Early PC only had 5 card slots, and the only jack on the motherboard was the keyboard. One slot is going to be used by a video card, one’s probably being used by a hard drive controller, one’s probably used by a parallel + serial card. Soundcards also included controller ports to try to save a slot.

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I thought sometimes they called them game ports (for the joystick.)

I reasoned if you are installing a sound card, you are probably doing some gaming, so it made sense to sort of bundle those together.

[–] the_crotch@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago

Its on the sound card because it's a midi port. Its designed for connecting a keyboard (as in electronic piano). Most people used it for gamepads but that's not what it was there for.