Soundcards of the Stone Age

[Salka]

I recently acquired a couple of ancient PCs from the good old days. My particular favourite is this one 386sx Pc, with a tiny little 15'' monitor, running Windows 3.1. It brings back memories of the times when I used to listen to the Eurythmics while trying to copy DOTT backgrounds in a copy of DPaint we got with PC World magazine, and then turning it up to drown out the sound of my parents screaming at each other and throwing things around because they couldn't agree on exactly what shade of blue the sky was.

Anyway, while this 386 is nearly exactly the same as the computer I remember using as a child (ours was also sx, not dx), it doesn't appear to have a sound card. Apparently, not all PCs had sound cards back then. And I was thinking... wouldn't it be neat to be able to get my hands on an old soundblaster pro card? I could reinstall Dr Sbaitso and The Talking Parrot for the first time in... 13 years! (Actually, I still have Sbaitso on this PC).

Is it true that not all PCs came with sound cards back then? It seems somewhat unbelievable, like a tale of distant times long ago passed. And can I buy a new sound card for it? Probably not, because of driver compatability issues and whatnot with Windows 3.1... also, that'd probably screw up playing old games on it, even if I could. Is there a chance I might find a really lousy soundcard somewhere in the deepest and darkest corners of PC world that might do the job? Does Intel make Intel EXTREME Sounds? Ha ha! Ha.

Out in the shed, in the corner, there's my old 386. It died long ago. Perhaps I could take the sound card from that. That was a Soundblaster. Would I be able to find the drivers for it?

Anyway, never mind that. Tell me about your day or, alternatively, the first time you ever owned a Sound Card. What was life like when your head was floating in a thick, treacle-like space of silence? What was your first reaction to SOUND? Were you like, "Man, I though all people could listen to this sweet, sweet music," or were you more like, "Man, holy crap!!!" or perhaps, "Blah blah blah where do you put the toast in this sound card blah blah I'm taking you back to the store, you're not even a KETTLE"? Do tell!

[Jake]

Most PC's didn't have soundcards. I remember a handful of people I knew bought sound cards specifically to play Wing Commander 2 with the speech pack. That was so hardcore I could hardly believe it (the awesomeness of it I mean).

That said, I'd had an Apple IIgs for a couple years by then and was beyond used to having (for the time) quality sound in my games and stuff. Amiga users are probably in a simliar boat.

[Salka]

Wow, I was previously unaware of this massive, silent, poverty-stricken portion of the computer owning population of old. I imagined ALL kids must have sound cards like I did. Little did I realize it was a privilage, man. Some kids had to play Pinball Dreams with no sound, or Secret of Monkey Island with PC Speakers. Sound Cards didn't just come as standard? Crazy.

[Wormsie]

PC speaker was just so awesome.

Seriosly, my brother and I had been playing Lemmings when our dad took the PC to the store and they had a sound card installed. We were practically jumping in awe as we heard the music, it was just the ultimate cool.

The joy didn't last long, as there were some hardware incompatibility issues and dad took the PC back to the store. He wasn't too content with computers, had my brother and I been a little older we would have fixed the problems in no time.

[Salka]

Man, arghhh, I hate people like your Dad. They're the sort of people that come in and say crap like, "So does this PC have a modem to put disks in to?" or they'll point at the monitor and say "Does this hard drive have a place to download games from my CDs on to?". If you're buying a PC and you know nothing about them, do what normal people do, and at least do a little bit of research on them. Once, I swear to god, somebody came in and asked where you put the bread. SHE THOUGHT THE PRINTERS WERE TOASTERS. She wasn't even OLD or blind or anything. And another time, somebody came back with a keyboard and said that he'd bought it yesterday, and he couldn't find out where to plug it in to the TV and turn it on, where to plug in the telephone line, and also did you have to buy a separate attachment to put floppy disks into? THIS WAS LAST WEEK. You motherfuckers, you make my weekends so much harder, and my work day so much longer.

[Chris]

Man, getting a sound card was an amazing friggin experience. The first time I had one was in our 486, and I almost couldn't believe it. Holy crap.

[ysbreker]

My first soundcard was in my own 486. it was a secondhand soundblaster 8bit. I can remeber if it was isa or pci tho. I do think I still have the card, booklet and dikettes that came with it.

[Wormsie]

Man, arghhh, I hate people like your Dad. They're the sort of people that come in and say crap like, "So does this PC have a modem to put disks in to?" or they'll point at the monitor and say "Does this hard drive have a place to download games from my CDs on to?".

He never was that bad, but I'm glad I don't live at home anymore. I was his tech support.

[Kolzig]

I came to the pc world rather late, all my friends already had pc's. My first computer was a used 486DX 33Mhz machine. It didn't have a sound card, but in some time I got enough money and bought myself a brand new Sound Blaster 16 Value card.

Oh man the sweet sound of digitized speech in the first NHL Hockey, and the adlib/sb musics in Stunts and Jones in the Fast Lane. That was heaven.

Hmm, I also remember building some weird crap in school with pc speakers. Doorbells and all sorts of strange unworking scrap.

[Erwin_Br]

My first PC was a 286, which didn't have a soundcard either. Hell, it didn't even have a hard disk!

Then one day I got this brand new, very expensive, 486 DX 66 Mhz with a single speed CD-ROM drive and... a Creative Labs SoundBlaster! W00t! And the hard drive was a whopping 60 MB!!! I still have that machine somewhere, and I think it even works. Might be fun to dig it up someday and start playing all these neat pirated games I had.

--Erwin

[Wormsie]

Then one day I got this brand new, very expensive, 486 DX 66 Mhz with a single speed CD-ROM drive and... a Creative Labs SoundBlaster! W00t! And the hard drive was a whopping 60 MB!!! I still have that machine somewhere, and I think it even works. Might be fun to dig it up someday and start playing all these neat pirated games I had.

Sounds exactly like the PC I had.

[Salka]

We had all sorts of early home computers, real 80's looking stuff, but our first PC was a 386sx with a 40 MB hard disk, which was neat. The second PC we got was a 486dx with a 60 MB hard disk, probably pretty much like yours, and it was amazing because 7th Guest looked so friggin' amazing in comparison to any graphic adventure we'd ever played. We were just awestruck. It was amazing. I mean, the game was crap, but it looked gorgeous!

In those days, I mean.

[Erwin_Br]

We had all sorts of early home computers, real 80's looking stuff, but our first PC was a 386sx with a 40 MB hard disk, which was neat. The second PC we got was a 486dx with a 60 MB hard disk, probably pretty much like yours, and it was amazing because 7th Guest looked so friggin' amazing in comparison to any graphic adventure we'd ever played. We were just awestruck. It was amazing. I mean, the game was crap, but it looked gorgeous!

In those days, I mean.

The 7th Guest was the first adventure game that I played on that new 486! It was also the first CD-ROM game I bought! It didn't run that smoothly, though. I remember the sound would crackle whenever an animation was running.

--Erwin

[Ninja Dodo]

I remember being totally in awe of the theme song on the Lion King game. Disney used to make cool platform games.

[b0b]

aaaaaaah.

I remember saving my paper round money for god knows how long to buy an 8-bit, creative labs soundblaster V2.0.

sixty quid.

mono, 8-bit only. But like someone said earlier, when I heard the wing commander speech pack - oh maaaaaaan. that was amazing.

Previous to that, all we had was the PC speaker, which could actually be tortured into playing digitized speech (start of space hulk, I think?) albeit very quietly. The tinny MIDI though, and crackly speech through crappy tiny speakers, aaaaah. That was joy.

Goddamn kids with their £20 5.1 surround soundcards and Xboxes with dolby... don't know they're born!

[Chris]

Oh man, Space Hulk. That was actually a pretty good game.