Rich's Random Retro Reviews

A few years back I decided that I wanted to do some VGA capture from my old vintage computers so I could show it off in my YouTube videos. This lead me down a dark hole to try and get a working solution. I'd seen a couple of cheap VGA capture devices on eBay so bought a few to try. None of them were successful. I tried several different ways of doing it and I was pulling my hair out until  I stumbled upon a video by a fellow retro computer enthusiast called Victor Bart . He has done a fantastic video on the way he does it.  Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel I figured I'd give his solution a go. The only thing I changed was the capture card - mine is USB, not PCI-E. The secret sauce is the VGA scaler. Many older machines and games in DOS output at strange resolutions and switch between them frequently. Most of which these newer cheap VGA capture devices don't support these old resolutions. For example: the Windows 98 start up screen displays at something like 720x400....

Another one of my saved searches on eBay is for BeOS related things. Unfortunately these days  this search seems to pull back Bang and Olufsen stuff - which I definitely cannot afford but every now and again, something properly BeOS pops up.  This little beauty came up for auction and was listed at £4.99. Within the last 30 seconds, it still had no bids, so I put one in for £4.99 and waited. I wasn't too bothered if someone else bid on it but I thought it would look cool in my CD wallet, next to other obscure software CDs. Turns out I won the auction so I paid and a few days later this turned up.  Now I did have a 7300/200 that was another buy from eBay a while ago - which in theory this would have run on, but I had to have a cull of machines in early 2022. I was up to about 11 Macs at that point and I was getting moaned at as they were everywhere - in the garage, under the bed and anywhere else I could store them. So this will have to sit th...

I've loved the BeOS ever since I tried it out from a demo CD from the now defunct PC Plus magazine here in the UK. I've done several videos on YouTube about it. I've even built two 100% compatible machines in the past dedicated to running this obscure operating system. Including a video on borrowing a copy of the CD from PC Plus.  Someone I follow on Twitter found a BeOS demo CD and posted a pic of it. I liked it and commented that I'd love to have an image of the CD but not to worry as it was sealed. He said he thought he might have another one that he would send me if I was interested and of course I was. We exchanged details via DM but all went quiet. A few months pass and I suddenly get a DM apologising for the delay and if I still wanted it let him know. He popped it in the mail and a few weeks later it arrived. I haven't tried it on any physical hardware just yet, but that's a plan for after I've finished building my test bench. Here's a pic of me...

Over the years, I've had many many models of Macs but the one that I've always had a soft spot for was the blue and white G3, which was released in 1999. At the time, I could never afford one as I was a lowly apprentice at a small office for a large construction company. I used to buy the MacUser magazine religiously and oogle at the pictures they had of all the new machines. I never thought I'd end up having one, but a few years later when the prices were more affordable I got one. Now I don't remember what happened to it, but I had to get rid of it at some point. Since then I've always wanted another one as the design is just so cool. Yeah I've had a couple of G4s over the years but there's something about the blue and white aesthetic that just does it for me.  So I was browsing Facebook Marketplace as there seemed to be a drought of these machines on eBay and came across a listing for a really well looked after machine AND matching 15" studio display...

I've had an eBay saved search for a particular item for what must be the last nine years. It has been for our very first PC we had back when I was 13-14. No, not the Packard Bell - they're relatively easy to come across, no this was a Digital Starion 917. Digital as in DEC - as in Digital Equipment Corporation. As far as I'm aware, DEC PCs weren't sold here in the UK - or if they were I certainly don't remember ever seeing them in magazines or in shops. Ours was bought from a US military PX (Public Exchange) that as a member of the Royal Air Force, my Dad was allowed to use when we lived in Germany. They sold food, clothing, footwear and many other American things we couldn't get in the German or British stores.  When visiting the store once, they had a really decent deal on a PC, which my Dad took advantage of. The PC was the aforementioned Digital Starion 917 and he bought the matching 17" monitor to go with it. Until that point we had been using an LC475...

I was planning on doing a video on my blue and white G3 a few weekends ago and I was going to talk about utterly horrid the mouse was that came with this machine. Anyone remember the puck mouse? Yeah that. Well I was going to show it on camera and how awkward it was to hold and I thought it might be a cool idea to get a mouse mat with my logo on. I settled on Vistaprint and a few days later this arrived.  Just like the stickers, I'm very impressed with it. It is actually black - just looks a bit weird on camera. Expect this to pop up in future videos.  The puck mouse sent me down another rabbit hole. I ended up purchasing a MacAlly USB mouse. It is much more comfortable but needs a second mouse button: And as usual, I wasn't happy with just having the MacAlly mouse, I wanted the matching keyboard, which I found on eBay from another seller: It looks graphite in this pic, but it is blue and white to match the G3. I took it to pieces and thoroughly cleaned it but I'm not sure ...

My current 'itch' as my friend Wolf calls it, involves the PCs running the original line of Intel Pentium CPUs. Our first PC was a 100MHz Pentium and the Packard Bell I've mentioned was a 133MHz model - upgraded to a 200MHz processor in the dim and distant past. The Elonex server from the construction company I've mentioned is also a 100MHz Pentium. The accidental motherboard and CPU purchase I made also has a 200MHz CPU, so I'd say I've got a fair experience with processors of this vintage but there was always one that I lusted after. The 166MHz Pentium with MMX technology. Off to my favourite marketplace of choice, eBay, the transfer of some funds and a week later this arrived: I haven't tested it yet, but I finally have one! Woohoo. I'm not sure which machine to put this in yet. Do I upgrade the test bench? Or do I put it in the accidental mother board and CPU purchase then put the 200MHz CPU into the test bench? Not entirely sure yet. 

Don't ask me why, but I have had a fascination with Apple's Rhapsody operating system for THE longest time. I did have a few VMs a while back that had Rhapsody DR1 for Intel, Rhapsody DR2 for Intel, OpenStep and NeXTSTEP but I'd never tried it on physical hardware. When I got the Elonex server from my Dad's storage a couple of years back, I did try and install a custom Rhapsody DR2 image to a compact flash card that Action Retro had created. but none of the graphics cards I had worked with it in anything other than 640x480 in 256 colours.  Well recently I got "The urge" again - that and the Elonex server was now in pieces and more easily able to mess with it's config. I downloaded the Rhapsody ISO from machintoshgarden.org and burned it to CD, then wrote the floppy disk images to some spare floppies. Along with the CD was a PDF with a list of compatible hardware so as with anything retro, off to eBay I went, in search for a compatible graphic card. The ATI...

Yeah, so I kinda bought another motherboard and CPU, which is almost identical to the ones I pulled from the Elonex server mentioned in another post.  The one on the right in the image above is the original mother board with its 100MHz CPU (and fancy new old stock heatsink and fan) and the one on the left is the new one. They're very similar except the new one has a DIMM socket for RAM along side the four 72 pin SIMM sockets. The CPU is also 200MHz and it came with 32MB of RAM and a graphics card - all for about £25. I couldn't say no really. I have no clue what I'm going to do with it but YAY for cheap retro hardware. 

I'm in a Pentium PC craze and I'm trying to build myself a test bench for a socket 5/7 motherboard. Why? Well - the computer/case that I'm using is HUGE, dirty, yellowed and is missing the side panels and doors. A test bench would allow me to quickly swap out hardware for different operating systems or swap CPUs or RAM for testing performance. I blame RMC was playing with a Packard Bell Multimedia Executive PC on his channel recently and I got mine out of the attic, however, the machine is special to me, so I didn't want rip it to pieces.  So whilst up there, I decided to get my old Elonex server/PC out to use this as a basis for my test bench. This PC was the Novell NetWare 3.12, then later 4.11 server for the office of the construction company I used to work at. When we upgraded to NT 4 this machine was defunct and I was allowed to bring it home.  I took it to pieces and laid it out on a piece of cardboard but it was a mess and stuff everywhere, so I decided to try a...

Whilst browsing Instagram a couple of months ago, I came across an offer for 10 die cut stickers for £1. Usually offers on Instagram are junk but I figured for one of my British pounds, I'd give it a try. The offer was from Stickermule  - who I'd never heard of before. Anyway - after uploading my logo and choosing the design, I approved the design and made the payment. Royal Mail had loads of strikes here in the UK before Christmas and obviously with the increase of mail on the Royal Mail network, it took some time for the stickers to get to me, but when they arrived I was SUPER pleased with them. Oh and rather than 10, I got 12! And here they are. Aren't they lovely? I'd highly recommend using them, if you can find the offer, they're a bit slow but for the price, I have absolutely no complaints. 

It occurred to me the other day that I don't really have a place where I can share what I'm currently up to unlike my friend Blake Patterson (who we'll talk about in another post). I share photos on Instagram and I'm quite active on Twitter but I can't really expand on what I'm doing on those platforms. They're a good place to see what I'm currently working on though, so go and give me a follow over there. I'm also not very good at the whole YouTube thing either. So it is my hope that this will be the place for that. I've not been a very successful blogger in the past, so there may be times where there is a gap between posts. Apologies in advance for this. Life and other none tech things get in the way - like decorating my our home office or building out our camper van conversion. All the best R