1996 - Another PC Upgrade, New Sound Card, and New Vanity Callsign

I was inactive the entire year until August, when I began working some islands for I.O.T.A.

I did upgrade my computer system to a no-name Asian motherboard design with a generic video card, with an AMD K5 75 CPU. I was anxious to get this system to run faster. I spent a lot of time trying to get a Cyrix 6x86 p150+ CPU to run without crashing, but the heat of this early 6x86 was too much for this cheap motherboard. I would upgrade the whole system myself in 1997.

I also took my old 80486 motherboard, an old hard drive, and other cards and made myself a whole separate PC system, which I sold to a Brown University student when I ran an ad. I got $400 for it.

On September 17, 1996, I purchased a Creative Soundblaster 16PNP sound card for $75.

I applied for a vanity callsign during the first phase of this new system. K1SO was one of my top choices, but a bit further down the list was WA1P, which I had always wished I had gotten back when they were issuing them the first time around. It would sound great on CW, I thought, and the WA1 prefix had a flavor of the old days when WA1 XXX were prevalent.​

On November 4, 1996, I was issued vanity callsign WA1P (pictured left). This call was previously held by Atsushi Tatomi, ex: AH0Z, now K1RJ. Here is the QSL card I had made up for my new call.