creepingnet
Veteran Member
I'm trying out something new on my vintage PC's. As we all know, I"m not a full-blown retro guy, mostly just a retro gamer who likes the old hardware. But sometimes, the old hardware lacks certain features that I want/like.
The issue here is internal speakers, all of my boxes have SoundBlaster cards (save for the Tandy which funnels everything through the int spkr anyway), those internal sound cards all have pass-throughs for the internal speaker header on the motherboard, so while sending the internal speaker header to the soundcard, everything is run through the output jack on the SoundBlaster.....
However, I'm getting sick of using cheap old computer speakers (and the mess they leave around), and several old headphones to hear audio from my old boxes, so I've decided to "re-purpose" those old internal speakers as an internal speaker for the soundcard, or later on, two, if this experiment brings about the results I like.
What I've done is used a cable from Radio Shack run from the line-out on the soundcard, un it through a bent slot cover, and then back into the case, the aligator clips clip to the positive and negative leads on the speaker, producing mono output.
The ending results were pretty good for a 1.5" speaker, also, I noticed I got the highs to roll off more with it going through the SB16.
My eventual plan is to mount TWO speakers inside the case and have stereo output, and use a right-angle jack so I can keep the back flush. The whole reason for this is to allow me to have my precious video game audio without needing speakers or headphones externally by keeping it all inside the case.
Did a few other things over time as well, took out the ET4000 video card for awhile to try out the ATI VGA Wonder I have, for some reason the VGA Wonder only displays in black and white, so I"m not sure exactly what is wrong there, but I'll look into it.
Meanwhile, the 486 is being put away for the time being, I"m thinking about working out a way to make it into a PC recording setup....totally stripped down, and see if maybe I can record a full demo CD on that computer using my old, full duplex, no-latency, Hardware Loopbacked SoundBlaster AWE 32 (with 2MB of Wavetable Memory!!!), as I'm getting sick of fighting the MPAA and RIAA's destruction of a consumer grade sound card with hardware loopback, and I had an old P120 that could throw down the audio more than fast enough to hard disk, so maybe a 486 DX4-100 is what I need for recording demos.
The issue here is internal speakers, all of my boxes have SoundBlaster cards (save for the Tandy which funnels everything through the int spkr anyway), those internal sound cards all have pass-throughs for the internal speaker header on the motherboard, so while sending the internal speaker header to the soundcard, everything is run through the output jack on the SoundBlaster.....
However, I'm getting sick of using cheap old computer speakers (and the mess they leave around), and several old headphones to hear audio from my old boxes, so I've decided to "re-purpose" those old internal speakers as an internal speaker for the soundcard, or later on, two, if this experiment brings about the results I like.
What I've done is used a cable from Radio Shack run from the line-out on the soundcard, un it through a bent slot cover, and then back into the case, the aligator clips clip to the positive and negative leads on the speaker, producing mono output.
The ending results were pretty good for a 1.5" speaker, also, I noticed I got the highs to roll off more with it going through the SB16.
My eventual plan is to mount TWO speakers inside the case and have stereo output, and use a right-angle jack so I can keep the back flush. The whole reason for this is to allow me to have my precious video game audio without needing speakers or headphones externally by keeping it all inside the case.
Did a few other things over time as well, took out the ET4000 video card for awhile to try out the ATI VGA Wonder I have, for some reason the VGA Wonder only displays in black and white, so I"m not sure exactly what is wrong there, but I'll look into it.
Meanwhile, the 486 is being put away for the time being, I"m thinking about working out a way to make it into a PC recording setup....totally stripped down, and see if maybe I can record a full demo CD on that computer using my old, full duplex, no-latency, Hardware Loopbacked SoundBlaster AWE 32 (with 2MB of Wavetable Memory!!!), as I'm getting sick of fighting the MPAA and RIAA's destruction of a consumer grade sound card with hardware loopback, and I had an old P120 that could throw down the audio more than fast enough to hard disk, so maybe a 486 DX4-100 is what I need for recording demos.