I think this will be the final update on my P70 project.
I opened the case back up to examine the video board caps. They look pristine. And The only reason I would replace them at this point is to help with the ghosting that can be seen in some of the photos I posted when the machine is booted to windows. And Ill be honest. Im not at all convinced recapping the video board will help with this so unless it gets worse I think Ill put that off until its needed.
The Texelec OPL3 Resound 2 board came in so I popped it in and coppied the file from the website to the reference disk.
By the way looking at this photo.... Where the heck is slot 3?!?
Since this sound card is basically an adlib clone there was no software to install (i forget do you need to install adlib drivers in windows 3.11????)
I tested out a few games like Doom, The secret of monkey island, Planet X3 and Warcraft 1 and 2.. They all sound perfect for Music and no sound effects.
I think I made the best choice on a sound card for this machine. ITs barely a 486 and Im limited to 8mb of RAM so the types of games it can play is pretty limited (in fact some of the games I used for sound testing are to slow to actually play but they were good for sound testing) so paying 2 and a half times as much for a sound blaster compatible card just isnt worth it in my opinion.
I think I hit the ceiling with this IBM p70 as far as options go. Both slots are taken up, the RAM is maxed out, it has a hard drive card now, and a Cyrix 486 cpu upgrade. Unless someone makes something new I can somehow install in the midst of all of this; This machine is complete. And honestly I dont think there are a ton of these working out there so its too niche for specific upgrades.
Anyway I hope this thread gives people with the P70 (and a most likely dead ESDI drive) motivation to dust them off and get them up and running.
Mick
P.S. Special Thanks to
@markgm for selling the McIDE-CF. If I hadn't spotted that card this computer would just be sitting on a shelf forever.