486 Laptop needs sound card

Dennis Wood · Post by **Dennis Wood** » 23 Jul 2001 9:11 am

I have a Gateway 486/66 just sitting around doing nothing and was thinking about maybe adding a sound card for playing midi files or BIAB files for practice or jammn'. Any/most suggestions welcome.
THis is a DOS/Win 3.11 machine but i have a 3.11 to win95 upgrade that i could install.
thanks
dw

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Sierra U-12 Crown Gearless, Peavey Nashville 400,
Peavey TransTube Fx,
Peavey Stereo 212,
Peavey TT Bandit w/ex speaker. Tele, Strat, 1970 Les Paul Std.

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 23 Jul 2001 10:07 am

You'll have to verify that there is an open slot for an expansion card and the buss type. Since it's an old 486 it's probably and ISA buss type.

I wouldn't go to WIN95, it works poorly, if at all on a 486.

Will BIAB (current version) run on a WIN 3.1 machine? BIAB has a player only but I don't know if it will run on Win 3.1 either.

Dennis Wood · Post by **Dennis Wood** » 23 Jul 2001 11:49 am

Jack, thanks for the reply. I am assumeing there is an open ISA slot, seems to me i remember an opening on the motherbord(guess i should look first). if there is no slot, is it possible to use the external com port? I had hoped someone was familiar with the gateway 486/66 as it was a pretty popular machine when it first came out. I upgraded a desktop 486/66 to win95 and you are correct, it didn't run well at all. But, i think for midi files and an occasional txt file for notes or lyrics, it would suffice.
thanks Dennis

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Sierra U-12 Crown Gearless, Peavey Nashville 400,
Peavey TransTube Fx,
Peavey Stereo 212,
Peavey TT Bandit w/ex speaker. Tele, Strat, 1970 Les Paul Std.

Ole Dantoft · Post by **Ole Dantoft** » 26 Jul 2001 4:18 am

Dennis,
You say in your topic-heading that it's a LAPTOP, is that right ??? I don't know this particular PC, but if it's like almost every other laptop, it doesn't have a STANDARD slot anywhere, but maybe a proprietary expansion slot, which can only connect to periferrals (sp?) from that particular manufacturer.

If this is the case, your only option is a PC-card (PCMCIA) sound-card, if the PC has THAT capability, but these are expensive, and frankly I wouldn't spend that on a 486 !

BTW I've been with BIAB since version 1.0, and it DID run on Win 3.x, but I don't know about the later versions.

Ole

Jim Baron · Post by **Jim Baron** » 26 Jul 2001 6:46 am

Just finished redoing my old 486/66 laptop with Win 3.1 for BIAB use. I tried putting in one of the later versions of BIAB and it would run, but not well. The program was just to large and the soloist files would freeze up. Plus many of the features would not be usable like recording. So I loaded in version 7 and took it to version 7g so it would play the newer style files and it works good. I already had an older Roland SCP-55 PCMCIA slot sound card to use. The easiest thing for sound is to find an older Roland sound module like the SC-7 or 50 or 55 that has the serial port connection. Then you can put it all in a carring case and be ready to jam in about 10 minutes.