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See what I did there with the II? As in Lynx II? No? Well... fine. I never claimed to be a good literaryist. I'm pretty sure that's a word. If I tell my spell-checker to ignore it, it works, and that's good enough for me. Anyway, a few years ago, I had written that I had dusted off my Lynx II and picked up a few new games for it. And while there were a few keepers in the bunch, after a little while the Lynx sat idle again. In the last couple of years though, it's had new life breathed into it not once, but twice, thanks to a couple of very talented Lynx hobbyists. AtariAge member McWill created an LCD screen replacement kit that has to be seen to be believed. The original Lynx screen was dull, washed out, and had a very narrow viewing angle. Mine was starting to exhibit dead pixels, too. McWill's kit puts a modern, bright, crystal clear screen in its place (and you can optionally add a VGA output, too). I posted about my experience with installing McWill's screen kit in the Lynx forum. The upshot is, it completely transformed the system. The games actually became more playable, as details lost to the old murky LCD screen suddenly became razor-sharp. It was like my Lynx got cataract surgery! That was a weird analogy. Maybe this is better: It was like the difference between looking at leftover pizza through wax paper or Saran Wrap. Uh... no. Look... here are a few photos, okay? Rampart, before: And after: And Awesome Golf before: And after: It looks a lot better. That's the point to take away here. If you want to see more, I posted extensive before and after galleries. If you want to order one of these amazing new screens, just contact McWill, and he'll get the details to you. For those who don't know how to solder, he offers installation as well. He also has kits for the Lynx I. So... after installing the new screen, the games I had looked better, but I still had a relatively meager selection of them. But this year AtariAge member SainT developed an SD-based multicart for the Lynx. As with similar multicarts for other systems, the RetroHQ multicart allows you to load any or all Lynx ROMs onto a single Micro SD card, which can then be plugged into your Lynx. From there, you just choose the game you want to play from an onscreen menu. The online reviews and videos of it were all very promising, so I asked to be added to the pre-order list. And last week - mine finally arrived! SainT's Multicart is on the left (the Micro SD card can be seen in the notched corner at the top), and a standard Lynx cart is on the right: Once booted, the menu system is very responsive and clear to read. A downside is that it only shows 8 character filenames: One thing that helps is that you can organize your ROMs by folder. Mine are alphabetical for now, but I may further refine this by games I play more often, or by genre, etc. A really nice option is that you can add preview images to your SD card to view pictures of the games you select before loading them. This is very handy, especially if you can't remember what game KISTENSC is supposed to be. Or in this case, APB, which is, well... APB. In order for the previews to work - your ROM names and preview names must match. The preview images have already been created, named and zipped for download, so you'll likely have to go through and rename something for them to work. In my case, I renamed my ROMs to match the previews. It's just as well, since the menu can't display long filenames. Also, you currently can't create your own preview files, unless you can figure out how to save images in the correct image format. It'd be great to be able to create your own, or even have multiple ones available for each game to show different screens or other information. Once a game is selected, it takes several seconds to load, but from that point on, everything works as if it were an original cart. The multicart is very solidly made - with a 3D printed case permanently attached to it (for the Lynx I, you have to get one without a case, or it won't fit). There's quite a long waiting list to get one - I was added to the list mid-May, and it finally arrived mid-October. But it was well worth the wait, because apart from a few unavailable homebrews, I have instant access to the entire Lynx library. If you want to read more about it, check out the this thread. To get on the order list, just post a response in that thread, specifying what you want. I'd highly recommend both of these items to any Lynx owner. They really do transform the system, and have really increased my enjoyment of it. If I had to pick one, I'd have to go with McWill's screen. I never thought a Lynx could look that good. But once you get the screen looking good - you're going to want to get the multicart, too.

Okay... that's a bit of a cheat. Technically, it should be Stella at 20, at 19. But that just doesn't sound as cool. Bet you never thought you'd see another post about this project... did ya'? Well, at a certain point, neither did I. Eleven years ago, almost to the week, I received the original camera tapes for the two-volume documentary Stella at 20 from Glenn Saunders, with the intent of re-editing it into an expanded version of the documentary. The goal was to put it out on DVD, since it initially only appeared on VHS, and Volume 2 had never been widely available. The problem with just releasing the original documentary to DVD was that the master tape of Volume 1 had been lost by the duplicating house, and no dub had been made of it. So there was no way to get anything better than VHS quality for Volume 1, without going through and re-editing it from the source tapes. And if you're going to do that - why not expand it, since over a dozen hours of footage was shot? Well, that was the thought anyway. But, as happens with so many other hobby-centered projects, it went nowhere. The time needed to invest in it and do it properly never materialized. Between my job, other Atari-related projects, and occasionally real-life, I just didn't have the time to do it. For all intents and purposes, I completely underestimated the amount of time and effort this was going to take. At least two other people over the years offered to re-edit it as well. None of the offers panned out. Something else that factored into this, was that video technology was rapidly changing. It became a moving target. As part of my job, I spend a great deal of time trying to hit that target. When I originally digitized the tapes, the best quality I could manage was DVCAM format. Now this could be considered - charitably - a "prosumer" format. And for editing a DVD, it would be acceptable. But for creating new masters equal to the quality of the original Betacam footage, not so much. Within a couple of years, the equipment I had access to changed significantly, and I could then capture video uncompressed. Clearly, this would be the way to go, but it meant re-digitizing over two-dozen tapes, and even then, the big problem was still carving out the time needed to re-edit it all. Within another couple of years things changed significantly again, as we moved on from standard definition to high definition. And while the tapes were never shot in HD, it still factored into the question of what was our target? Was it Blu-ray? Do we upscale everything? Do we stick with DVD? Well, that became a moot question too, as the emergence of YouTube completely changed how people consumed video. Even though it wasn't authorized, Volume 1 of Stella was already out there. From exactly the sort of grainy, low-resolution VHS source that Glenn had wanted to avoid in the first place. Glenn's solution: Skip the re-edited version, and just put all of the original camera tapes online. The two released volumes ran 2 hours and 40 minutes combined. That meant 10 hours of material had never been seen. Even with an expanded documentary, most of that material would still have remained hidden away. This way, everyone who really wanted to see this amazing time capsule, could do so in its entirety. The destination? Archive.org. To present the material in the best possible quality, the tapes needed to be recaptured with online playback in mind. I ran a number of tests, showing them to Glenn for his approval. In the end, we decided the best results were to upscale everything to 1280 x 720p, 60fps. This de-interlaced the material (essential for online playback), and upscaled the material for viewing on computer monitors (we found 1080p to be unnecessary, given the standard definition source material). We maintained the original aspect ratio (pillarboxing the video), and made no edits to the material, apart from muting the reference tone at the beginning, and overlaying titles onto the color bars. Any edits present were done in-camera, during the shoot. And now, finally, it's all done. You can watch all 27 original camera tapes (plus some rare bonus footage of Jay Miner) online, right here: https://archive.org/details/StellaAt20 Having watched through all of the tapes several times, I can tell you there's some fascinating, amazing footage in there. Great stories, technical background, industry insights, history, anecdotes - enough to keep you busy for, oh... about 14 hours altogether. Since these are unedited, there are stops and starts, off-camera comments, awkward pauses and just dead air. But it's all worth wading through to get to the good stuff. I hope you enjoy it! It's been a long road to get here. Some technical information, regarding how the tapes were captured: Hardware: Playback deck: Ampex CVR-75 Time-base corrector: Leitch DPS-475 Capture interface/scaling/de-interlacing: Blackmagic Teranex 3D Computer: Apple Mac Pro 6,1, 3GHz 8-core Xeon, 32 GB RAM Software: Capture: Blackmagic Media Express Video editing: Adobe Premiere Pro Audio editing: ProTools HD Video encoding: Adobe Media Encoder Codecs: Capture: Video: Apple Pro Res 422 (HQ), 1280x720p, 60 fps; Audio: 24-bit, 48kHz uncompressed Upload: Video: H.264, two-pass vbr, 10Mbit/sec, 1280x720p, 60 fps; Audio: AAC, 320kbps, 48kHz