Rich's Random Retro Reviews

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...