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Number Crunching

V

Vint

Experienced Member
Joined
May 14, 2008
Messages
390
Location
Ohio, USA
Scrunching things down.
In these (2) 22x56" cabinets I have squeezed in (17) vintage computers, (7) cassette tape units, (2) disk drives, misc. computer magazines, and many computer manuals. Not bad for a space less than 20 cu. ft. (About the size of the average refrigerator!)

attachment.php


I still even have room for some of my programmable calcs.
Cabinets contain: 3 TI99/4A's, a TI CC-40, a CBM Plus/4, VIC-20, C-128, with 1541 disk drive and 3 Commodore cassette decks. I also have 2 Atari's, a 600XL and an 800XL with a 1050 disk drive and 2 Atari cassette units. Stuck in there is also a CoCo 2 and an MC-10 with 16K RAM pack all by Radio Shack. There's an Apple IIC in there and a shelf of 5 old laptops. Also these cabinets have doors so things are neatly out of sight and dust free :)
 
Hey guys, I didn't mean the (2) cabinets held ALL my vintage stuff.
As I mentioned in another post started by Linexlove (What's your pile of junk look like) I have 2 plastic tubs and a small set of plastic drawers. Just this morning I moved the stuff from the plastic drawers to a small wooden 5 drawer set. That's now where I keep my software, some of the frequently needed power supplies and my old programmable calc collection and different cartridges for the different computers - as per these pics I just took.

http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3764
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3765
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3762

As for joysticks, this shoebox is their home.

http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3763

Lastly, about monitors.
As I've stated elsewhere I use only (1) monitor to serve for every computer I own. I'm running a KVM switch to switch between the (2) computers seen in this picture right above my drawer set.

attachment.php


Note the small box between the PC's. That's the hookup for ALL my vintage computers to my monitor fed through a video capture card in the HP Pavilion 7845. (Except machines requiring RF, which hook directly to the capture card's RF in.) Incidentally I bought that HP for $15. and it's working great for old DOS stuff too. The Compaq SR1620NX is my daily driver (main computer).
As can be seen in my photo albums (this site), I can run all my vintage machines plus my modern day machines through (1) monitor.

http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3767

The (2) cabinets housing my vintage machines are 5' from my computer desk. The wooden set of drawers is within arms reach. I can pull any of my vintage machines and have it up and running in just a couple minutes. Besides, with this setup I can also easily hook up my XBOX or Wii through the capture card and also make video recordings. All into just (1) monitor. It works for me.
Hope that answers the questions ok. I think I've got a good setup here for the equipment I use. Of course this only works for my particular needs. If I was running say, a PC Jr. or an IBM XT, like many of you - this compact setup would be useless. It's all in what you collect, I suppose :)
 
I've always wanted to set things up like that, through a capture card, but there's one major problem I've always run into - latency. I've found that if you try to play a game on a vintage computer or game console through a capture card, 99% of them will have too high of latency to be playable.

I've seen one card that has no latency, however, and that's the ATI All-in-Wonder, which that purple box appears to be from. Is that the secret to this setup? Perhaps I need to buy my Dad's All-in-Wonder from him and set up a box like this to preserve more space.
 
Raven said:
. . . . . problem I've always run into - latency. . . . .I've seen one card that has no latency, however, and that's the ATI All-in-Wonder, which that purple box appears to be from. Is that the secret to this setup?
Click to expand...

Correct you are. My card is the ATI All-In-Wonder VE. (A bunch of years old now, and probably easily had on eBay for a pittance now.) I've never had any lag that I've noticed with the card. Here's one of my YouTube vids made with that card, if you'd care to check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8IXGwrBcg4

I made the video a while back but if memory serves me correctly it was done like so -
PC1 was to slow with onboard video to run my racing games and record them too. So, I bought a decent enough video card for PC1 and ran a clone copy of my screen to a 2nd computer containing the All-In-Wonder card. That way the racing was easily done on PC1 with nice frame rates, and the picture sent to PC2 where it was recorded through the capture card. Works fine for console setups too, like XBOX or whatever.

Why do all that, you might ask? Limited budget is my answer.
I never could afford cutting edge anything. I enjoy technology, but with limited funds I always have to buy the low end stuff. My main PC runs a Sempron chip. The last PC I had ran a Celeron chip. It would be nice to roll with the dual or quad core and Win 7 crowd, but alas, I am but a poor boy :rolleyes:
 
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