Pci soundcard for mac g3

Question

Hi,
I have a blue and white Mac G3, my onboard sound in jack has broken and i can no longer record into my mac, i have heard that its possible to use a pci soundcard but i dont know which one as i have searched google but cant find what i need, i dont want an expensive soundcard just a basic good quality soundcard, i am running OS 9.2.
Many thanks, Andy.

Answer 1

I currently use an M-Audio Audiophile 2492 PCI sound card in my Power Mac G4/400 AGP "Sawtooth." It works well and drivers are still available for this card from the M-Audio website.
I haven't checked eBay lately for a used one, but as another post alluded, a decent Audiophile 2492 might set you back around $50US or so. You do need to make sure that the card is designed to work in the old PCI slots -- some of the older cards were factory modified to work in the PCI-X (or whatever it is called) of the new form-factor Power Mac G5s. Almost all Audiophile cards since the G5 model came out have been made to support that slot architecture. I don't know if the PCI-X is backward compatible with the old PCI standard of the older G3 and G4 Power Mac towers.
If you do find a decent used Audiophile card, pay special attention to the RCA style jacks on it. The grounding sleeve of the jack was held in place within its plastic casing merely by the friction of the metal against the plastic. On my card, the grounding sleeve of one of the jacks consistently comes out of the card when I remove the cable, which can be quite an annoyance. The fix is to simply push the sleeve back into the plastic holder.
Otherwise, it's a great sounding card; much better than anything that Creative Labs every put out for the Macintosh. As long as you have fast enough hard drives (7200 RPM or better), your G3 should have no problem using the full 24-bit 96,000 kHz sampling rate of this card.