My two cards came in today, I'm almost certain that the packaging in NOT Vanilla Sonnet, but I've been known to be mistaken. The only thing that leads me to believe that one might be unused is that there was a hole in one of the two sealed bags that the card slipped out of easily. The seals are different from any I've seen on a Sonnet Anti-Static Bag before, but these are earlier cards than my 466.
Under an 8x Slide Loupe, both cards appear to have been in a PDS Slot at least once. This could be factory testing or from being used in an IT environment, which might explain the retention of the original packaging. One of my boxes came in sans slip sleeve, but I got the "Powered by Sonnet" stickers, manuals and a Crescendo "Encore" Install Diskette 1.4.5 in each box.
My 466 came with the same manual, but the Crescendo "Encore" Install Diskette 1.4.4. The slip sleeve is very different, displaying the Mac OS 9 Compatible icon and a nifty "Zooming Illustration" of a partial board shot rather than a pic of the actual card.
Considering the newer rev. "Driver Diskette" packaged with the older cards, along with the identical Y2K copyright date/rev 1.0 manual for all three cards, I'd say these are packages that were RMA'd under Sonnet's 30 Day Trial Policy. They were likely tested, repackaged with the most recent driver rev. Install Diskette, possibly the latest manual available and any missing "Powered by Sonnet" stickers, then liquidated in a package deal to be sold off as warranty free "used" merchandise by a third party.
Dunno, just guessing!
)
Under an 8x Slide Loupe, both cards appear to have been in a PDS Slot at least once. This could be factory testing or from being used in an IT environment, which might explain the retention of the original packaging. One of my boxes came in sans slip sleeve, but I got the "Powered by Sonnet" stickers, manuals and a Crescendo "Encore" Install Diskette 1.4.5 in each box.
My 466 came with the same manual, but the Crescendo "Encore" Install Diskette 1.4.4. The slip sleeve is very different, displaying the Mac OS 9 Compatible icon and a nifty "Zooming Illustration" of a partial board shot rather than a pic of the actual card.
Considering the newer rev. "Driver Diskette" packaged with the older cards, along with the identical Y2K copyright date/rev 1.0 manual for all three cards, I'd say these are packages that were RMA'd under Sonnet's 30 Day Trial Policy. They were likely tested, repackaged with the most recent driver rev. Install Diskette, possibly the latest manual available and any missing "Powered by Sonnet" stickers, then liquidated in a package deal to be sold off as warranty free "used" merchandise by a third party.
Dunno, just guessing!
)