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microchannel sound cards on ePay.. not mine.

J

justjunk

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 2, 2009
Messages
87
Location
mid michigan
# 270559228733
ChipChat 16 Microchannel MCA Sound Card
...already over $300 usd

and

# 190387121527
Used Microchannel PS/2 Sound Card IBM part no. 95F1288
 
Man, that price seems so ridiculous...

I know Microchannel sound cards are not easy to come by, but are they truly that rare? And if so, don't prices like that take the fun out of vintage computing?
 
If you want sound in a MCA machine you will pay a bunch for it I guess. I find many people will pay big bucks to "finish" a project or collection, so there must be fun in it or they would not do it. I tend to be too cheap to pay market value for quite a few things I would want, this is a hobby and a money sink.
 
some time ago i purchased an ibm audiovation microchannel sound card for around $65 (open box with some accessories) and thought that was crazy. reading up on the microchannel cards the chipchat is considered "best" (for gaming) making it easily worth another $300 ?!?!? the other card listed is a lesser (less compatible) card and i will be interested to see what it sells for.
 
Oh dear, that sounds like what happened with the Sony SCPH-1001 (it sold for hunderds of dollars because it had RCA jacks and thus was supposedly the best PlayStation/CD player ever made until someone discovered it wasn't and prices tanked).
 
justjunk said:
# 270559228733
ChipChat 16 Microchannel MCA Sound Card
...already over $300 usd
Click to expand...
That's based on the ESS1688 chip, which was used in many '90s laptops. It has rather poor frequency response and high levels of background noise. Definitely not worth the money!
 
vwestlife said:
That's based on the ESS1688 chip, which was used in many '90s laptops. It has rather poor frequency response and high levels of background noise. Definitely not worth the money!
Click to expand...

if i understand correctly it is not the sound quality but rather the compatibility with games (think soundblaster) that makes the chipchat version so desirable.
i think the audiovation card has better sound quality but lacks compatibility with games and there are no drivers for newer versions of windows (newer than 3.1) although there seems to be a work around for 95.
i bought the audiovation card because it was the only thing i could find at the time. all flavors of microchannel sound cards are very hard to find and seeing two of them on epay at the same time is probably a real rarity.
all that said over $300 does seem an excessive price for a sound card. note that the other card is at $11. i will be watching both auctions with great interest.
 
This is making it /really/ tempting to pull the SoundBlaster MC out of the Model 90 I got yesterday and put it up on eBay!
 
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