Capturing 100 VHS tapes on new XP machine?

[albertobalsalm]

To those much wiser than I,

I am in the process of re-digitizing over 100 of my family's VHS tapes and have made some recent recommended purchases in hardware and could use some suggestions and insight.
I've been a lifelong Mac user since the mid 90s when Adobe software like Photoshop was still specific to Mac OS and the last time I owned a PC was a Sony Vaio from the early 2000s. I just purchased a Dell i5 Optiplex Tower with Windows 98 Pro 32-bit SP3 installed, Radeon 7000 graphics and it just arrived my door today. Needless to say, i'm lost and would love to confer with those much wiser than I am prior to beginning my first VHS capture. If this post could summon the fabled “Lord Smurf” i’d be smitten LOL.

Other specs and hardware
- i5 2400 3.10 Ghz processor
- 240 gb SSD
- 4GB Ram
- The seller of the computer mentioned he believes It's one of the last PC set ups that were XP compatible with USB 3.0 drivers installed I am just not sure how to confirm this
- VCR setup - JVC HR-S3500U using a Panasonic ES-15 as a pass through. I purchased a JVC HR-S9600U but noticed awful video quality coming out of the S video connector so I'm in the process of confirming whether or not it's just connector and just not the heads in need of some cleaning. if I am able to remedy the picture issues with cleaning I plan to keep this as I believe it would be foolish not to use it as my main deck
- My ATI TV Wonder HD 600 USB 2.0 arrives tomorrow

Because I am not familiar with customization on a PC tower I'd love to ask what I should add to my PC hardware's set up to optimize it and including a link with a short video of all available slots on this tower since I am not sure what the name for most slots on a motherboard are. Someone recommended removing the SSD that's installed and transferring it to an enclosure with a SATA to USB 3.0 cable after my captured are finished so I can transfer it to my main computer to void a potentially very long transfer time via USB. But before tinkering with anything I wanted to know if I was safe to remove this blue plastic that seems to support the installed SSD? I also considered just doing a fresh install of Windows XP Integral addition as i've heard I might experience some issues anytime using an SSD but this setup with the installed SSD works fine.

Any tips or advice on what I should add, if anything? I will be confirming USB transfer speed to an external drive shortly. What would you guys add to my setup if this what you had? Any insight no matter how small or big would be immensely appreciated 🙏🏼

Sincerely, a PC "Noob"

Video link:

https://youtu.be/1K66u4flrNY?si=7i8AcaCuoWFjoR7q

https://youtu.be/1K66u4flrNY?si=7i8AcaCuoWFjoR7q

[heychrischin]

You and I are in exactly the same boat - years of Mac experience, just built my first PC in many, many years.

Mine is built, have tried installing XP on the SSD to not avail. Am waiting on the above-mentioned Lord Smurf to provide me with an installer especially made to install that older operating system onto a new SSD.

[albertobalsalm]

I found someone selling an updated Windows XP PC with a new SSD and he described it as being maxed out and optimized for the “premium XP Gaming experience”, and because it was $300 (including an original 4:3 monitor!) I figured it was sufficient. However, the owner has not done any video capturing with it but he believes it is more than sufficient for what I plan to do with it with the ATI TV wonder HD I was just hoping for any feedback from anyone who is actually done an extensive amount of capturing Windows XP machines. The seller also believes I don’t think I’ll need to remove the internal SSD and transfer it to an enclosure that just transferring to any external would suffice. I was originally led to believe that any windows XP machine would be at USB 2.0 speeds which would take a very long time for me to transfer potentially hundreds of gigabytes each capture batch.

He sells multiple units with this upgraded hardware Windows XP set up. I’ll include a link in case you’re interested, all of them have SSD’s that are at least 250GB. I didn’t ask how he was able to make it work on Windows XP pro, But I can confirm it works and it’s fast. For around $300 including the monitor mouse and all cables, it almost seemed too good to be true, but he has a great rating and reviews history and works flawlessly when running some of the games like Doom 3, Diablo, Quake, etc. Once I get my ATI TV Wonder HD 600, install the driver as well virtual dub and the ideal codec I’m going to test the set up.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/16694909491...mis&media=COPY

[albertobalsalm]

UPDATE

In case anyone else is wondering or coming from Mac OS land like I am, I also wanted to add that the box on the ATI TV Wonder 600 USB states it recommends an ATI Radeon Direct X 9 compatible or newer graphics card for optimal output quality. Being a noob with Windows, I wasn't sure if the Radeon 7000 that came with this very affordable setup was better so was very pleased to read it is. It also recommends a Pentium 4 processor as well as a few others as a minimum but wasn't sure if the i5 2400 3.10 GHZ on this machine was better or worse and it seems it is significantly better.

So far the only thing i've found the need to add is some DDR3 memory (that's what's currently installed inside of the tower, crucial brand 4GB 1600 UDIMM 1.5v) which was very affordable. I picked up 2 sticks of 8 GB DDR3 Ram since purchasing them in pairs of 8 seemed the most common when looking. I wasn't sure if there was any limitation in the system that would be caused by me getting anything higher than that, plus I figured that type of memory was already installed and it seems to work very fast with some of the games I tried. Adding this information in case anyone else is in need of a Windows XP set up that's prebuilt and seems to match the spec for using the ATI TV Wonder 600 HD to capture video. For the price of $300 it seems like an amazing value, zero need for me to build anything, i'm just adding some RAM to ensure optimum performance even though the box states only 1GB of RAM is recommended.

[BW37]

You need to immerse yourself a bit more in vintage PCs to make your way here.

A few points to start:
1. Windows XP 32 bit can only address 4GB of memory so that’s all you need and why the PC comes with that much.
Send back the 16 GB unless you want to dual boot a later 64 bit OS like Windows 7 or something. But that’s another whole can of worms you might not want to tip over.
2. Google AI isn’t very smart… You need to dig further than its cursory view of the world. If there was a way I could disable it in Chrome, I would! I think most AI thinks human civilization is about 3 years old
3. There have been 3 “Radeon 7000 series” of graphics cards over the years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_7000_series
Which one is in your PC is a bit unclear, but I’d bet it’s the middle RD version which should be fine.

BW

[aramkolt]

Probably shall summon LordSmurf haha. He'll say you need a frame TBC before doing anything else, or if you're going to use the ES15 in place of it that it also needs to be paired with a DVK-100 or DVK-200. There's really not too much point in using the 9600U if you're passing through the ES15 since you'd be turning the line TBC off in that scenario.

Does the composite output from the 9600U look good? If it does look good, then it's not dirty heads or anything mechanical on the deck side. Could be a dry solder joint or bad S-video plug though as you mentioned.

If you bought a 9600U at the going market prices, then I suppose a recommended frame TBC is probably not out of the budget which these days is usually noted to be an AVT-8710 or a TBC-1000. They both will probably need to have been recapped already if you want them to be reliable.

Generally, you'd want to avoid using the ES15 if you have a VCR with line TBC and there is no residual picture distortion/flagging/tearing which is usually at the top and you're also using a frame TBC after that.

As for SSD installs and XP installs, I've heard about Windows XP "integral edition" which is kind of a hacked version of XP which I'm not sure is technically "legal" to use, but it's available for free online nonetheless. Microsoft hasn't shut the Zone94 down that develops/hosts it which I'm sure they could easily do if they wanted. It has more modern drivers and cumulative updates along with built in web browsers that actually still work with the modern internet and SATA drives.