Taking Pictures of Computer Screens

This is an old post, preserved for reference.

The products and services mentioned within are no longer available.

I've been writing this blog for almost 10 years now, and most of the time it follows this same format. A paragraph of text, followed by a photograph, another paragraph, another photo etc. I take a lot of photos for each one of these, and try to get the best shots. But one thing I seem to be unable to do is take a decent photograph of a computer screen.

I have tried various options, different monitors, different cameras etc. but I've never quite got the hang of it.

Any time I use a CRT, it's usually a bit of a muddy picture with reflections etc. and I always have problems with empty screens with just text up in the top left corner, often resorting to photographing just that area.

Flash doesn't help here, as you just get a bright circle.

So it's a question of holding the camera still.

Even when I do get a half decent picture, there is often bits of the room reflected in the screen.

Or maybe a view out of the window.

Or worse, the photographer.

It's not just PETs. Same issues with a Commodore 1901 CRT monitor,

I have a small black and white CRT on the shelves above the workbench, useful for tuning into machines with only an RF output before composite video conversions etc.

That is very difficult to catch a decent photograph of for some reason it always seems to catch a partially drawn screen.

And even when I do, it's often not much use for blog posts where colour is relevant.

The oscilloscope below is likewise problematic for me to photograph.

Please note, all the pictures above are from actual blog posts. These were the best ones. These were the result of a process where I said, yes, that's the one I want to show off to the world. You can only imagine the state of all the ones I rejected.

I have had more luck with LCD monitors, where I can often get a usable shot.

There are more than their fair share of ropey ones though, and again, the mainly empty screen is a problem.

The camera also seems to have a blind spot around the light blue on dark blue default colours on the Commodore 64.

And in a few cases, I have resorted to changing the colour scheme on the C64 just to get a picture.

I've got a number of blog posts ready to go, but I've held them back in an attempt to get some better screenshots. So I've been trying some different things.

I did try getting a gooseneck camera mount, which sort of worked, but it still wobbles a bit when you press the button (and it doesn't have a remove shutter control). I also tried taking video on the camera, which sort of worked.

One option that seems to be popular to record video for the youtubes is to use a DVD Recorder. I have tried that a few times, it's a bit more involved as I need to connect it up, record it to the internal hard drive and transfer to DVD (or I think I can record direct to DVD-RW), then take the DVD to the PC and play it with VLC media player and take screenshots I can use on here.

That's not too bad. It's a bit involved, and unfortunately, neither of the two DVD recorders I have tried will accept NTSC signals, just displaying 'unsupported format' (or something like that). I suspect the hardware would be more than capable of doing it, but for commercial reasons or copyright protection etc. they block it.

But the PAL side of things is OK, but as with this sort of device, adds a bit of latency to the display. So that is an option, but I was hoping for a better one. The next option was a USB video capture card. I got a cheap one to try out (based on the theory that the more expensive ones probably used the same chipset, just in a better box?).

That plugs into the AV leads from the back of the computer being tested, and recorder directly to the computer. In some cases, I can also make use of multiple outputs to view on my usual monitor via RGB and record via composite.

I can then record the session to the PC, and go back through the recording to select the section I want and take screenshots.

Like the DVD option, this is particularly useful when I am trying to catch a particular event happening, or get some gameplay pictures rather which is difficult whilst holding a camera.

This device claims to support NTSC, but I didn't have any luck with an NTSC VIC20 (and yes, I did try NTSC and 'auto' and various other options, but it wouldn't lock on sync or show any colour).

(and yes, it is NTSC according to my LCD monitor).

It also had issues locking onto the Commodore PET (which is NTSC timing without a colour burst).

The PAL version was OK on the VIC20, and seemed to be a bit sharper than the DVD Recorder recording.

The C64 default blue on blue was a bit blurry.

These is an S-Video input. I tried connecting that up to the C64 instead.

The result was a bit better, less banding, still not brilliant, but better than the photos.

So, I have a couple of options for PAL systems. They're not great quality, and they don't support NTSC. Over to you, dear reader, can you suggest any methods that may work for me, or equipment I could try?

2022 Update: Nope, I still haven't got any better.

Epson Equity LT Laptop - Part 1

This is an old post, preserved for reference.

The products and services mentioned within are no longer available.

25 years ago, I started University, hard to believe I know, given I have such a grasp of modern technology. I had an Amiga 500 that had served me well throughout my A Levels, but my parents had decided it should be passed on to my younger sister (who promptly sold it to one of her friends - I was very upset and don't think I have fully recovered). The University had lots of computers, so I was planning to use those, but I did end up with a laptop. Sort of.

This isn't it, but it was a similar model, an Epson Equity LT. It had belonged to one of my dad's friends, and the screen had been damaged. He asked me to have a look, and I got him a few quotes from PC repair places to get a new screen. I think they were sufficiently expensive that he bought a new one instead, so I was left with the laptop, minus a working screen.

Handily, the screen detached, so I was able to remove the useless broken screen section. I was a poor student (boo hoo, but I am still accepting donations), so couldn't afford to get the replacement screen. There was a connector for an external monitor, 9 pin so monochrome or CGA, but I didn't have one of those either.

It also had a serial port, and what I did have was an old BBC Micro and a black and white TV (see above, poor student, 1994 etc.). So I remember I hooked it up with a DOS boot disk set to redirect the console to the serial port, and a terminal program on the BBC. I'm going to have a go at recreating that. Bit first, I need to have a look at this laptop. I have had an ebay saved search running for ages, and it finally turned up one of these, although this is a different model, it is the posher version.

The one I had was an NEC V30 8086 clone with 640K RAM and two 720K floppy drives, one on each side. This one is the same except that it has only one floppy and a 20MB hard drive instead, but it's not in the best of condition.

It does however power up, count up all 640K of RAM, but then flags up an error that the time and date is not set. This is a late 80s machine. It will have a battery inside. Oh dear. Better have a look at that.

It doesn't like 2019, so I set the date to 1989 and it seems to have DOS 3.3 installed, along with Lotus 123 and a word processor called Galaxy.

The hard drive is ridiculously loud, I guess I'm so used to fanless SSD systems these days. Right, time to get inside and see if we can find that battery.

OK, there's a lot going on there. The main battery pack looks like 8 C cells, 9.6V at 2000mAh, I'll look at replacing that with new NiCad cells at a later date.

I've spotted the CMOS battery, but it's going to need a few bits removing to get to it. That board is the hard drive controller. I was hoping it might be an 8 bit IDE drive, but it doesn't look like it. The expansion slot is propriety, so I'm not going to be able to easily fit an XT-IDE type board, so there goes my chance of replacing it was a compact flash card.

The drive I think is a JVC unit, 20mb, 26 pin connection. New one on me. (more info on the JVC JD-3824LOYO drive in this blog post: https://knm.org.uk/blog/2017/04/the-jvc-26-pin-hard-disk-interface-part-1/) 

Ah, there's the battery. I'm pleased to say it hasn't leaked, that can be such a problem on machines of this era. This one is a 3.6V lithium cell in AA form with leads soldered to tabs.

That measures 0.0V on the meter, so we can assume it is well and truly dead. I fashioned a replacement from a new AA 3.6V cell in a battery holder. That will save me soldering new leads on in 20 years when it next gets replaced.

The holder is screwed in place using the screw which used to hold the P clip on the old cell.

Whilst I'm inside, here's the heart of the beast, a 5 year old CPU design at the time, still going strong.

Some DRAM chips providing the 640K RAM, and two 8K EPROMs with the BIOS.

Putting that back together, everything is still working, and it should now be able to remember the date and time. Wow, that hard drive is screachingly loud.

So, what's next. Well, after waiting ages to find one of these, another has come along, this time the dual floppy (i.e. quiet) version. That looks in better condition, but is listed as not working. I'm sure there's a plan forming here. I also need to sort out a BBC Micro with a terminal ROM and I think I have the original serial cable I used somewhere in one of the many collections of "things which might come in handy one day".