The Ultimate Commodore 64? - The Commodore 64 Ultimate Review

The original Commodore 64 had a pretty long run for a computing platform, released in 1982 and discontinued in 1994. Its fortunes mirrored that of the company which developed it as Commodore achieved its greatest success with the C64 and never quite managed to achieve a similar level of market dominance thereafter. Now there is a new Commodore 64, the Commodore C64 Ultimate, which promises to be an end-all, be-all solution to running C64 software on a platform worthy of the Commodore legacy. Today, having had a chance to play with one for about a week, I can put those claims to the test.

Would you Like a Book 8088? Or How About a Hand 386?

Fairly recently (May, 2023) there has been made available for sale a retro-themed laptop called the Book 8088.  The Book 8088 is a real PC running a fair amount of vintage hardware and was made in China by a company called DZT.  Additionally this company has also made a portable PC called the Hand 386.  However, the Book 8088 is also the subject of controversy and reviews have been mixed on both products.  Although I do not own either and have no intention to buy either I have researched and viewed enough YouTube reviews of the device to offer some relevant insights on these devices.

Apple IIc - Epitome of the Apple II Experience?

In 1984 Apple Computer released the fourth computer to its Apple II line, the Apple IIc, A2M4000.  The Apple IIc was a "compact" version of the Apple IIe with many expansions built-in.  It was released alongside the Macintosh and despite the hype the market did not respond in the way Apple had hoped.  Nonetheless they still sold about 400,000 systems from 1984-1988.  In 2023 these systems can still be purchased for $150-200, so let's take a look to see what makes them special.

The Kneale Watcher, Reader & Listener

Nigel Kneale (1922-2006) was a British/Manx author whose influence on science fiction, supernatural fiction and television drama cannot be understated.  Kneale wrote many scripts, screenplays and stories that would have a formative influence in English drama.  While Kneale is best known for his Quatermass stories, his work is much more varied than those relating to Professor Bernard Quatermass.  He has a fairly vast body of work that still exists, although due to the nearsighted preservation practices of the BBC and ITV affiliates of the 1940s-1970s, many of his contributions to TV drama do not survive, at least in their original form.  The man wrote books, TV plays, film scripts and radio dramas.  The purpose of this article is to identify what of his "genre work" still exists, what has been released and the best versions available to acquire.  While books have been written about Kneale's career, impact on modern genre fantasy and his works, here we will let the author speak for himself directly to his audience.

Turn your DVD Player onn. - A Review of the $25 Wal-mart Wonder

DVD and DVD players were once considered necessities for gracious living.  The technology has been around for over 25 years now and remains the lowest common denominator of delivering film and television in a permanent (non-streaming) form to the masses.  Although the venerable disc format has been eclipsed by Blu-ray and more recently 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, some of us still find value in our DVD libraries, especially for those discs which have content unique to them or can only be put on a Blu-ray as an upscale.  And sometimes you need just a DVD player.  Wal-mart has a house brand called onn. which manufactures an inexpensive DVD player.  Last year I found I needed a DVD player to play discs on my CRT, having rediscovered the benefits of watching certain discs on a CRT, and saw that the onn. DVD Player was only $25 and decided to take a chance on it.  In this blog entry, I will relate how I discovered some rather pleasant surprises with this player with you.

The Godzilla Series Japanese Film U.S. Theatrical Releases

Godzilla was first introduced to the wider world through the medium of the cinema.  Western theater audiences were exposed to Godzilla and other Japanese sci-fi films on a fairly regular basis during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Godzilla's theatrical releases have garnered particular attention, the series is still going after almost seventy years.  A theatrical release of a foreign film in the US is a particular mark of distinction and prestige, and many people believe it is important to try and preserve these films as close to the way they were exhibited as possible.  The Godzilla franchise is one of the most successful in history but during its films theatrical runs would the greatest number of people see the film at one time.  

Some of Godzilla's theatrical releases are well-known and readily available, but most have fallen into obscurity.  Even in the VHS era when theatrical releases were more available, there was usually something missing or altered such as credits and title screens.  In this blog article I will identify what you would have seen in terms of credits and titles if you saw these films in a US theater during their wide release theatrical runs.  

Reconstructing a "Lost" Version of The Phantom of the Opera in HD

I sometimes like to think of fan-based restorations of classic films, whether they are of a Godzilla film, a Walt Disney classic short or Star Wars, as the culmination of film restoration.  The Internet and broadband has fueled talented creators to take films from whatever sources they can find and make something even better than the studios which made or have rights to these films did or could.  I have talked about this subject before and in the recent past I have done a few minor projects myself.  Unfortunately due to the nature of the films such projects often cannot be shared publicly.  My most recent project is safe enough to share and touches upon a subject I have discussed in the past, the 1925 version of The Phantom of the Opera.  Specifically my goal was recreate the first version of Phantom I ever saw, the Killiam Film Classic release.  Sit back and let's go over why this release was significant, how it entered my notice and how I restored it to what I hope will be seen as its "proper glory."

Keeping the Upscale and Capture Pure - The RGBtoHDMI and Digital PC Video Standards

When IBM was designing video display adapters for its IBM PC, it treated video quality as important.  While the world of displays was in 1980 essentially analog, IBM chose to use digital outputs for its IBM Monochrome Display and Printer Adapter and Color Graphics Adapter.  Later it continued to use a digital TTL interface for the IBM PCjr.'s built in video and its Enhanced Graphics Adapters.  Competitors and copycats, like the Hercules Graphics Card and the Tandy 1000's built-in video, also copied IBM's usage of the DE-9 port carrying digital color signals.  While some of the color cards had composite color video support, serious business usage demanded the use of a monitor which could accept those digital signals for the highest possible picture quality possible.  

By 1987, the limitations of the digital interface, with each color primary requiring a separate collection of wires, was too limiting for IBM's Video Graphics Array.  The connector was changed and the colors were output over an analog interface, which only required one pin per color primary.  The VGA analog video standard remained the principal way by which PCs connected their displays for over fifteen years.  By the time the digital DVI connector became popular enough to replace VGA, the older pre-VGA standards had been long consigned to the realm of retro-computing.  

Today the modern display device tends to eschew any display standard older than DVI, with most only having HDMI and DisplayPort inputs.  The digital standards of old used special CRTs, which have become expensive and often require repair or restoration due to age.  Those of us who enjoy working on retro computers are faced with having to "settle" for composite video, having to fork out large amounts of money and space for the special digital CRTs displays or use rather particular capture cards to see what was intended.  The RGBtoHDMI is one really good solution for these issues, let's take a look at it.

RetroUSB AVS : The Affordable NES FPGA Console

RetroUSB AVS, courtesy of RetroUSB.com

The NES is undoubtedly the most cloned video game system ever, and in the 2010s FPGA technology had decreased in price to the point where it was affordable to implement retro video game systems on an FPGA.  The RetroUSB AVS was the first NES FPGA console made available to the public, and while I have discussed it before on this blog, I have not done a full review of the AVS because I never had one in my possession before.  That changed recently thanks to a friend of mine who let me borrow his for testing and review.  As this console is almost five years old at this point and is the only NES FPGA console you can currently pre-order, I think it is time to see where it has progressed and how well it has held up over the years compared to more recent competition.

MiSTer - The MAME of FPGA Simulation Projects

MiSTer Fully Assembled (courtesy of MiSTer Github Wiki)

Why bother pricey FPGA simulation when there are so many excellent software emulators lying around?  The answer can be boiled down into one word : lag.  Lag is the most intractable problem with emulation and the most insidious.  Everything else, accuracy, ease of use, authenticity, a software emulator can accomplish.  But doing all that without added latency is a huge challenge and one which oftentimes cannot be met without some very expensive hardware.

An FPGA console is a modestly priced solution to lag.  FPGAs simulate original hardware at the logic level and can simulate multiple processes in parallel.  A software emulator must recreate a system alien to the hardware on which it is running and is essentially limited to processing multiple hardware events serially.  The most popular FPGA solution not made by Analogue is based on the DE-10 Nano FPGA development board.  This board is the key to the MiSTer project, a group of cores which simulate various video game consoles, computer systems and certain arcade machines under a common framework.  In this blog entry (or entries), I will dive into the world of MiSTer and discuss the aspects I like and dislike.

A Brief History of Godzilla on Home Media

Before home video tape and disc formats was available, the only way to see a motion picture was in the theater during its first run or through a reissue.  Later, when television became available films would be available for broadcast but TVs were expensive in the 1950s, color TV was expensive until the mid 1960s, and studios typically did not make their prestigious library titles available at first (with occasional exceptions) because they still viewed themselves in competition with television.

Godzilla movies have been released on home video for a very long time, longer than many people may realize.  With the release of the Criterion Showa set on Blu-ray, we will finally have had a release of every Godzilla film on HD disc.  Here in this blog article I will give a brief overview of the franchise's release history on all home video formats, both popular and obscure.  I am concentrating on what was available in the English-language market, with which is what I am the most familiar.

Game Boy Interface Revisited

A few years ago, I discussed a piece of homebrew software called Game Boy Interface (GBI).  GBI was written and is maintained by a GameCube enthusiast who goes by the handle Extrems.  Extrems intended to replace the official Game Boy Player (GBP) Start-Up disc for the GameCube which, when combined with the attachment that is fitted underneath your GameCube, allows you to play Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance cartridges using genuine GBA hardware.  Before GBI, if you did not have the official disc, your GBP attachment was useless.  GBI quickly made the official disc essentially obsolete, but the software has been radically revised since I first profiled it.  Let's return and see what's changed and I will give my own personal take on how I like to use the software.  This will not be a fully comprehensive guide because there are features geared toward hardware I do not own and uses I do not put GBI, but if you are new to GBI you may find something here instructive.

Quatermass and the Pit Blu-ray Review

The serial format, breaking down a story over multiple, distinct parts, has a very long history.  Silent film serials were followed by sound film serials, and up and until the 1950s the genre had fulfilled a need for audiences to be entertained in a weekly format.  Television's introduction led to the downfall of serials from Republic Films and other studios that specialized in narratives punctuated by cliffhangers.  The format did not generally translate well to television, where people expected a program to begin and end in one viewing.  In the 1950s there was no real ability for an average TV viewer to record programming to watch at a later time, you either saw the program or you hoped for a repeat.  This suited television broadcasters, who wanted viewers to experience a new story every week.

That was the evolution in the U.S., but the U.K. was not yet ready to abandon the classic serial format.  The British Broadcasting Corporation, a publicly-funded TV network, had to fill the same number of hours in a day but with fewer resources that its American commercial televison network counterparts.  The serial format had its advantages in cost, sets, costumes, production personnel and actors could be reused for several weeks at a cost significantly less than having to mount brand-new productions every week.  Serials were broadcast alongside series not only by the BBC but also the ITV affiliates for a solid three-decade period.  Here I am going to offer my thoughts on one of the best of the serials ever produced from this period, Quatermass and the Pit as presented in its November 2018 Blu-ray release. 

Three High-Quality 1080p Game Boy "Consolizing" Solutions Compared

For some reasons, probably strange, many people like to play Game Boy or Game Boy Color games outside their portable confines.  One reason is that the games are good but the original screens for these devices are terrible to look at by modern standards.  Nintendo has on certain occasions tried to satisfy the need to play portable games as though they were home console games, but those solutions are old.  Pure software emulation can easily take the GB to 1080p and beyond, but software is wholly divorced from original hardware.  There are software emulators with dumping cartridge slots like the RetroN 5 and Retro Freak, but they are only 720p solutions.  A promising new mod called the GBA Consolizer is an FPGA-based upscaling solution for the Game Boy Advance but is limited to 720p output.  There was a mod called the HDMYBoy a few years ago but it never got beyond a few prototype units.  For this blog article, I will focus on hardware-based solutions which I have some ability to experience personally and can deliver a 1080p experience.

Proper Analog Retro Video Capture with the Datapath E1/E1s

Capturing analog video can be a difficult task.  Analog video follows rather imprecise standards and is increasingly being discarded in today's world where 100% digital video solutions like HDMI and DisplayPort rule.  Capturing a digital signal is often simply a matter of buying a capture card/box and plugging everything in.  But capturing audio signals, at least those signals that do not conform to the "broadcast standards of 525/625i", is not quite so easy.  But while there exist inexpensive devices that can handle low quality composite and medium quality s-video sources, what about high-end analog sources like component video, 15KHz RGB and 31KHz VGA signals?  Moreover, are any of them compatible with 240p signals put out by retro consoles and home computers?  While there are affordable devices that can sort of handle these signals like the Startech USB3HDCAP, the results are often second rate.  But what if there was a device that you can acquire for similar cost and provide truly first-rate capture?  Interested?  Well if you are, read on to discover the power and the caveats of the Datapath VisionRGB E1 and E1s.

Nonsense and Other Observations about Dracula/Horror of Dracula

As much as I love Dracula (1958)/Horror of Dracula, I find it has a lot of plot holes, ideas that don't make a lot of sense and other weirdness.  I started to write down certain observations as I was watching the film and eventually they became so long that I thought them worth putting them up in a blog post.  These observations as I have put them to type have been as timestamped to the times (roughly) in the film to which they most apply.  I am using the 2012 Hammer Restoration found on the 2013 Region B/2 Blu-ray/DVD from Lionsgate with altered color timing by a fan (which eliminates the overly-blue tint found on that disc).  Any DVD or Blu-ray release should be able to follow along without too much difficulty.

New Accessories and Ideas for the Game Boy Camera

Courtesy of Wikipedia

The Game Boy, while a modern marvel in and of itself, had a very unique peripheral released for it toward the transition from the monochrome Game Boy to the Game Boy Color.  That device was the Game Boy Camera, a cartridge with an twistable camera lens capable of taking four-color photographs in a 128x112 resolution surrounded by borders.  It could save up to 30 user-taken pictures to its battery-backed memory.  The program included some rudimentary editing tools, simple games and many little touches which were weird by Nintendo's standards.  Nintendo also released the Game Boy Printer, a small thermal printer which functioned as the only official way to memoralize photos outside the cartridge.  While the Camera was considered a modern marvel itself in its day, the Camera has had a cult following ever since.  Let's look at some of the ways in which continued interest in the Game Boy Camera has manifested itself.

Compatibility Issues within the Game Boy Line

In the beginning, Nintendo released the Game Boy and it took the world by storm.  Since 1989, Nintendo has released no less than 9 major followup products in the Game Boy line sold to the public in the eighteen years to follow.  The Game Boy line has a reputation for rock-solid backwards compatibility, but here we will explore issues with backwards compatibility in as much detail as I can find.

StarTech USB3HDCAP Review - A Jack of All Trades?

The StarTech USB3HDCAP (courtesy of Amazon.com)

Capturing real hardware has always been something of a challenge, especially when it comes to retro video game consoles and computers.  I have been seeking an affordable "all-in-one" capturing solution for some time.  Recently I read about the StarTech USB3HDCAP and remarked that it could handle odd inputs like 15KHz RGB, 240p Component video and even 320x200 70Hz VGA.  I also read that the StarTech uses the same hardware as the more expensive Micomsoft X-CAPTURE 1 and the less-featured Elgato HD60 S.  I purchased a card recently and found that getting the best out of it is not quite as straightforward as I expected.  Here let me discuss what I have tried and how well it works.

The Rise of Interlacing in Video Game Consoles

Until the Genesis and the SNES, all video game consoles used 240p resolutions.  However, in the quest to gain greater graphical detail without severely impacting performance, game programmers began to use interlaced video modes in the fourth and fifth generation of video game consoles.  Then in the sixth generation, interlacing was the norm and progressive scan was the option.  By the seventh generation, HD gaming was the norm and interlaced graphics usage was more or less here to stay.  Let's explore the issues surrounding interlaced video game graphics here.