Uncreative Labs

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I have an old System that was apparently a computer portrait system at one time an old IBM 5150 w/ a radio tuner ??? and a card I mentioned earlier that captures frames the hd is not readable so I am in the process of rebuilding it. I have a feeling though this unit will probably never take pictures or play music from the radio while typing on wordperfect ever again.

Have any of you ever encountered REALLY strange cards for older computers? A radio card is rather odd for any computer vintage I guess (at first I though it was a sound card until I looked at it, has an antenna port) I am guessing there were other strange cards around, one that just seemed interesting that I sold about 4yrs ago said ma100 (and nothing else) it was an MFM card with 384kb of memory on it and two serial ports. Not a bad idea for a 5150, but I have never seen one like that again, maybe should have kept it, oh well.

Cheers

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Radio cards weren't that strange. More of a novelty. Several are still being made, including some "high-end" versions...

http://www.winradio.com/home/receivers.htm

Joined: 01 Oct 2004 Posts: 169 Location: behind you!

here is the one I had. It was nice but the drivers were buggy.

aims tech radiotrack

Joined: 19 Oct 2004 Posts: 138 Location: Lynnwood,WA

I have and still use THREE strange old cards......all in used on my 486 none-the-less

PB-TV5 Pacakard Bell T.V. Tuner Card - Probably one of the earliest TV cards, it's just 16 bit, requires a 512K SVGA card or better to run, yet only works in 256 color SVGA with Windows 3.1. It has a capture feature that does not work period for some assinine reason. I pulled it out of a Packard Bell Multimedia Socket 3 system where the leaky CMOS battery ate up the traces on the motherboard, rendering it unable to store, much less even write/read BIOS settings, however, it'd still POST.

Packard Bell FM Radio Card - This is much like what you describe, has one phono jack for the antenna, and another for the audio output. I used to use this for a radio in one of my other machines in my shed for entertainment when working on computers during the winter....however...It's now in the 486 and hardly gets used At the Moment, it's mostly for show & tell.

Future Domain 4 Channel IDE controller w/BIOS - I found this wacko thing in a pile of boards at a local thrift shop just before I moved. It seems to have issues with Windows 3.1 for some reason, but works okay with 9x. It basically allows a computer with both a limitation on how many IDE drives it can run (read TWO), and how big they are (eg. Break the 528MB limit with a max of 8GB), it also has a funky audio connectors on the back which I assume is for a CD-ROM, they're both RCA jacks. Because of this, I'm running older 486 boards with a 3GB HDD!