Contour ShuttlePRO V2

I’ve had been waiting a couple of weeks for this item to turn up from eBay and it was definitely worth the wait!  The Contour ShuttlePRO V2 is a multimedia controller used for editing video and audio and the like.

As you may have noticed from the handwritten labels on the buttons, it is fully customisable so you can pretty much get it to work with any program you like from VLC to PowerDirector!

Once you’ve got the buttons set up how you like, not only does it make editing quicker and easier but it allows you to be more accurate as the jog wheels/dials are way better than just a standard mouse.

This is not the first Contour Shuttle device I’ve owned as just a few weeks ago I purchased the Shuttle Xpress as I didn’t want to splash out on the pro in case I didn’t get on with it.

When I saw that I could get one from CeX for half the new price and that I could sell it eBay for the same it was a no brainier as it meant I could try it out and if I liked it I could sell it on eBay and get the Pro version - which is exactly what I’ve done!

Sorting Things Out - PC Games System Requirements & Other Software Titles

I've been a bit quiet online for the last week as I've been sorting my Retro/Vintage collection out a bit and have rediscovered quite a few things I had tidied away and forgotten about!  I have a spreadsheet containing the details of the permanent pieces in my collection, but it's a continuous work-in-progress as before I get a chance to complete it I've purchased something else at either a car boot sale or (in more recent times) on eBay and I get distracted and move on to unboxing/unpacking my newly acquired items!

I think I have around 70 games (around 50 in DVD jewel cases and 20 in the old boxes they used to come in) but I don't know for sure as that's one thing that I have never gotten around to documenting.

I'm planning on using more of my games collection when it comes to testing the Retro Laptops that I have but the current issue I have is that I have no idea what games are compaitble with which laptops so I am now developing a spreadsheet that has that information on it.

This is what I started with:

Using the information from the back of the games I have put both the minimum requirements and recommended requirements in along with some notes on what else is on the disc like Acrobat Reader and Internet Explorer etc. but it took quite a while to gather the information as it's all in the very, very small print on the cases so I decided to see if there were any databases of PC Games with their specifications already out there that I could use to create a more streamlines spreadsheet of my collection.

After spending some time searching I finally came across www.gamesystemrequirements.com which seems to contain most of the games I picked at random to search for, it contains a lot more concise information which is exactly what I was looking for and will save me having to read all the small print on the back of the cases.  The idea behind the spreadsheet is to make it easier to see what games I can use to test a specific laptop based on the CPU and RAM it happens to have and what OS I have installed - going forward I should then be able to see at a glance what games will run on Windows 98 for example.

After comparing what is written on the back of the jewel cases and what is listed on the Game System Requirements website I see that there are quite a few discrepencies so I cannot rely on it fully and still have to check the back of the games, but it has helped me lesson the amount of data that I am collecting and my spreadsheet now looks like this:

All I've got to do now is add all the software I have including all the DVD jewel case types, big box versions, CD jewel cases, software in CD sleeves and in my CD/DVD organisers!...

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**EDIT/UPDATE**

Here's what it looks like with a few more entries:

iomega Clik! PCMCIA PC-Card Floppy Disk Drive

Way back in 1999 iomega released a pocket-sized zip disk drive that until recently I never knew existed!  Despite being around 21 years old the PCMCIA card has not given up the ghost, but is there any data on the disks that came with it and if so what data is on them?  There's only one way to find out!

IBM ThinkPad Laptops - January Car Boot Sale Finds Tested and Inspected

Way back in January 2020 I picked up 8 different laptops for £1.90 each (click here if you want to take a quick look at all 8 and the Shuttle Desktop I got).  I've been so busy doing other things that I have only recently gotten around to having a proper look at them and have produced a 4 part series of YouTube videos of me inspecting and testing them...

The first one I took out of the storage box was pretty beaten up, the lid is covered in very deep scratched - clearly the car booter had no idea what the real value of these laptops is and had not been storing them properly or looked after them at all.

Without giving too much of the game away, in Part 4 I also do a speeded up tutorial on how to install Windows 98 Second Edition!

PART 1:


PART 2:


PART 3:


PART 4:

How To Create A Backup Image of a CD and Upload it to the Internet Archive Website

Drivers for Windows 95 and Windows 98 laptops are not always easy to find so it comes in handy if you have the original System Restore Disks that may have originally come with the laptop but the world of Retro Computing isnt always that forthcoming as a lot of the discs have been either lost or thrown away over the years - so what can you do to get hold of old system restore discs I hear you ask?!

Well, you can visit https://www.archive.org which is the Internet Archive website and you can see if anyone has uploaded a backup copy there that you can download, burn to a disc and then restore your Vintage/Retro laptop back to factory settings!

The only way these disc images get on to the Internet Archives website is by people uploading disc images of the Restore Discs that they have.  This is why it is important that if you have any system restore discs, when you  get a chance, make backup images of them and get them uploaded to the site.

In this quick video I will show you one way of creating a CD disc backup and how easy it is to upload them to the Internet Archives website...