Here are some pics:
https://vintagecomputer.ca/files/adlib/
I am curious if you've figured out roughly what serial number the 1990 edition start with. Maybe 100,000? Being a Canadian collector, I am an Adlib fan and look forward to seeing our work.
From what I compiled so far, the switch from 1/4 to 1/8 happened somewhere between serial numbers 81314 and 105017. So 100000 could be a good hypothesis.
However a little note: a serial number of 100000 doesn't mean that 100000 cards were produced; if I observe what they did between the MSC and the Gold card, they jumped from 178577 to 200214. Knowing that they skipped a bunch of serial numbers when having big revisions of the product, could mean that they did the same thing earlier between the 1987 and 1990 versions, concluding that possibly anything between 82000ish and 100000 simply doesn't exist.
An interesting detail is that they still scratched/removed the YM3812 markings on the 1990 version until a bit later, stopping only somewhere between 116899 and 119849.
The "most recent" AdLib card I've seen so far was SN 178577, made in 1991, stored, and sold by AdLib Multimedia after the bankruptcy in 1992.
As for Timo's card there is two bits of information accessible from the front that allow me to make an educated guess on the SN :
- knowing that the YM3812 chip isn't obfuscated gives it a SN more recent than 116899,
- the production week/year printed on the card (49/90) would place it somewhere before SN 119849, although that information sometimes is unreliable.
- the production date on the 3812 chip is however misleading and should not be used to date a card, because the chips were received separately and placed randomly on the cards. The dates definitely don't go linearly (ex.: 9037, 9031, 9046, 9043, 9049, 9046, 9050, 9118, 9050, 9124, etc.)
Timo, let me know if my guess is good!
