More OS details for preferred Win XP SP2 build?
 

Hello,

Newbie here... First post.

I've been searching and reading posts here for a couple months as I'm begin my trek into conversion of my old 8mm, Hi8 home videos and some old VHS tapes to a digital form. As well as upgrading my source equipment, I'm inventorying my old PC's and OS's to see if I have what it takes to assemble a good capture PC. Luckily I'm a pack rat and have kept some useful stuff! I will probably try a couple systems built from the skeletons abandoned in the closet, one with an old original Radeon AIW (AGP 4X, 32MB) and another with an eBay PCIe X1800XL AIW (if it works). I have the dongles I need for both cards.

I also have a selection of original Windows XP OS's that I've purchased for home building my PC's including one XP Home with SP2, and two XP media center 2005's. I believe at least one of the media center versions is SP2 based and maybe both. Based on what I've read here, XP Media Center doesn't play well with the AIW hardware and software. But, if I recall, I don't have to install any of the media center stuff if I don't want to, and hopefully I can slipstream an installation ISO without it.

So my question is:
Does anyone have a recommended list of hotfixes, etc. to add to SP2 that they find works well (ie., better than without them)? Would the additoins be different if I used the XP Home version vs. one of the XP MC versions? If the best is to add NO hotfixes, all the better!

At one time I planned to slipstream an updated version of XP to ease future installations. I had done this for Win 2000 and it worked slick. But the XP plan only progressed as far the collection of the hotfixes, etc. I never made an XP slipstream but I think I might still have all the pieces I'll need. It looks like now is the time relearn the slipstream process and complete that plan. Hopefully, I'll have what I need "carefully" squirreled away on my NAS.

If this information is already posted elsewhere on the site, please point me to it and I apologize for wasting anyone's time.

Thanks,
BW37

SP2 as released is fine, nothing to really add. AIW will make you update a few things, like the Windows Installer, ASP.NET, etc, but that's about it. I have those downloaded to a thumb drive, never connect the XP system online.

Disable the SP2 firewall, anti-virus, and other security warnings.

I never liked slipstreaming. I did use DriverPacks to allow XP to install on more modern motherboards and SATA, but that's about it.

This is off the rails.. I have not tried this.. but

I noticed that AMD has drivers for up to Windows 7x64 for AIW cards back to the AGP 9600.

This sometimes includes the mmc, usually doesn't include a MPEG2 decoder.. but if your going to use it to capture Uncompressed.. VirtualDub works fine even on Windows 7

The AGP cards require a specific type of motherboard which might not be supported as well under Windows 7.

But PCIe came into its own during the Vista / Windows 7 timeframe. Most of the support had become internalized by Windows by that time rather than added on to the operating system after its release.

So.. if your going to try an X1800XL PCIe card.. you will be using a Theater 200 chip (good), but unless you wanted to record in MPEG2 using the ATI offload feature of ATI MMC.. you might do completely okay with VirtualDub instead.

I have not tried this.. but I've been thinking about it.

Windows 7 x64 is supported until January and has the most motherboard, device drivers and hardware is current. Its old, its a hack operating system.. but might be easier to use with SD cards, SSD devices and USB3 devices for storage.

We are also on the cusp of the Win10 generation who say "never Win7" but it might be another one of those periods in history when you could bridge a special gap and cap completely Uncompressed and not have to worry about IO, capture hardware or codecs.. do all that after you've edited.. or save them as Uncompressed and call it done.

The PCIe MPEG recording quality/drivers/MMC are terrible. Anybody wanting the MPEG should stick to AGP or the couple PCI.

This post is about WiXP, and I don't really see why Win7 is discussed. We both know that AIW sorta works in Win Vista/7 32-bit, but it's hackish and unreliable. XP or don't use AIW.

The PCIe drivers in general are kind of funky, issues like image offset that isn't present in AGP.

Whatever AIW card you get, use the disc/download ATI drivers, not the included MS version.

Thanks for the quick replies guys.

Good to hear plain Jane XP-SP2 works. I think I'll continue down parallel paths: My trusty old P4T533-C as home for the AGP AIW and one of my AMD AM2 boards for the PCIe. I will definitely want to try to capture with VirtualDub and Huffyuv as I'll want to produce final versions in forms other than MPEG. It sounds like the AGP system could be for direct to MPEG trials and the PCIe for VirtualDub and Huffyuv and just see which I like better.

The PCIe option is more attractive because of the SATA drives and eSata that come along for the ride as well as the newer hardware otherwise. I have more and larger SATA drives lying around than I do working/old IDE drives. And I can still buy new SATA drives too. My biggest IDE is only 200 GB and I don't think you can buy new IDE's these days, at least it looks iffy from the normal channels. Experience with PATA to SATA adapters anyone?? That might be the best option if they work. Well see.

I'll start with XP-SP2 on both though Win 7 is definitely tempting for the PCIe machine and I have a few of those OS's lying around too though I've upgraded (downgraded???) most of those to Win 10 as everyday machines for my wife and I. I don't know if I could install those OS's on another machine or not or if I could even reload an old back-up image to one I've upgraded and get it activated. I do have an operational Win 7 32 bit system that was Media Center that I gave up on due to cable card issues. I'll probably fire that up and upgrade it before January just to put a stake in the ground.

I've still got a long way to go on my trip down this rabbit hole but I figured getting the OS right was a critical starting point.

BW37

Mostly you'll have to settle down and work on one operating system at a time and maintain that for capture until done.

If you can get the XP hardware together, you will have the most options.. but you will be nursing an older system with specific special needs. As you have pointed out you may have some limitations in hardware choices.. but consider "After" the capture you can offload that to newer hardware over common buses like USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 using modern hard disks and SSD drives. Do not try to use the system for more than one task, use it only for capture.. tuning it for multiple purposes will drive you crazy. I would recommend backing it up regularly to a fast USB drive like a Corsair SSD USB stick and an imaging solution like macrium reflect free. But that's what I do.

I only mention the PCIe options if your forced to go that direction, the situation is not entirely hopeless.. but its not recommended if you have other choices. For one thing all the PCIe cards except the very rare X600 require a hefty gamers power supply with direct connections to the AIW card.. and they are noisey.. their cooling fans are called "hair dryers" for good reason. And they are massive heat engines, many older cases don't have enough space for enough cooling fans to keep them from overheating. You also won't have hardware assisted compression options from the card itself.. you would with the XP solutions using the ATI mmc software... if you decide to save your captures as compressed video.

Choosing to save your capture files as compressed video or uncompressed video is often a matter of "do you have the disk space" or time to deal with chopping the video up and editing out commercials before publishing by burning a compressed copy to DVD. Or "its mandatory" because the video is less than perfect and you have to capture Uncompressed so you can run advanced software tools on the video before editing and publishing.

And sometimes people just want to get the job done, and not make decisions about it.. so if they can afford to buy enough hard disk space to store all the Uncompressed video.. that's what they do.. if they can't afford to.. or the video doesn't matter that much to them.. then they capture and save to Compressed video and accept the situation.

I was exploring the AMD website and noticed they had Windows 7 x64 device drivers for more of the AIW line than I was aware of. And I haven't tried those before. I have always stuck strictly with the ATI discs.. I never wanted to look at the Windows 7 x64 possibilities before.. because I always assumed I would be capturing Compressed and would need the ATI mmc option.. that sorta works on Win Vista/7 32-bit.. but not really.. not dependably. For one thing mmc is always x32 and run in emulation mode on x64, if I recall correctly it wouldn't even "see" an x64 device driver even if the AIW had a proper x64 device driver.. so it couldn't interface with the AIW card.. x32 device drivers on Windows 7 x64 is not an option.. which is why you have to go back to using Windows 7 x32 if your using ATI mmc.

It was not until more recently that I considered Uncompressed using VirtualDub a real option even on Windows 7 x64.. its very costly.. with all of the downsides I just listed. Larger Power Supply, More fans and cooling capacity requirements. It is completely "sub-optimal" but it is a possible option.. better than giving up. But with patience and time.. XP hardware and AIW cards can still be obtained.. just not always instantaneous. I was only being optimistic.

I would agree there are better Windows 7 and Windows 10 options devoid of using AIW cards entirely if your not using XP.. and that is better than using the PCIe card that he already has. The X1800XL card is a hot noisy, power hungry card with a lot of quirks. I wouldn't throw it away.. but only look to it as a last resort.

Look again. It's just for graphics, not the video/audio aspect.

Based on everything I'm learning, I'll be sticking with XP for now. I have most of what I need to build the 2 systems so I will assemble both and make sure the cards and the overall systems are at least functional and stable. Then I'll move on to installing more software and eventually actual capture attempts. I understand the power and noise issues with the X1800XL but can handle that with the new PSU I just purchased (& needed anyway) and I have a giant old Antec 1240 case to build it in. They don't come much bigger. :D The heat might even come in handy in my cold basement during winter capture sessions :wink2:

I plan only to capture on either system and so will need to transfer the data to a more powerful system for further work. Hopefully, I can do that work in Win 10. Or that may be where Win 7 comes in. We'll see. I'm assuming I'll need to capture on drives connected directly to the MB and then transfer the data to something else. The older system only does USB 2 natively but that will be very slow so I hope I can figure out something else. Maybe that's where a PATA to SATA adapter would come into play. I wonder if I could build a non-internet connected wired LAN just to move data around between some Win XP and Win 7 systems. Hmmmm...

Anyway, I've got a plan now for the next steps.
Thanks for the input!

BW37

You cannot capture to USB.
And USB2 is indeed slow. Even USB3 can be slow, an issue on my capture laptop.

Even LAN is slow, gigabit/1000 is worthless. You need 10k fiber to do that plan. I though about it, but it costs too much, don't want to lay yet more wire.

eSATA, 2tb max for XP, good drives (tip: Fantom). That will keep you sane. ;)

Understood, therefore my assumption that I'll likely have to capture direct to an IDE drive on my AGP/IDE/USB2 native only system. I think my next best shot is to get a PATA to SATA adapter and route it as eSATA to an external eSATA enclosure or toaster (which I have). If this works for capture great! If not then I'll try it to move captured data to the drive and then take the drive to a USB 3 toaster attached to the edit/encode machine for further work.

Those Fantom drives look nice. For now I'll probably use my arsenal of eSATA/USB2 and USB3 toasters to get going.

And thanks for the reminder of the 2GB limit in XP. I have a few 1TB drives "lying around" (like in that unused Media Center and a long unused Windows Home Server) that will get me started.

Thanks again for the input.

BW37

Lots of AGP boards have SATA, especially Asrock boards, which have been much-discussed in this forum in the past few years. Search for those posts.