Some years ago I was looking at the same model with support for CMS. I think the going rate was about 200$ USD at that time.

The only guarantees in collecting - the price will hurt and over time it will go up 😁

keenmaster486 wrote on 2023-06-06, 17:35:

I'm thinking of buying a CT1320 card, but all of the ones on eBay are at least $250. Are they actually worth that these days?

I already have a CT1350 before you suggest I look for one of those. I'm trying to get the 1.x card.

yeah that's just how it is now

Well I managed to haggle one for $200. Whatever, I guess. Better now than years from now when they're even more expensive.

In all my travels and travails through recycle centers and old computer stashes here and there, I have never once come across one out in the wild.

Whether it's worth it depends on what your intention is. I have a model 1320C (with CMS chips). In practice, I found the card too noisy for every day use.

I only hang onto it for the purpose of doing sound card comparisons.

For practical usage in late 80s systems (e.g. Tandy / 286) I prefer the MediaVision Thunder Board for Adlib and SB support. Those tend to be cheaper than original Sound Blasters.

I have a 1350b and 1320c I intended to use in my early 5150 16KB motherboard but never got around to it (NO CMS chips in either). Just easier to run a Tandy 1000 and use Tandy Sound on those old games.

I intend to try to get the experience of writing software for these old sound cards on early PCs. I’m thinking the CT1320 goes in the 5150 while the CT1350 goes in the 5170.

For a full blow late 286/12 or faster you might as well get a SB Pro 2.0 CT1600, but for an early 5170 a CT1350 makes sense.

should be paying as competitive bidder in global market place - 'the market rate'

should be paying for its actual functional value - $10! (in my admittedly non connoisseur opinion 😀 )

should be paying for the satisfaction it gives you - anything you consider ok

Does running a Sound Blaster in a 5150 even make sense? We're talking about a 1989 sound card in a 1981 computer.

I guess if one is experimenting with mixing and matching different generations of computer hardware, I can kind of get it. But I honestly don't really get it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Alternative: make yourself a Snark Barker.

All simple THT soldering. Iirc it cost me about EUR 75 altogether. Was fun too.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2023-06-06, 17:35:

I'm thinking of buying a CT1320 card, but all of the ones on eBay are at least $250. Are they actually worth that these days?

I already have a CT1350 before you suggest I look for one of those. I'm trying to get the 1.x card.

For that cost you can probably build at least two probably three Snark Barkers yourself.

Personally for 8086/88 I'd go with Adlib, 286 /12+I'd go with Sound Blaster, 386/33+ I'd go with Pro 2.0, and 486/33+ Sound Blaster 16 - because they are a lot more period correct. So if you choose to go for an Adlib instead and you can build one of those for less than $50.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-06-07, 10:56:

Does running a Sound Blaster in a 5150 even make sense? We're talking about a 1989 sound card in a 1981 computer.

I guess if one is experimenting with mixing and matching different generations of computer hardware, I can kind of get it. But I honestly don't really get it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The original PC had a long reign, it was still "current" until 1987, despite being improved upon, and remained entry level basic spec just into the 1990s. Market penetration of PC/XT and direct 8bit bus "clones" was huge, large percentage of total PC market, and could not be ignored. Therefore cards that plugged in 8 bit slots were still made in 1989. What was really the death of 8bit bus machines was Windows 3.1 in the mass market. 1.0 was a tech demo 2.0 found some use cases, 3.0 was a lot better, you can actually get work done, 3.1 *BAM* it's generally useful and you need a 386/4MB to take full advantage of it (But 286 owners weren't really hurting until a year or so after.) Anyway, until Windows was the killer app that enabled killer apps, MSDOS 8088 class boxes were perfectly respectable. It's like if you got an i7-2700k in 2011, it's still fast enough for you to reach out and slap the ass of low end current stuff, that ppl would not bat an eyelid at much if you put a low-mid current GPU in, but might scream "complete mismatch" if you stuck it in the 2700k rig. Anyway, there's gonna be at least a 3 year period where 8088/SB 1.0 was a common config, before the windows bug bit ppl en masse.

I've yet to find a single game that plays worth a shit on a stock PC/XT which supports soundblaster (PCM audio)

There are a couple for adlib. If you broaden the scope to "turbo XTs" then it works

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-06-07, 14:55:

The original PC had a long reign, it was still "current" until 1987, despite being improved upon, and remained entry level basic spec just into the 1990s. Market penetration of PC/XT and direct 8bit bus "clones" was huge, large percentage of total PC market, and could not be ignored. Therefore cards that plugged in 8 bit slots were still made in 1989.

For clarity, I'm not disputing the hardware compatibility. Rather, I'm wondering about software compatibility and performance.

What software could be used with a Sound Blaster on an original IBM 5150 system? And would there be any practical reason to do so in lieu of a faster system?

I want to put the CT1320 in the 5150 because I want to put a sound card in it, and the original Sound Blaster is the lowest spec card I can reasonably find to put in there.

I could buy a Radlib from TexElec, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. My 5150 is going to be XT-like once I finish putting it together (640K RAM, hard drive, ethernet card) so I think it'll be like putting the SB1 in an XT clone in 1989.

The Snark Barker is cool, but I felt like I should have the real deal, before they get prohibitively expensive for me.

Unknown_K wrote on 2023-06-07, 05:45:

For a full blow late 286/12 or faster you might as well get a SB Pro 2.0 CT1600, but for an early 5170 a CT1350 makes sense.

You think so? I have a 286/12 and a CT1600 plus the CR-523 CD drive I just got, but I was going to put that in my 386. Maybe it makes more sense to put the SBPro in the 286... but how useful would the CD drive be on that machine?

Honestly, this is the hardest part about this hobby to me: mixing and matching hardware until you feel like you've got a well balanced fleet of systems that make sense.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-06-07, 14:55:

Anyway, there's gonna be at least a 3 year period where 8088/SB 1.0 was a common config, before the windows bug bit ppl en masse.

I would agree if you said Turbo 8088. 10mhz. Even better would have been 12mhz 286. People really were ditching 4.77mhz by that point.

But yeah, most of the games written to benefit the sound card came later after '89. Therefore, more suited for faster systems at the time. So for the 8088, I'm not sure if it was even a 3 year period. So hard to call it common. The first sound card I remember using the most was a PAS on a 386SX. Which probably originated around '92.

I guess most mileage for SB when it came out on a slow system would have been using adlib compatibility.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2023-06-07, 15:23:

I want to put the CT1320 in the 5150 because I want to put a sound card in it, and the original Sound Blaster is the lowest spec card I can reasonably find to put in there.

If one is putting a sound card in a 5150 just for the sake of it... sure, I guess. It's just not going to be a system capable of really taking advantage of what Sound Blaster can do.

It seems like an expensive way to fill a card slot.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2023-06-07, 14:59:

I've yet to find a single game that plays worth a shit on a stock PC/XT which supports soundblaster (PCM audio)

There are a couple for adlib. If you broaden the scope to "turbo XTs" then it works

^ This.

At minimum, early sound cards really needed a Turbo XT or XT/286 hybrid system to start taking advantage of what they could offer.

Though for even for the Turbo XT, era I'd favor a Tandy machine with Tandy 3-channel sound.

Once you hit late 1989 / early 1990, it's the era of 286 + VGA + Adlib / SB.

Since no one was really targeting 4.77 MHz by the time Sound Blasters were common, I'm not really expecting to use this system to play period correct games. I want to have the experience of programming the Sound Blaster on an early and very slow PC, just because it's fun.

Since the SB supports DMA, there shouldn't be that much strain on the CPU, should there?

Plus the Adlib compatibility is also there; the 5150 should have no trouble playing some OPL2 music, which is also something I'd like to experiment with.