What retro things have you done today?

Retro6 said:
I will have to give up.

I've tried 3 different sound cards in the DOS/WIN95 machine and each time I can not install sound drivers. I've also tried to install the onboard sound trying 7 different drivers from VIA and they all error out. This machine is cursed.

Can not get USB MASS storage device driver installed neither so I've had to waste blank CD's trying out sound card drivers.

I will have to wait until another sound blaster card shows up on ebay that includes the Driver CD. I will give up after that and tear out the motherboard and chuck it in the bin if I still can't have audio on this machine.
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Try and run the Knoppix Live CD to see if it can pick up the onboard sound or one of the add in cards. If it works, you know it's your Windows install / bios setup.
 
Retro6 said:
I will have to give up.

I've tried 3 different sound cards in the DOS/WIN95 machine and each time I can not install sound drivers. I've also tried to install the onboard sound trying 7 different drivers from VIA and they all error out. This machine is cursed.

Can not get USB MASS storage device driver installed neither so I've had to waste blank CD's trying out sound card drivers.

I will have to wait until another sound blaster card shows up on ebay that includes the Driver CD. I will give up after that and tear out the motherboard and chuck it in the bin if I still can't have audio on this machine.
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If you get a network card going on the retro pc you should be able ftp files to it instead of using up disks, though you probably already know or tried.
 
Funky stuff is going on with the DOS/WIN95 PC I got an error saying that Windows needed to be reinstalled and could not start. I will have another go at it later but after today I will put that machine aside and concentrate on my other machines. I think I will need to do a motherboard change the illuminate the issues.
 
I tried to install Flight Unlimited 3 on my W2K box. It keeps failing. I'm wasting too much time on this. :o I read the wiki on this software. Lots of effort put in creating it and sadly not reflected in the sales.
en.wikipedia.org

Flight Unlimited III - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Also, loving the SB Extigy. I love the idea of the better than hifi sound quality. I wish I could hear it over the PC fans and CD Drive spinning.
 
Retro6 said:
I'm having a lot of luck with finding various pieces of software , I found crocodile clips which is excellent for building and designing electronic circuits and I found a version of BBC Basic for DOS. I can start writing some games now in Basic like in the old days but in DOS. :)

This program holds a lot of nostalgia for me, I used to spend ages on this when I was at school. I never thought I would find it again...

UetqlyI.jpeg
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Yesssss!!! Loved messing around with this!
 
just an update on the DOS/WIN95 build... I managed to find an ISA sound card that works right out the box without drivers although this sound card is a bit worse for wear which is the reason I never tried it before, it has a lot of crusty caps on it so I'm surprised it worked at all but it was my last attempt. I now have sound... well out off the left side but no working game port... now I know this card works out of the box I can search ebay for a fully working card of the same kind. Success
:)
 
Whats the best way to get files onto a DOS PC?

  1. Dos Packet driver (i cant find any Info for my US Robotics NIC to get this working)
  2. Windows 3.11 then use the TCP network in that to drop files over, anyone done this?
  3. 2nd IDE CF Card transfer manually?
 
Kurgen said:
Whats the best way to get files onto a DOS PC?

  1. Dos Packet driver (i cant find any Info for my US Robotics NIC to get this working)
  2. Windows 3.11 then use the TCP network in that to drop files over, anyone done this?
  3. 2nd IDE CF Card transfer manually?
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For me, it's using my router (Frizbox) as an FTP server and then using Windows based software to transfer files across.
I have got a machine that does have a DOS NIC Driver, but I prefer using Windows for simplicity.
 
Kurgen said:
Whats the best way to get files onto a DOS PC?

  1. Dos Packet driver (i cant find any Info for my US Robotics NIC to get this working)
  2. Windows 3.11 then use the TCP network in that to drop files over, anyone done this?
  3. 2nd IDE CF Card transfer manually?
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The CF card way is a nice idea but doesn't always work as I've found out, it depends a lot on the machine, Some machines don't like CF cards.

The Networking way sounds like an option although I've never done networking in Windows 3.11 as it was before my time. It might be a case of easier said than done.

Another more practical way is ISA to USB card or floppy GoTek USB. I don't know if there is something you can get for the serial port like an adapter for a USB drive?
 
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Null modem cable file transfer if both machines have a serial port, that is another method. But a USB floppy drive is probably the easiest, if network option not available. By which I mean the DOS machine should have its own normal floppy, and the USB floppy plugs into your modern PC to stick files on a disk.
 
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Bubo said:
Null modem cable file transfer if both machines have a serial port, that is another method. But a USB floppy drive is probably the easiest, if network option not available. By which I mean the DOS machine should have its own normal floppy, and the USB floppy plugs into your modern PC to stick files on a disk.
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I have the floppy for drivers etc, but its a bit cumbersome for anything else.
 
Bubo said:
I've been doing pretty much the same thing recently. I bought the "Elgato Video Capture" USB 2.0 device for 80 quid yes it is called that generic sounding name. It comes with drivers for Windows and its own software which was really easy to use but I then also had a sniff around the free OBS software instead and this works great with this capture device. One thing OBS does is it allows you to capture at 50hz and deinterlace the video, which is what all my dads miniDV videos are recorded in. With the default software all the captures were at 25hz and I could tell the frame rate was half what it was if they were played on the camcorder, so OBS basically went beyond what the default software is allowed to do with the hardware, and shows the hardware itself is capable of more.

In summary, give the OBS software a go and see if it can get the most out of your capture device. OBS can also use your gpu to hardware encode on the fly, so you don't end up with massive files you have to compress later.

BTW, the only reason I bought the Elgato was that I know I have one of those really cheap USB capture devices around here somewhere, but I can't find it for the life of me, so went and got the Elgato. But I can tell you the quality is quite a lot better than with the cheap one from when I used it before. Though it would have been nice if I could have tried it with OBS as well, to see if it made the best of it.

Edit: Plus if you do edit to do any editing as well then Kdenlive or Da Vinci Reslove are free. You may even be able to capture directly with these same as OBS.
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Id like to convert old vhs tapes too of family stuff so need a capture card. Only want to do this once so id like to get a top quality card for best capture quality but dont want to pay thousands. Anything you would recommend?
 
Not really pc related, but I have been trying to get my Zx spectrum Pico running on my TV. Pico has vga out and the tv has hdmi. I have tried multiple converters so far and none work.
Looking for some nostalgic gameplay :-)
 
Cyber-Mav said:
Id like to convert old vhs tapes too of family stuff so need a capture card. Only want to do this once so id like to get a top quality card for best capture quality but dont want to pay thousands. Anything you would recommend?
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I only have experience of a cheapo £20 Ezcap USB device, the one with trailing leads and a silver plastic thing with a large black button it if you google it. That and the above mentioned £80 Elgato Video Capture USB 2.0 device, which I got for because I couldn't find the Ezcap one, wherever it is in the house. Between those two the Elgato seems to give higher quality. The bundled software will detect the input video format if you tick a box, which it doesn't tick by default btw, and it allows you to enter the time you want it to capture for after which it will automatically process and save the file. So you can set it to record say 4 hours of video, come back later and it will have saved the file. The software then allows you to trim want your want off the start and then end, and then saves it again.

The software is very easy to use, but as I describe the device seems to be capable of more than the bundled software allows, which I managed to unlock with by playing around with OBS. I am just starting to explore what OBS can do. The Elgato comes with a driver so in theory can be accessed by any windows software which expects a video input source, bascially is if it was a webcam. So I imagine Kdenlive and Da Vinci Resolve will also work with it, so you can directly edit afterwards.

There are quite a few testimonial videos on youtube if you want to check it out. Simple enough for vhs/video8 capture if that is all you need to do.

If you have anything on MiniDV then technically you could get the best quality by using firewire directly. I have an old motherboard which has a firewire port so I could set this up, but I did a few with the Elgato and the quality is plenty good enough anyway, using an Svideo lead rather than normal composite. So yeah, use Svideo if you can with these things.

On a related topic, if you are doing any archiving of really old tape, especially the thin MiniDV stuff, then make sure you research how to deal with any mould build up on the tapes. Mould can grow on the upper and lower surfaces of the wound up tape which basically sticks the tape to itself and can and will tear the tape when played. I have had to splice several tapes which have broken when I started this. I don't think normal VHS will be as affected as much as it is thicker than that used in the smaller tapes, but worth researching as well.
 
I've been thinking more about my old iMac G3 computers... I have all the original restore CD's of OS9 & OSX but I'll use OS9. Apparently the iMac G3 can play PS1 games with some simple software. I have 100's of PS1 games so its even more worth it to dig out one of the old iMac G3's and while I'm at it I'll give it an upgrade. I will upgrade the RAM to 1GB and save the old RAM for the retro PC's plus I can take out the IDE hard drive and put that in a safe place as these are very handy for retro PC builds and I'll give the iMac G3 an SSD of 120GB. I will need to give the Mac a good clean, I might even need to open the whole thing up to clean out the CRT area and also see if I can get the slot loading CD drive ejecting. It be a nice little project.
 
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