Rich's Random Retro Reviews

I'm hoping that this will be the last post about how I capture VGA from my old retro machines as I think I now have a solution that works well. It also captures audio and injects that into the HDMI signal too.  So what's different from my last four posts? Well not much to be honest, other than I've changed the powered VGA splitter I'm using. For some reason, the two Startech splitters I bought, and worked fine, for some reason have introduced a flicker on my capture machine. So much so that the video is unusable. I've tried different cables and I even bought an identical one thinking my existing one was faulty. I went back to using the unpowered splitter cable, even though it produced a noticably darker image which I could fix in edting.  I'm on a discord server where a fellow YouTuber mentioned what they use, so off to eBay I went and I managed to purchase this: It's an Extron P/2 DA4xi 1:4 Four-Output VGA Video Distribution Amplifier DA - basically a power...

I was desperate to play this game since it was announced and I was excited to hear it coming over to Apple Silicon. On launch day I downloaded it and I've so far been blown away by the graphics that my little M2 Mac mini is able to output. Here's a screenshot of some game play from my actual Mac mini.  The only thing I don't like about it is the Zurks! And if you know, you know ;)  I haven't finished the game yet but I just wanted to mention how gorgeous this game is and I'm super excited about it being available on the Mac. 

No no no, I haven't forgotten that I have a blog - it's just, I've been rather busy over the last six months or so since my last update. So what's new? Well this arrived: YES PEOPLE! The Digital Starion 917 is here! As you can see there was a bit of shipping damage, but the plastic pieces were inside the case, so I managed to retrieve them and glue them back in place.  I took it completely to pieces and cleaned it within an inch of it's life. I also had to replace the Dallas clock battery which thankfully is socketed so no desoldering required. The machine wouldn't boot with the dead one - it would simply freeze. I managed to find a 'new old stock' one on eBay and fitted that and so far so good, it's retaining the date and time and any system settings.  The case has also received a retrobright as it was very yellowed and I'm super happy with the results. I'm so pleased to have one again - I did an unboxing video as well as a chat with another...

Looking at the statistics of my blog posts, they don't get very many views, so I'm pretty sure there is no one out there waiting for this update. But the update is - the powered VGA splitter arrived and the video capture is way better than before. The image is nice and clear bright, without artifacts.  Here's the setup: There are plenty of steps but it works out well. The quality is much better than without a powered splitter. I'll have to do a video or some pictures detailing the exact steps. 

In December of 2021 I decided it was time to retire my 2017 13" MacBook Pro. I was having to charge the battery a LOT - at least every day and sometimes twice in one day and I wasn't doing anything too taxing - other than the occasional export of a 1080p H.264 video or playing around with some retro PC in a VM.  My MacBook Pro only had 8GB of RAM and with the last few machines I'd had to settle on certain things. RAM being one of them. This time I decided that I would find the money and pay the Apple Tax to upgrade the RAM from 8GB to 16GB and I also decided I didn't need a Pro laptop any more and a MacBook Air should suffice so I ordered one.  It arrived directly from China after a week or so as it was a Build to Order (BTO) option and it would appear that Apple doesn't have stock of them in the UK. Anyway - it arrived and I was super happy with it. At one point I managed to get 5 days on the battery - admittedly via babying it.  Unfortunately the screen developed...

It's been a while, but I haven't forgotten I have a blog!  My last post was about a £20 PC I picked up from Facebook Marketplace and this post is a little more about it and what I've been up to with it.  I found a BIOS update that allows the motherboard to support up to a 450MHz Pentium II. I have a spare Pentium II 400, so I downloaded the BIOS and flashed it - something I HATE doing. Happily it worked and I didn't brick the motherboard! I inserted the Slot 1 400MHz Pentium II and turned the machine on and....(after fiddling in the BIOS) 400MHz is a nice increase over the 266MHz CPU that it came with. I also found a vintage version of CPU-Z called CPU-Z Vintage Edition which can be downloaded here . Unfortunately I couldn't be bothered to get a screenshot of it, so this photo will have to do: I love how it only lists MMX under instructions! Usually it's alphabet soup.  Aside from that I've swapped the graphics card with an AGP ATI Rage 3D something or other...