Rich's Random Retro Reviews

In January last year I decided I needed a dedicated space for all of my retro collection/toys/computers/stuff so I bought a log cabin and built it in the garden. It's 4m x 3m and looked like this when I started: It took me about 4 months from start to finish.  I painted the outside and put the felt roof on to make the structure watertight.  Inside I installed 100mm insulation on all four walls, the ceiling and under the floor was some 25mm insulation.  I installed a vapour barrier.  Then plasterboard before painting. I've never plastered before so I left it quite rough thinking I could just sand it down.  Sanding was not fun.  So that's it. That's the studio - where I film my YouTube videos from.

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...

I picked up the PC in the picture below for £20 from Facebook Marketplace. No idea what the specs were, but on the back was a label that said it had a 4.3GB hard drive in. As much as I love the noises old PCs make, spinning hard drives are SLOW and loud.  I like to replace the drives with an SSDs or at least some kind of flash alternative. As long as you're not running a *NIX or NT based OS, then compact flash cards are a great and cheap option. Anything with a more advanced virtual memory management system usually degrades flash storage solutions really quickly. It's best to try and find a proper SSD if you plan on running one of those on your vintage computer.  So I plug in an IDE to compact flash adapter, put the CD-ROM on the secondary IDE channel and turn the machine on. I'm greeted by a 192MB of RAM, Pentium II 266MHz PC. Not bad for £20 - and the case is in excellent condition.  I need to install an operating system on the computer now, but I can't find my Win...

So I've been playing today ANNNND here are my results and something I've learned that I really should have thought about.  In one of my previous posts, I said I had found an unpowered VGA splitter to be good enough for me. Well I take it back. Below is a screenshot (unedited) from OBS earlier using a VGA splitter and the new BlackMagic Design HDMI capture.  As you can see - the image is extremely dark and if you click on it, you'll see that there is lots of noise in the image. For some reason, it has never crossed my mind as to why the image appears so dark. It's because I'm splitting the signal in half. DUH! Of course it's going to be dark. I also think the VGA splitter cable is responsible for the noise that's been added to the image. When plugged directly into the graphics card, the capture is noise free. Here's what it should look like.  This is much better. (Ignore the colour depth change. The first screenshot was at 256 colours, this one is at 24 b...

Our first PC was a DEC Station 917 - which I've mentioned in a previous post and it came with plenty of software to keep the younger me entertained. Remember - the Internet wasn't really a thing at this point...Anyway last night I thought it might be fun to find a wallpaper that I used to have. It was of a parrot and that's all I could remember. I had no idea where I got it from other than we had a very limited selection of software back in the day - so it had to have been from one of those.  One of the CDs was a CD Sampler that had demos of Microsoft Home software and hardware products. I used to browse this CD a lot - wishing I we had the cool looking Microsoft Home Mouse or the Natural Keyboard.  Turns out, someone archived it and put it on archive.org - so I downloaded it and created a Windows 98 VM to explore. I fired it up and was immediately transported back to 1995.  The Microsoft Home Mouse is awful. Ergonomically it's terrible but I loved the look of i...

I thought I'd do a follow up to my original Capturing VGA post as I didn't really mention the software that I used. Initially the solution I used had the same hardware with the exception of the actual USB capture device. This was an AVerMedia GL310 (LGP Lite) which was great, with a couple of exceptions. It would only to 30fps 1080p but would do 60fps at 720p. I wanted 1080p60. The software was a REAL let down. It was Windows only and called RECentral. It wasn't very user friendly and as such I wasn't overly keen on it.  I think  it worked with OBS but I didn't use it with that and I just found it a bit clunky.  The second device I used was the Elgato HD60 - which turns out is old and the software doesn't work on Apple Silicon. But I managed to get it installed and working on the Windows 10 PC that we have as a Plex media server, once I had found it. It turns out I should have bought the newer S version and the older software is buried deeply on the Elgato webs...

To coin a phrase invented by my good friend Wolf, and the one that I've mentioned before - my current brain itch is for speakers. The reason for this has to do with my blue and white G3. The issue is there is only one speaker on the front of the machine and it's mono. It's fine for the Mac chime or for system alert beeps but for anything more it's a bit lame.  Cue my scouring eBay for something appropriate. I do have some JBL Duet speakers that sort of matches the aesthetic of vintage Macs and PCs but they really stand out next to a funky coloured Mac. I did find a video or a picture of some translucent blue speakers but I couldn't find them for sale and I now can't remember the name or brand of them. Anyway back to the eBay search. I did a search for vintage computer speakers and not much came up. I then did a search for vintage multimedia speakers and these bad boys popped up.  Wolf and I are terrible influences on each other. I sent him the link and he said I...

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...