LGR - The AdLib Gold (Patreon)

https://youtu.be/t3SPe7hv-DA

Ahh, now this is the good stuff.

Greetings folks, and allow me to introduce a video that I've been enthusiastically craving to make ever since LGR first began. And thanks to a unit on loan it's finally happened!

This is the one and only Ad Lib Gold 1000 sound card, released in 1992 as a (rather late) follow-up to the OG 1987 AdLib Music Synthesizer. And it really is the stuff of legend. I’ve bid on just about every one of them that’s shown up online, but well. AdLib Golds rarely show up for sale at all, and when they do, the lowest price is rarely less than a thousand bucks for a loose card and more complete examples can go for $2000-4000 or so...

Suffice it to say this may be the only time I ever have a boxed Gold 1000 in my possession so I've spent the last couple weeks spending every day on this project while working on "easier" stuff in the meantime. Hopefully it's come together well, it ended up being a half hour mini documentary of sorts. My goal here was to see whether or not the AdLib Gold lives up to its mythical reputation, delve into its rocky development history, explore why it failed, and see how it actually performs on early 90s PC hardware. I gotta say, this was quite the learning experience and I hope I can really shed some light on this rare beast for those that are interested.

Now to take a day off and think about what's next, haha. This project has been EATING MY BRAIN 24/7 ever since it showed up in the mail so it's kinda hard to stop thinking about it at the moment. Already know a few small things I'm gonna tweak in the final video so there's that. And I ended up cutting a few sections of the video since it was getting rather lengthy, so I may create a follow-up on Blerbs before I ship it back. We'll see. For now, please enjoy this look at one of the most uncommon, valuable, and hyped-up sound cards in the entirety of vintage computing. 🎶🤘