I've been looking for parts to build up some older computers, xp and win98, and have found ebay has plenty of pci cards of supposedly similar capabilities to the legacy cards I'm searching for for about the same prices. I've been looking at mostly pci lan cards, sound cards, and dial-up modems.(I really needed one a while back to fix a pc). I know that electronics fail with age, and there is no way to gauge how the parts from the scrap dealers were treated by previous users heat, storage, age, etc. I wondering if these new generic cards are actually reliable and if they might be a better investment. There are few reviews on amazon. I suspect many cards are just clones cashing in on expired patents, however I have had driver issues with generic usb products in the past. In fact I have a usb wireless card that only successfully installed twice despite attempting to use it on 20+ setups/installs, without a model number manually finding drivers gets interesting. Trouble shooting cards without 10+ years of forums in google to read might be difficult too. Some of these cards supposedly come with driver disks although from the past I know those aren't always helpful, or labeled. What are your opinions, do they seem worth considering? What have any of you heard or experienced with such cards, especially those in the tech service industry? For what it's worth most the PCs are either to be classic gaming towers which will need gameports, or glorified jukebox dvd players.


Ps: If anyone has ever seen a pci card with 2 gameport connectors please let me know! one If my current projects has two soundblasters just for multiplayer games. Digital gameport controllers do not work with usb adapters. I suppose an alternative would be a pci to two pcmcia cards plus two gameport pcmcia cards?