What retro things have you done today?

LewisRaz said:
Do you know what box that TTDLX is from!?! I am collecting it in every variant I can find and not seen that!!
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I got the game a long time ago from USA but I don’t think this version came in a box.
It’s released by Slash and I believe they are a budget distributor from USA.

Any other PC games you are after? I got a bunch of old DOS games on CD, so maybe I can take a few pics and you might discover more variants to look for ;)
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phatboy said:
Nearly bought one of these, was one for like £20 on eBay a few months back but I forgot and it went. Wasn't you was it lol
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I bought a new one back in 2003 and got rid years later.
I paid £28 for this one back in 2018.

I managed to get Flight Unlimited 3 installed by copying CD 2 and 3 to the HDD and installed from there.

I also installed MS Combat Flight Simulator.

With the Extigy and W2K with SP4 now installed, this is a solid build.
 
I bought a shoe tidy that fits on the back of a door. All my retro controllers and display cables are now organised and easily accessible.
 
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Bubo said:
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.
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found this in the shed:

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claims its got vivo so can it be used to do capture?
 
Cyber-Mav said:
found this in the shed:

claims its got vivo so can it be used to do capture?
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I can't say for sure, all I can say is that you would need to build a retro pc around that agp card in order to do your capturing, and therefore be limited to what capture software will work on that system and how easy it would be to have enough storage to capture your videos. It looks like it has an svideo port on the back so if it says it has video in then it should be able to capture, though maybe only with whatever propriety software comes with it, and you'd have to see what the quality is like with it obviously.

edit: I will upload a sample from a video I did with the Elgato in a bit so you can see the quality that is possible. So keep an eye on this post for a future edit.

edit2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dP0Uj3aY0--mSFKVpOmtM8FdDtGHITxo/view?usp=sharing

Download this sample and play it in VLC or MPC-HC so it plays at 50hz. If you open it in the browser it will probably only play at 25hz otherwise mess with it. It was recorded on a Sony HanyCam on Video8 tape and capture via the cameras Svideo output into the Elgato using OBS Studio configured to capture at 50hz with yadifx2 deinterlacing.
 
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!bluetonic! said:
The world's your oyster for a USB pad. Did you want it to be era specific?

What about a Playstation 2 pad going through a USB converter?
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Yeah I could try that... I'm looking for something that will work with games in Windows 98, I tried a Logitech one and I had little to no functionality from it in games I also tried a few of those cheap generic non branded ones with the same results so I'm guessing I'd need something more period correct for the era. I'm thinking about a sidewinder or something.

A Play Station controller sounds nice,
 
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After having the parts for ages I finally put this together. I found a new old stock boxed Antec P160 which is a rare find in the UK and spurred me on. I think it’s a stunning case, and really light as the whole frame is aluminium. Plus I love chrome. Shiny shiny.

The year is roughly 2006, I’m 20 years old. In between spending all my money on car insurance, trying (failing) to buy girls affections and posting on OCUK, this imaginary me has just spent a small fortune on assembling this epic last XP era machine. We’ve all heard rumours of the 8000 series cards but they can’t be THAT much better surely?…

Time to bask in the majesty of it before quad core and the 8800 GTX comes and crushes everything. A time traveler has also sent me an SSD which was very generous.

Antec P160 case
Opteron 185 (I know there is a Athlon FX badge on the front of the case but it’s our secret don’t tell anyone)
Zalman CNPS9500 LED
4GB DDR 400 Corsair XMS (going to reduce this to 2GB so I can use 2GB in my FX-57 build)
ASUS A8N32-SLI
PCI Sound Blaster Audigy 4
Reference design GeForce 7900 GTO 512MB SLI
240GB SSD OS Drive
160GB 7200rpm HDD Backup
2TB 7200rpm HDD Games
Enermax Infiniti 720w SLI PSU
Windows XP 32 SP3

All stock settings using the last supported driver (307.83):

Although worth noting the correct timings for the memory weren’t set it was just defaults from the board.

3D Mark 2001 SE score (single GPU) : 30,241

3D Mark 2003 score (single GPU) : 20,678

3D Mark 2005 score (single GPU) : 10,227

3D Mark 2006 score (single GPU) : 5,801

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Last day in the office before holiday and spied this Lenovo T60p thrown in a dispose pile. Was apparently found in a cupboard and was heading for the skip in the rain, powered on first time on its own battery!! holds charge nicely and it's 4:3!!!



Quick conversation later, safe to say it's now home with me, has 7 on it now but looking at Lenovo site it should really be on 2000 or XP pro, so that it shall be!

All the drivers are readily available still too :)

Spec:
T7600 core 2
4gb ddr2
128mb Radeon X1400
Not sure on drive size yet
 
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I might have a play about with one of my HP Compaq DC7800 machines I got free. I may grab some more of these from the place I work at they have a whole stack of these for e-waste.

The specs on these machines are still decent. I setup Chrome OS on one and you can watch youtube and browse the internet just fine even BBC iPlayer works just fine so I'm thinking about doing a Windows 2000 build out of one then doing a benchmark on it. The processor is an Intel 3.5GHz Dual Core 2 Duo with 4GB RAM and 160GB SATA HDD. I can't remember if these have a floppy header on the board but it looks like a floppy drive can be added to the case... I might be able to do an ultimate Windows 2000 small form factor build from it.

I'm not sure as to whether there are drivers for the onboard sound and video but these did run XP\7 so in my experience and general rule of thumb is that if it was designed to run Windows XP then Windows 2000 should work fine on it. For an ultimate build it would be better to get a low profile GPU and separate low profile sound card, preferably with a game port... it might be easier said than done in terms of what is available but I can go with onboard graphics and sound just to get things started. The onboard graphics may just be good enough but a sound card with a game port would be favorable for joysticks in older games.

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