I am thinking about buying a new sound card and I am worried that my fairly new computer may have an outdated motherboard... when @home came to my house a few months ago, I talked the installation guy into giving me an ethernet card (even though I had free USB ports). I went to put it in my computer and realized that the card was arranged backwards... in order to put it in it would have to be upside down. I took the back off and tried rearranging it, but no matter what I did, it wouldn't fit right. I figured that he may have given me a card for a Mac or something by mistake. But I have seen a few pictures of soundcards on the internet, and I noticed that they were set up just like this ethernet card..

Have they changed the way motherboards face?

you basically mean that the metal plate was effectively on the other side?

Well, I know some cards do come like that, come across a couple, which were fairly old, but i think it's like buying a car with the steering on the corre.. oh no, i meant on the right side, in america... only a few people want them, so they just don't come around much, some catalogs i've seen offer left and right sided versions.

Never quite understand why it was decided to make AMR/CMR cards the otehr way up to PCI tho, cos you HAVE to lose a PCI card if you use an AMR.. which sucks...

...go on, keep 'em comin kewp

Just seen this post and though I'd add my own question to it:

Since most new Apples use PCI cards for most thing (if not all?), are they compatible with PC PCI slots?

I recently bought an old PCI SCSI card - it was £1 (English) so I thought I'd give it a go. Got it home and it is actually longer than any of my other PCI cards (the 'pins' all line up, but there's a much bigger gap between the front of the card and pin 1), and it's got some weird attachment (not the normal screw in side panel job). Since it was obviously not designed for my type of computer (is it an Apple?) would it work?

Not tried looking at the manufacturers website yet, as it's not of great importance. It was, after all, only £1.

It might be an old card for a server, like IBM. I have an old IBM server with only MCA ports, they look alot like the PCI ports. Actually I thought it was PCI before I took a closer look in the BIOS.
About the upside down card, I have seen both and actually don't know why they are like that.