honestly the only thing in that box worth the risk is the gravis card. I would have picked it up for $60. I'm a betting man. If its not too late get him to cover that card in aluminum foil. It will increase odds of survival.
I have never seen a Gravis card here. What is the going rate for this card, in working condition? I am not even sure which one in the bin it is...
It is the red card in the very bottom of the box. In general, if you see a large red isa sound card, it is likely to be a Gravis.
I was looking for something red, but overlooked that bottom one. I hope to find one someday, but since I never owned one in the past, I have no 'emotional' need for one.
Dont start that discussion here 😉 Its a nice card with an interesting history, it sounds very good, its rare and it hurted me to see it in the pile in that condition...
I recently got a 3.4 in good condition for 104€.
Seller (buyer too) takes a gamble... sometimes it can sell for a lot more in the auction but sometimes just for peanuts. Especially if the seller doesn't know what something is worth or he knows it's damaged goods.
Correct. In this case I was sure the seller didnt know what he has in his hands and he most likely expected to get 15€ in the auction for 3kg of junk.
But I was afraid somebody else sees the GUS and the auction gets a much higher result than what I have offered as buy-at-once...there I didnt want to wait for the auction to end.
If some parts are still working it was a good deal...will report when it arrived 😉
Dont start that discussion here 😉 Its a nice card with an interesting history, it sounds very good, its rare and it hurted me to see it in the pile in that condition...
I don't see how an item that you can always find on ebay can be considered "rare". Expensive, yes, but not rare. And expensive only for those buy-it-now auctions (since retro stuff is a big rip-off). A normal auction like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/122805398812 shows the real value, and that is just about $100.
The GUS midi capabilities is completely different, it shines at playing pcm samples at high quality while while asking little performance to the CPU. It can play up to 32 voices (16 per stereo speaker) at 44KHz in 16 bit. The sound blaster 16 can only output two at a time (one per speaker). To mix sounds, you need to do that by software with sb16 and if you mix 2 16bit 44KHz sounds, you'll loose quality, and that'll ask some performance to the cpu. In the meantime, the GUS just needs to play those on two different channels, and both will stay at their proper speed and that'll ask little for the cpu to do
This card isn't the best DOS card to play midi, but it must be one of the best if you want to play MOD music (like epic megagames's creations, or demos)
Try to play the mod file you find in with that demo https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=233s&v=_yJ5M3BY2Ts on an sb16 and you'll hear the sb16 being completely overwhelmed by the amount of channels this mod uses.
So comparing it to the Dreamblaster is just missing the point. The way it process sound is much closer to what the SNES' sound chip does or the Amiga's sound chip does.
honestly the only thing in that box worth the risk is the gravis card. I would have picked it up for $60. I'm a betting man. If its not too late get him to cover that card in aluminum foil. It will increase odds of survival.
I have never seen a Gravis card here. What is the going rate for this card, in working condition? I am not even sure which one in the bin it is...
Never seen one here? Better pay attention the next time you're going trough my ads: I just sold one this week on mp! 🤣
It was the first i ever laid my hands on. But i'm not into the soundcards, i prefer motherboards and 3dfx/3d cards. For sound any soundblaster isa will do for me, plug&play is even better.
asus tx97-e, 233mmx, voodoo1, s3 virge ,sb16
asus p5a, k6-3+ @ 550mhz, voodoo2 12mb sli, gf2 gts, awe32
asus p3b-f, p3-700, voodoo3 3500TV agp, awe64
asus tusl2-c, p3-S 1,4ghz, voodoo5 5500, live!
asus a7n8x DL, barton cpu, 6800ultra, Voodoo3 pci, audigy1
honestly the only thing in that box worth the risk is the gravis card. I would have picked it up for $60. I'm a betting man. If its not too late get him to cover that card in aluminum foil. It will increase odds of survival.
I have never seen a Gravis card here. What is the going rate for this card, in working condition? I am not even sure which one in the bin it is...
Never seen one here? Better pay attention the next time you're going trough my ads: I just sold one this week on mp! 🤣
It was the first i ever laid my hands on. But i'm not into the soundcards, i prefer motherboards and 3dfx/3d cards. For sound any soundblaster isa will do for me, plug&play is even better.
Hmm, must have missed that! I was offline for a bit last week also. Was it gone quickly? I should check you auctions more often anyways haha.
Seller (buyer too) takes a gamble... sometimes it can sell for a lot more in the auction but sometimes just for peanuts. Especially if the seller doesn't know what something is worth or he knows it's damaged goods.
To the best of my knowledge a seller is not entitled to cancel an auction for an offer he gets through a personal message or elsewhere. This is shady at best and morally devastating to see other people defending this kind of (mis)behavior.
As this is pretty much offtopic: EOD from my side.
Seller (buyer too) takes a gamble... sometimes it can sell for a lot more in the auction but sometimes just for peanuts. Especially if the seller doesn't know what something is worth or he knows it's damaged goods.
To the best of my knowledge a seller is not entitled to cancel an auction for an offer he gets through a personal message or elsewhere. This is shady at best and morally devastating to see other people defending this kind of (mis)behavior.
As this is pretty much offtopic: EOD from my side.
I wasn't defending this practice and you are right. I'm marely saying the seller can cancel an auction if he wants to, even if there are bidders.
Might be just the light, but on the picture it looks as C13 has a small dent in the middle. In this case, it must be replaced as it would cause a short inside the cap.
U1 is skewed. Soldering points are not original, it was probably re-soldered in the past. The upper four pins seem to have too few solder, the other ones have too much. I would de-solder it, clean the pads, and re-solder it properly.
So I am still trying to get this SOWT-24 running.
To remember, all Caps, power regulator and the crystal were removed when I got the card.
I replaced them all but its still not running. I tried in a Aztech and a Soundblaster 16. As far as I understood it should run without additional driver when selecting Waveblaster / General Midi output on port 300/330 in a game - correct?
- do I have consider the direction when mounting the crystal? I think it should not matter?
- can somebody confirm I have chosen the correct Caps? 16V, 10uF? I have no photo where I can see it on a reference card.
- is the power regulator 79L05 the right one? I am very unsure about this as the previous owner used the board for his soldering pratice and a 79L05 was still installed. But maybe he replaced it already with a wrong one?
I dont think the soldering of U1 or the black caps are the reason. They are looking good to me and connections seem to be fine.
I dont think the card is damaged. After closer inspection I noticed nearly all cards of this lot were used for "soldering practice". And I was able to repair all I tried by removing excessive solder...
Mabye I should open a new thread, not all will look here...