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A silly question about sound card capacitors

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First post, by jheronimus

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Hi, all

I'm about to finally get myself an OPL3-enabled SoundBlaster (namely, a CT2770). While looking at the photos of the card I've noticed that there are a lot of empty spots on the PCB where capacitors and an IDE pinset should be. Compare this

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and this — also a CT2770

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I've also seen this on some ESS cards: just take a look at this ES1869F:

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Now, I understand that manufacturers always try to reduce costs by getting rid of excess components and integrating as many feature into one chip as they can — even if that means shipping two different cards under the same model name. However, I also know that sometimes people tinker with these cards and remove capacitors and chips for their projects.

I have almost no knowledge of circuitry, which brings me to my question — how do I know if capacitors and chips are missing by design and not because someone decided to strip the card? Can you remove those components and still have a working device? Would that be visibly noticeable (e.g. signs of soldering). Hope that makes sense to you guys.

Thanks!

MR BIOS catalog
Unicore catalog

Reply 1 of 3, by gdjacobs

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jheronimus wrote:

Hi, all

I'm about to finally get myself an OPL3-enabled SoundBlaster (namely, a CT2770). While looking at the photos of the card I've noticed that there are a lot of empty spots on the PCB where capacitors and an IDE pinset should be. Compare this

Your CT2770 is missing the TEA2025 amp, so your card can only do line out.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 2 of 3, by jheronimus

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gdjacobs wrote:
jheronimus wrote:

Hi, all

I'm about to finally get myself an OPL3-enabled SoundBlaster (namely, a CT2770). While looking at the photos of the card I've noticed that there are a lot of empty spots on the PCB where capacitors and an IDE pinset should be. Compare this

Your CT2770 is missing the TEA2025 amp, so your card can only do line out.

Yeah, I've noticed there is also one audio input missing. It's just so weird to me they didn't assign this a different model name.

MR BIOS catalog
Unicore catalog

Reply 3 of 3, by h-a-l-9000

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> how do I know if capacitors and chips are missing by design and not because someone decided to strip the card?
In the latter case you usually see remainings of solder. Sometimes there will also be a huge mess and damage done...

> It's just so weird to me they didn't assign this a different model name.
It can be an advantage to produce only one type of PCBs that has all feature and omit some of them depending on market demand. The company needs to manage only one PCB part instead of multiple.
I.e. the first CT2770 might be produced at a later date where active speaker boxes and mainboards with dual IDE were more common.

The ES1869F has room for some sort of wavetable, so the manufacturer could sell an expensive variant including wavetable, and a cheaper one without. And they only had to design and order one model of PCB.

1+1=10

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