VOGONS


First post, by dbellue1

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I got one of these off of eBay. It is the CT4740. I have been looking for Sound Blaster cards that come with the box. I miss the yellow and blue boxes. I have gotten very lucky and found 3 so far. Thank you for a positive spin on this card, because I was happy to have the box, but I thought the card was horrible compared to others. It was painful because I see the beautiful box, and I expect the card to be a regular Sound Blaster 16 from the early 90's. My latest find, which is arriving soon is a Sound Blaster Pro with the box. I had been watching on eBay and there has been one listed for a while for $700 and I was starting to convince myself to get it for the memories and then someone put one up for under $200 the other day so I got it. My best friend had a Sound Blaster pro, and I bought a Sound Blaster 16, and our games sounded the same and I now know how lucky we were. My Sound Blaster 16 was from 1992, and I only paid $99 for it from a Walmart store in my area. If you do read this, I wanted to share I also found a Sound Blaster 16 CT1740 off of eBay. It is like the one I had but with the missing ASP chip. I read about it in an issue of computer shopper after I had got my card, and I have never forgotten about that article. That card was the holy grail for me back in 1992. I am so happy I have found a community that shares my love for old hardware and the many happy memories it brings with it. I can truly say there is no computer hardware I bought after 2000 that really excited me like it did in the 1990's.

Reply 1 of 13, by dbellue1

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It just got here, yeah. Now if I only had a 486DX 33 to plug her in and start up Prince of Persia, Wing Commander 2, Star Wars X-wing, and Wolfenstein 3D. That and a pizza would be a fun Friday night!

Reply 2 of 13, by SScorpio

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I bought one back when they were new and was disappointed. As Phil mentions Adlib is trash on these, so good luck with old games.

I originally thought these were the next step up from the AWE 64, and boy was I wrong. The wave table sounded better than what an old card could pull off, but listen to the playback in Phil's video and the music is just off, and it doesn't use the standard Soundfont format.

Phil's video was trying to highlight there are still deals to be found, but you can get a far better Sound Blaster Live for about the same price, or $5 more than one of these. Maybe once the supply of those dries up, but I could see some of the crystal based cards being sought after instead.

At the end of the day the card is just a rebrand of the Ensoniq AudioPCI which is the last card they put out before Creative acquired them. And the goal was making something as dirt cheap as possible to sell to OEMs and save the company.

Reply 3 of 13, by BitWrangler

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In general, I think of the SB128's niche as post 1997 games on sub 1Ghz CPUs, because it's meant to be one of the lightest on CPU for that kind of thing.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 4 of 13, by melbar

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This CT4810 was the first soundcard in my first self-build in the 1990's.
The socket 370 platform was: Abit BP6, with first: one 466Mhz Celeron. Then later with two 466MHz Celeron's. Overclocked to 7x75Mhz = 525Mhz.
Back in these day's, it was not the time of silent personal computer.
The used heatsinks were these noisy 'golden orbs'.
Golden Orb Socket-370 CPU Cooling Fan

Interesting: I've sold the mainboard in the 2000's. It has refused to boot. I think a simple recap would be enough to save this board.

Now, when i look to silly prices for Abit BP6 on eBay, compared to the prices for PCI 128 soundcard...
No comment....

Edit:
Later, the PCI128 was replaced with a real EAX card. The soundblaster live.
Don't know which CT number...

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Reply 5 of 13, by RandomStranger

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BitWrangler wrote on 2024-10-27, 04:52:

In general, I think of the SB128's niche as post 1997 games on sub 1Ghz CPUs, because it's meant to be one of the lightest on CPU for that kind of thing.

I think the opposite. I think of it as an integrated sound card replacement for OP CPUs. Since it has no hardware acceleration, a fast CPU has to make up the difference. The only types of builds I can imagine this in is either those where you just need sound and don't really care about gaming, or super budget/trash quirk builds like something with a 3GHz Celeron D and Geforce MX/FX-5200.

sreq.png retrogamer-s.png

Reply 6 of 13, by Munx

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Phil did make a video comparing sound card performance for games and it was one of the worse ones:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC01uiyuJxI

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The FireStarter 2.0 - The wooden K5
The Underdog - The budget K6
The Voodoo powerhouse - The power-hungry K7
The troll PC - The Socket 423 Pentium 4

Reply 7 of 13, by Zup

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My girlfriend (now wife) had (almost) one of those in her computer. It was a PCI64, I guess that there was not much difference.

It... worked. I don't remember having troubles with OS or games, but I remember that I could hear some kind of noise when the CPU was loaded. I thought that it could be that it got interferences from the bus or the CPU could not handle it (it was a Pentium 75). The previous and the replacement cards (SB16 and AWE64, both ISA) did not had those noise, and that card put on another (faster) system also did not had that noise.

Some questions...
- Did that card had any amount of RAM onboard? I suspected that the soundbanks in that card used onboard memory, but I'm not sure.
- What were the real differences between PCI64 and 128? I thought that were (almost) the same chip, with some minor differences (some pins (un)connected? software?).

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-10-27, 06:44:

I think the opposite. I think of it as an integrated sound card replacement for OP CPUs. Since it has no hardware acceleration, a fast CPU has to make up the difference. The only types of builds I can imagine this in is either those where you just need sound and don't really care about gaming, or super budget/trash quirk builds like something with a 3GHz Celeron D and Geforce MX/FX-5200.

Keep in mind that:
- Not every (although most) PC motherboards had sound.
- The integrated motherboards sound cards had almost no quality. They were so bad that you could tell the difference even with shitty 10€ speakers.
- Unless you needed very good quality (musics), audio acceleration (gamers with 5.1 speakers) or retro gaming, it was a solid budget offer.

I have traveled across the universe and through the years to find Her.
Sometimes going all the way is just a start...

I'm selling some stuff!

Reply 8 of 13, by leileilol

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Zup wrote on 2024-10-27, 07:37:

- What were the real differences between PCI64 and 128? I thought that were (almost) the same chip, with some minor differences (some pins (un)connected? software?).

Changes for AC'97 compliancy (48khz, etc)

Being the older AudioPCI card, PCI64 supposedly had Soundscape compatibility which wasn't on the 128 (as Creative took over by that point anyway)

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Reply 9 of 13, by swaaye

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I think the most interesting thing is how there's a monthly new thread about these cards. I mean these are the lowest of the low really. I am not sure if there are less capable PCI sound cards.

Some of them have 4.0 speaker output and that is something you don't find on all cards. I used to play Total Annihilation with surround sound from my AudioPCI. That was the only memorable thing about the card. Well, other than how the DOS driver is quite problematic if you actually try to play a lot of games with it.

Reply 10 of 13, by chinny22

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swaaye wrote on 2024-10-27, 15:51:

I mean these are the lowest of the low really. I am not sure if there are less capable PCI sound cards.

Well 1 step up from the lowest IMHO due to the dos drivers.
Cards can still be useful if you have a PCI only motherboard without a SB Link, or you have something like a Realtek onboard sound that can't do dos sound at all.
but other budget options like the Avance Logic ALS 4000 are better choices.

and while the SBLive! is still so cheap and available I struggle to think actually purchasing one of these is a good idea apart from novelty.

I have 2 PC's with the PCI64 onboard, it does the job and means I don't have to go out and purchase more sound cards for these 2 rigs

Reply 11 of 13, by luckybob

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I think Phil made on of the most reasonable and logical arguments in the video.

I'm paraphrasing but; "its not perfect, but its good enough for 9/10 games for 1997 and on." and "you don't need the 'perfect' card that works on every single game made with audio-fool quality" and I would like to double down on those comments.

Yea, its fun to get the perfect system, but holy hell do people need to calm TF down. Besides, its a LOT more accurate to just use whatever your compaq/dell came with and what you could buy with pocket change at your local computer store.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Reply 12 of 13, by stamasd

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melbar wrote on 2024-10-27, 06:03:

The used heatsinks were these noisy 'golden orbs'.
Golden Orb Socket-370 CPU Cooling Fan

I find it extremely funny that the store lists those heatsinks as "Up to 1GB" 😁

I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
With a bit and a byte
And a read and a write,
I/O, I/O

Reply 13 of 13, by stamasd

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Zup wrote on 2024-10-27, 07:37:

- Did that card had any amount of RAM onboard? I suspected that the soundbanks in that card used onboard memory, but I'm not sure.

Nope. The sound banks are in main memory, accessed through the PCI bus, on all ES1370 and variants. No memory on-board. And BTW that may be one reason for the noisiness.

I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
With a bit and a byte
And a read and a write,
I/O, I/O