use some time in 2011, given the dates on the system and the presence of AVG Free 2011. It has 128MB of RAM soldered to the motherboard, although the onboard SIS graphics munch 32MB of that. I replaced the 256MB stick present with a 512MB one, and I've ordered a 40GB HDD to replace the (still perfectly good, but too small) 20GB unit. Only flaw with the spec that cannot be easily upgraded around is the fact that the 4 USB ports are USB 1.1; ah well.

jwt27 wrote:

YMF289: 41000Hz

According to the YMF289 datasheet its 44100Hz.

Lukeno94 wrote:

Packard Bell Versa E400 - perhaps one of the nicest examples left in existence. Everything works bar the main battery, it runs q […]
Show full quote

Packard Bell Versa E400 - perhaps one of the nicest examples left in existence. Everything works bar the main battery, it runs quietly and coolly for a 1.5 GHz Northwood Celeron. Screen is in very good shape, so is everything else, and there are only a few cosmetic issues.

It seems to have last been in regular use some time in 2011, given the dates on the system and the presence of AVG Free 2011. It has 128MB of RAM soldered to the motherboard, although the onboard SIS graphics munch 32MB of that. I replaced the 256MB stick present with a 512MB one, and I've ordered a 40GB HDD to replace the (still perfectly good, but too small) 20GB unit. Only flaw with the spec that cannot be easily upgraded around is the fact that the 4 USB ports are USB 1.1; ah well.

1.5 ghz northwood celeron? wow, never seen one of those before, slowest celly netburst i ever saw was a 1.7ghz and that was willamette. I thought the 1.3ghz wilamette P4 I had was a slow as P4 ever got, guess you win! I imagine a 1.5ghz celly with 128k cache must be an REAL slug. Anyhow it's a cool machine, I'm oddly jealous 😀