I appreciate the reply Lordsmurf, your comments were right on point where I thought they would come in and confirms a lot of what I have been reading.
As I mentioned, most of the listed equipment I picked up years ago not necessary even for this purpose (save for the Panasonic deck). So not necessary married to any of it, just included it incase they would be useful.
From the sound of it, it looks like I would be best to start from scratch here. I need to check my back stock of PC equipment, I know at one time I used to have an ATI AIW card. I may have some pinnacle devices lying around as well, although I don't know if some are better than others, or if there are any to def stay away from.
I also have several legacy PCs around, so I should be able to spin up a dedicated XP or Win 7 box for the purpose of capturing if you think that would be the route to go.
Sounds like the ideal setup would be
AG-1980 -> [external frame TBC] -> Pinnacle USB capture via Svideo ->
Virtualdub on a windows XP/7 PC
From there should I be capturing in raw uncompressed, or
Huffyuv or Lagarith
With the above setup in mind, In your experience, how big of a hit will the captures take if I start without the frame TBC, while I work on increasing the budget to purchase one?