hunterjwizzard
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Mar 21, 2020
- Messages
- 909
Aside from the basics, video, network, and audio; what other kinds of PCI cards do you like to use?
/thread hijack/I had a PCI radio card back in the day. It was pretty terrible. I think it got one station without static, even with a decent antenna.
For several years I also had a "myth box" DVR stuffed full of analog TV tuner cards. Of course that was made obsolete by the digital TV transition. There are ATSC tuners now, but with nearly everything available via streaming it's kind of pointless.
analog TV tuner cards
Well the notion I always liked was using my computer monitor "as a TV" with the capture card, IE just as a display, but somehow still going through the PC instead of a switcher. I know its a weird thing to want but like I could hook my playstation up to the capture card and play on it while still watching TV on the TV(or vice versa). Having it run through the computer also meant I could still do things on the computer. The ADHD is real.Anyway. Obviously useless today, but if you want to play with stupid pet tricks like hooking a VCR or video game console up to a *very gutless* computer they might still be good for a laugh.
but the idea of just having those RCA jacks did then and still does now feel really awesome.
Teenage-me didn't have the money or the modding skills. Fortunately Adult-me has both!So add RCA jacks?
The only other thing I know of is DVD decoders. But that's why I started this thread, hoping someone else has some thoughts.Apart that class of hardware - FM/TV/AV/Sat cards - is there anything else that's not a specialized industrial controller of something?
I'd like to bid around ebay for interesting PCI cards but I don't know what to search for.
If your board isn't deluxe with onboard code readers, a PCI POST card could be interesting. I recall buying one like this (http://www.qiguaninc.com/met/producten/producten119_en.html) which promised a bunch of additional diagnostic data, which came with a little booklet to decode the additional four-digit codes it generated, but it never seemed that useful in practice, and seemed to no longer register codes in the last board I had with PCI slots (an X370 board). The most amusing aspect of it was that the silkscreen announced a copyright date to 2023, which was several years in the future when I bought the card.
I think this one is a better choice for utility
PC Analyzer Diagnostic Post Card Motherboard by elecseller on Tindie
4-Digit PC Analyzer Diagnostic Post Card Motherboard Post Tester Indicator with LED Display for Desktop PCwww.tindie.com
ISA and PCI and it's internal which is better when doing diagnostics than having displays on breakout. But if you're building a case and you want to fill it up with peripherals and oddware, sure that one looks kind of neat.
Yes, they work with anything 286 and newer that puts out POST codes. I had one in a recent Asus mainboard (6th gen Intel) because I was too lazy to connect anything and wanted to check if it lives.How widely compatible are things like this? Its definitely an interesting device, but could I expect one to work in any system with PCI slots, or does it only work with a narrow range of motherboards?
This raised somewhat bitter memories as I have an entire box of PCMCIA-to-PCI adapters(including front-panel adapters, back panel, etc) that somehow survived The Great Hardware Purge when I threw away a Voodoo5. I kept these stupid things.- PCMCIA adapters
I have a number of what was at one time very high-end Canopus video boards for digitizing. Almost everything was accelerated locally in hardware with your choice of a front panel for I/O or an external box.