Does anyone actually own that PC mainboard advertised in EW that had tubes on it!

[Fanuc]

Hello,

Just a quick one. I don't know if people remember that in an old edition of Electronics World (formally EW&W) that there was a PC motherboard with a tube on it for the music section. It also had audio grade M cap capacitors.......

A collector's item no doubt..........

Anyone heard it before ? Would be fantastic to hear from someone who had one.

Wanna sell it?

Best Regards

Kevin

[Fanuc]

I will post some pictures tomorrow. Digging thru' all my EW's... Ho Hum!

[Fenris]

That would be the:

Aopen AK79G Tube
Aopen AX4GE-Tube
Aopen AX4GE-Tube G
Aopen AX4PE Tube
Aopen AX4B-533 Tube

Make sure it has tube in the name. Without the "tube" it's just a normal motherboard.

http://usa.aopen.com/search_prod.aspx?modl=tube

One search in Google for "vacuum tube motherboard" to find the manufacturer, one search to find their website, one search on the website for "tube".
Good luck finding one. E-bay may be your best bet.

[nnuxx]

i might wanna read this article before spending your buck$ in one such board
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/...ube/index.html
maybe some improvements can be made???

i liked the idea tho

[Eva]

Non-sense technology for non-sense people. Despite the tube buffer, it employs the same lo-fi noisy AC97 chip as most motherboards, which is probably integrated into the main chipset together with all the high frequency digital stuff. I'd rather keep the spdif and use whatever external DAC I want.

[bikehorn]

i have to really wonder what sort of power supply that tube is getting. doubtless a very noisy one.

[tomahauk]

Originally posted by bikehorn
i have to really wonder what sort of power supply that tube is getting. doubtless a very noisy one.

i think its a kind of SMPS

[Zen Mod]

besides coolness of owing this sort of mobo, there is just one rule;garbage in ,garbage out..........

only external audio card can have any decent sound.....

pause ; volume up............click,click,toc,click.......

[MJL21193]

Originally posted by tomahauk



i think its a kind of SMPS

To the best of my knowledge, every PC power supply is switch mode. Too expensive for the real thing.

[MJL21193]

Originally posted by Zen Mod

only external audio card can have any decent sound.....

pause ; volume up............click,click,toc,click.......

I disagree. Onboard sound was bad in the old days, but not today. If you have the processing power, there's nothing wrong with onboard sound. The big marketing machine at Creative has everyone brainwashed into thinking otherwise.