I got my first PC around 1997. It was a good machine for the time: 32 MB with a 200 MHz MMX pentium, it got a S3 graphics card with 2MB of video memory and had

I got my first PC around 1997. It was a good machine for the time: 32 MB with a 200 MHz MMX pentium, it got a S3 graphics card with 2MB of video memory and had a modem, cd-rom and a sound card. The sound card was an Aztech Labs aAZTR2316. It came with drivers for windows and DOS. I soon discovered that "compatible with soundblaster" was not the same thing as "100% compatible with soundblaster". To get my sound card working as a soundblaster, I had to load its drivers. They worked but were somewhat buggy and required TSR's all the time. It some memory and, depending on the game, the game just refused to run with such drivers loaded. I never got to run battle chess with sound because of that. Since I had seen some "real computers" running UNIX I soon wanted to run linux on my PC. On linux I could play CD with the cd-rom but the drivers for my aztr2316 was only merged in 2007. By that time I had already bought a more compatible computer. I learned to envy my friends who had Creative Labs Soundblaster's and US Robotics real modems. It had some upgrades. Increased the RAM to 64 MB, replaced to modem with a NE2000 compatible network card, added CD recorder combo, I even got 2 floppy drives and 2 hard disks. The machine was almost fully stuffed internally. Nevertheless, It got replaced and I never heard a single tone from its sound card on linux. Years later I tried to turn on the computer again so I could test the drivers for the sound card. I never completed POST complaining about "parity error". I could have tried other memory chips, but I just gave up on my first machine. Let her rest.