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I'd like to ditch my Windows XP retro-computer...


Larry

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...but there is a problem!  I use (and love) an ATI All In Wonder video card that works flawlessly with our A8 video signals.  It gives me the following:

 

Pros:

1. a beautiful S-video 4:3 picture on my 1080P TV/monitor.

2. an overlay window on the computer screen that can appear anywhere on the screen along with APE, open ATR folders, etc.  So I only need one monitor.

3. the window is scalable from very small to large.  I usually keep it at about 11" diagonal. 

 

Cons:

1. One big problem is that I have to keep two PC's on my desk.  A modern one with Windows 10 and another (cube) with XP SP3. The reason is that ATI stopped releasing software that was compatible with anything newer than XP.  They did have a beta of a version for Vista that supposedly could be used with Win7, but I could never get it to work.  That still wouldn't get rid of my second PC.

2. I've never found another video or upscaler card that offered all the ATI features.  More modern cards that I've tried have video buffering which ruins their use with a computer or game machine.

3. I don't mind XP, but it is certainly "clunky" compared to Win10.

4. All my ATI cards are PCI or AGP, so the host computer must have (at least) regular PCI slots. These seem to be getting quite rare on modern mobos. And AGP is extinct. The most modern I've found is an ASRock Intel model with PCI and AGP slots, accepting a Core 2 processor.

 

All the rage seems to be Retrotink, but AFAIK, that takes the whole screen that is usable for the 4:3 picture. (I've never purchased a Retrotink.)

 

Any thoughts? 

 

 

 

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There's plenty of USB types around but depending on chipset you might get the problem of buffering and/or poor interpretation of the non-interlaced signal.  And generally they're not tuners, only doing composite or S-Video input.

 

As for software - it's only really the driver you need to worry about, most software will work with any given capture device of the given type.

 

I used to play with capture cards/devices a lot but these days with DTV being able to be recorded easily on most set top boxes and TVs I rarely use them.

 

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I know what you mean, I still keep a WinXP PC for a couple of reasons.

First is it has a "real" floppy drive that I use to write .ST images to floppys

to use on my ST's and vice-versa. Modern USB Floppy Drives just can't read/write

images properly to 360k or 720k disks.

 

It's also a multiboot having MS-DOS which allows me to use an original SIO2PC that I built many moons ago

and it still works fine, yes I do have an S-Drive-Max and can use Respqt the latter requiring a cable across the room

where as the old PC can sit beside my 8 bits.

 

I still have a very old laptop (I mean really old, originally with Win95 on it) with MS-DOS installed (my original SIO2PC),

but no floppy drive so can't use it for ST stuff, but it still works too.

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Hi Gary-

Yes, I've found a couple of USB types that worked.  And yes, it is the drivers that is the main issue, but I've yet to find a USB type that made me want to give up my ATI GUI.  I probably ought to revisit the USB types again.  The one that was most impressive (genuine EZCAP.TV) worked well with a freeware display software app, but the GUI was still quirky and had about a hundred different settings (slight exaggeration, but lots of cryptic settings).  Also looks like EZCAP.TV driver support ends with Win 7/8 -- (sigh). Looks like I'm stuck...

 

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There are some monitors that support PiP (picture in picture). You might be able to use those with a RetroTink. The setup would need testing as it needs to be established that the PiP does not introduce too much lag.

 

Your original setup sounds great. I had an All-in-Wonder from 1996 to 2002 but did not check that it would allow me to set up an Atari without an extra monitor.

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Maybe rebuild or replace the XP rig so that it's a smaller more appealing & elegant formfactor, and keep the AIW. Or just live with the box as-is. I keep 2 retro rigs around, to cover as much of the old era as practical. For floppies, serial and parallel ports, zip disks, old smaller capacity HDD. Some select software. Real DOS compatibility. Vintage printers.. stuff like that..

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6 hours ago, TGB1718 said:

Modern USB Floppy Drives just can't read/write

images properly to 360k or 720k disks.

After all these years I *finally* just bought one of those USB floppy drives for my new laptop so that I can archive some old 3.5" disks that I have.  The only problem is that now that I own a drive, I cannot actually find where I put the disks!  So I don't know if the drive will read/write to them or not.  ?

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4 hours ago, MrFish said:

If you're not using a KVM, it's something that would eliminate a lot of components on the XP PC. I use an IOGear 4-port with DVI/USB.

 

Yes, I have a two port switch with wireless keyboard, mouse, and (wired) monitor.  That really helps!

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My experience has always been that's it's best to keep the old stuff, you never know when you'll need something with an old floppy controller, or a real IDE port, or PCI port, or whatever.  I've gone thru this the hard way too many times.  A few years back, I dropped off at Goodwill a bunch of old cables, and I gave away ALL my old floppy cables with edge connectors, because I had forgotten WHAT THEY WERE, LOL!

 

Now I need one, and another old 5 1/4" drive, and all that stuff is hard or impossible to find and expensive now!

 

So, I'd rather have the old stuff around, and have less regrets!!

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3 minutes ago, glurk said:

My experience has always been that's it's best to keep the old stuff, you never know when you'll need something with an old floppy controller, or a real IDE port, or PCI port, or whatever.  I've gone thru this the hard way too many times.  A few years back, I dropped off at Goodwill a bunch of old cables, and I gave away ALL my old floppy cables with edge connectors, because I had forgotten WHAT THEY WERE, LOL!

 

Now I need one, and another old 5 1/4" drive, and all that stuff is hard or impossible to find and expensive now!

 

So, I'd rather have the old stuff around, and have less regrets!!

I'd agree in a lot of cases -- and I've got boxes of old stuff to prove it. Retire the hardware -- if need be -- but hang onto it.

 

Edited by MrFish
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9 hours ago, glurk said:

My experience has always been that's it's best to keep the old stuff, you never know when you'll need something with an old floppy controller, or a real IDE port, or PCI port, or whatever.  I've gone thru this the hard way too many times.  A few years back, I dropped off at Goodwill a bunch of old cables, and I gave away ALL my old floppy cables with edge connectors, because I had forgotten WHAT THEY WERE, LOL!

 

Now I need one, and another old 5 1/4" drive, and all that stuff is hard or impossible to find and expensive now!

 

So, I'd rather have the old stuff around, and have less regrets!!

    I have a DOS machine that runs my EPROM Burner, a Windows 98 PC which runs some very old games that won't run under XP.

A Windows XP machine for games that won't run under Windows 7. A Windows 7 machine for most of my electronic design software

that I don't want to pay to upgrade to Windows 10.  And lastly a Windows10 machine for all the new stuff.  I also have a Linksys 6

way: mouse, keyboard, and monitor switch so I can run any of the PC's from one monitor/mouse/keyboard.  It's a shame that they

didn't include speakers in that switch, I have a pile of speakers around my monitor (eight speakers behind my monitor).  I use

headphones on my Win10 PC.

   Even if you put the old equipment in the closet, I highly recommend that you keep the old stuff!  I promise, if you get rid of it

you'll need it some day and it will be that much harder to replace!

 

DavidMil  

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On 5/29/2021 at 5:02 PM, glurk said:

My experience has always been that's it's best to keep the old stuff, you never know when you'll need something with an old floppy controller, or a real IDE port, or PCI port, or whatever.  I've gone thru this the hard way too many times.  A few years back, I dropped off at Goodwill a bunch of old cables, and I gave away ALL my old floppy cables with edge connectors, because I had forgotten WHAT THEY WERE, LOL!

 

Now I need one, and another old 5 1/4" drive, and all that stuff is hard or impossible to find and expensive now!

 

So, I'd rather have the old stuff around, and have less regrets!!

I know what you mean, about 10 years ago I dropped off some old 486 PCs at a local recycling center, they cut the attached video cable off a working monitor without checking it.

I now wish I had at least saved some of the 5-1/4" drives, I believe there were some Panasonics that can be modified for no-flip flux dumping among them.

 

I just got a Greaseweazle F7 Lightning Plus and it appears I should get a modified drive, I destroyed 2 SpartaDOS Construction Set floppies out of 4 I scanned, fortunately 3 were copies of the same disk that I got 2 successful scans from, the last disk had 1 weak and 10 missing sectors which affected 2 files 1 of which was recovered from the successful dumps. That only left 1 file AT_RS232.COM which is a SpartaDOS driver for the ATR8000 serial port damaged.

 

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