[HN Gopher] Comprehensive list of modern reproductions of vintag...
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       Comprehensive list of modern reproductions of vintage sound cards
        
       Author : nickt
       Score  : 42 points
       Date   : 2022-06-26 14:58 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.vogons.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.vogons.org)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | noizz wrote:
       | WHY?
       | 
       | Being a boomer I don't miss anything about those cards. Drivers
       | were awful (if even existed), sound quality mediocre and all of
       | them came with a ton of compromises, if not quirks.
        
         | Fargoan wrote:
         | It's a fun hobby
        
         | goosedragons wrote:
         | There's a segment of retro PC gamers that like playing and
         | using period correct hardware because modern OSs and emulation
         | tools can be not quite right. Some vintage sound cards have
         | gotten scarce and expensive while still being desirable to that
         | community (in part because of the quirks) and so reproduction
         | cards have started to become a thing.
        
         | orblivion wrote:
         | Maybe you need to be Gen X or early Millennial. How do you feel
         | about (just inventing an example) the background noise of LPs
         | vs 8-tracks (vs cassettes)? This has to do with what was around
         | when were that specific age, I think. Particularly if it's tied
         | to a game we love.
        
           | orblivion wrote:
           | I'll also throw in - there's something to be said for
           | faithful reproduction, per se. I'm just coming to terms with
           | the fact that I'm never going to fix up all my old video game
           | consoles, and I'm going to find someone who is willing and
           | able to do something with them. And part of why is that I
           | know I can find an emulator to faithfully replicate it, and I
           | can set up a raspberry pi or something some day and have the
           | same experience.
           | 
           | People with old PC games might want to play and faithfully
           | replicate them again just the same.
           | 
           | (Though modernized versions are often fine too.)
        
         | prvc wrote:
         | Frankly, it's self-indulgence. Recently, Stallman has been
         | complaining about the diversion of resources away from free
         | software towards retro computing.
        
           | classichasclass wrote:
           | RMS confuses the symptom for the disease. Retrocomputing is
           | almost always pure hobby, done for joy and recreation, while
           | there is plenty of drudgery in libre/open source software. He
           | shouldn't be surprised when geeky goofing off is a lot more
           | fun for people than frequently unpaid labour.
        
           | IntelMiner wrote:
           | As much as I hate to give Stallman oxygen, as a fellow retro
           | computing enthusiast I'm morbidly curious to read about it.
           | Is there anywhere I can find the full text of his caustic
           | remarks?
        
             | prvc wrote:
             | I recall having heard it in a somewhat recent solo video
             | address of his, although I don't have the exact timestamp
             | ready to hand.
        
       | Sean-Der wrote:
       | I have been having so much fun doing Retro stuff. Vogons is the
       | place to be for this area. I bought a Compaq Presario 4505. Then
       | did lots of upgrades
       | 
       | * Ram to 64MB
       | 
       | * CPU is a 233MMX
       | 
       | * 512KB COAST
       | 
       | * Voodoo 3 3000 PCI
       | 
       | * IDE -> SATA with a 32GB SSD
       | 
       | * Audician 32 Plus
       | 
       | Wavetable cards are especially fun. Serdashop sells a bunch of
       | interesting ones. X2GS, Yucatan FX, E-Wave, McFly and X2S are
       | popular ones. Check out this[0] video. The music can be so
       | dramatically different depending on what hardware you have. It is
       | fun switching between cards.
       | 
       | Games from this era just had so much passion put into them and
       | you can feel it while playing. I am playing System Shock 1 right
       | now and you can see all the different experiments that went into
       | the game (some good and some bad).
       | 
       | ----
       | 
       | Another cool device to check is the WeeCee [1]. If you want to
       | play games on real hardware but don't feel like collecting (and
       | troubleshooting) old hardware.
       | 
       | [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiQQ7vvW_T4
       | 
       | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USHvvSbYmJA
        
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       (page generated 2022-06-26 23:01 UTC)