Device Drivers
I recently had an old 233mhz, win98se, computer go belly up. The hard drive developed a problem and the thing would not boot properly. I replaced the drive after salvaging some data off the old drive. Then began the job of restoring software to the new drive.
I had everything I needed except the sound card driver. No big deal. I usually mute the speaker icon anyway because I prefer a computer that does not beep or speak. It is very annoying to log onto a slow loading website only to find out that the time they wasted was used to load an audio message you did not want to hear.
Even more annoying is having hardware in the computer that does not work. So I began to look for a driver for my old OPTi 16 sound card.
I must have over 20gig of archived software programs, drivers, and utilities for a variety of cards, motherboards, and systems. The OPTi driver was not to be found in any of that stash.
So I started surfing the web. Lots of sites claiming to have the driver and nearly all of them requiring registration, payment, or participation in some kind of scam. A bunch of third party low lifes trying to make money on someone elses labors.
I finally found the ‘official’ OPTi website. They had some drivers but not the one I needed. I guess they thought they were being helpful in recommending purchase of a new PCI sound card. They are only 20 or 30 dollars. I was not in a buying mood to begin with and their advice just made me mad. I put OPTi on my blacklist as companies that have no real product support. I wont be buying anymore OPTi products anytime soon.
It probably cost me more than 20 or 30 dollars in time to search some more and come up with what appeared to be an honest and free site allowing download of drivers. DriverRequest.com. No Scams, Just Free.
So, if you are in need of a driver for obsolete hardware, give them a try.
One word of caution, the site has been heavily mined with links that are actually ads. So be careful what you click on or you might find yourself at one of those driver scamers that we are trying to avoid.