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Hi everyone! I'm quite late to the discussion here, but I didn't want to create a brand new thread to ask such a similar question.

Anyway, I'm running Maniac Mansion (the 1989 PC Release), and my plan is to record it thusly:

A 386 Leading Edge machine, made in 1988, with an EGA Card with composite out

The EGA composite produces a relatively standard NTSC (well, NTSC is joked to stand for "Never The Same Color") image. This would feed into my DVD recorder.

The audio, which is PC speaker only, will be recorded by putting alligator clips on the boards speaker chip, and leading those out to the DVD recorder's RCA inputs. Of course, this is mono, so I'd have a mono-to-stereo splitter on that chain, too. Oh, and it is unamped, so add in an amp between the PC end and the recorder end.

Does this sound like an ok way to do it? I hope so, because I'd love to get my 6:50 run verified. Right now it seems like the fastest run in pure DOS. You can get a faster run in ScummVM it seems, but ScummVM seems to be contentious here.

Here's my proof of concept:

Thanks!
Matt
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That sounds fine to me. Impressive setup you have there.
Edit history:
DJS: 2013-08-16 04:25:16 am
DJS: 2013-08-16 04:25:16 am
torch slug since 2006
wow, that's really cool.

thanks for letting me know what NTSC stands for btw, lol.
Thanks, guys! Recording DOS games is not an easy task.  I'd love to be able to share this machine with others, as it looks like the perfect platform for 1984-1989 (post-CGA, pre-VGA) runs.

I'm still working out some of the kinks so that I can get this down to below 6:40.

Shadow & DJS, would you be willing to verify my run once I post it? I'll PM you two once I've put the raw VOB up on Dropbox.
torch slug since 2006
i cant verify it (as in one of the steps to get it up on the site) since i know nothing about the game. but yes i could look at the VOB and see if its a ok raw recording (seems to be though).

the best, and easiest, and safest thing for you to do though is to post a quality sample in the Tech Support forums. read this: https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/how_to_post_a_video_quality_test..html .
Wow, thanks DJS! I'll post it there as soon as I get it down to 6:40.

Again, I am constantly amazed at how supportive and encouraging SDA (and the speedrunning community in general) has been so far.
torch slug since 2006
you might wanna do it before you get that, because if there is something bad with your video, you're gonna have to re-record the run (in other words, re do the whole run).
Oh, man, thank you for letting me know that. I'll submit my 6:50 first...it would be awful to get a 6:40 and have it be invalid, haha.
Edit history:
DJS: 2013-08-16 11:04:32 am
torch slug since 2006
i think you might be mis-understanding me. just go ahead and record 30 secs or so of gameplay, using the same recording setup as you are using at the moment, then upload that VOB (or do a final encode in Yua/anri-chan) and post it in the Tech Suppot forums, following the instructions here https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/how_to_post_a_video_quality_test..html

if you get a 6:40, then you wanna submit that to SDA, then that run will go through a whole bunch of processes (like verifying) and then eventually getting posted on the site.

in the Tech Support forums, in your quality test thread, we will "verify" your video quality, making sure there is no problems with that.

edit: you said you were going to upload a VOB to dropbox, you can just use that for the quality test thread.
Yes, I misstated what I meant to do. I did mean to just take either a snippit from the 6:50 VOB, or to just go ahead and do a new 30 second gameplay video. I think a new fresh 30 second video is my best option.

What I meant to say is that it would be terrible if I didn't submit a video quality test first, ran through a 6:40, and then found out that the video quality was bad and therefore that run couldn't be further verified.

Thanks again!
torch slug since 2006
oh ok, yeah thats fine. do whatever you want to Smiley

yeah it has happened before that people has submitted really good runs but then only having them rejected due to poor video/audio quality.
Impressive stuff.  And yeah, you'll have verifiers for this - I know Mayor K ran Maniac Mansion at a marathon via the virtual console, for example.
Garki16 -- thanks! What is so crazy about DOS running is the 500 different variants of graphics chips, audio chips, input devices, etc...worse, when combined together, you get even more variants...

The EGA composite test I just ran produced no video.  My EGA card's composite could be toast or it could be that the NTSC it is outputting is just a touch too non-standard. Worse, the speaker audio via alligator clamps was buzzzzzzzzzy.

I just ran a VGA-to-SVideo converter box test, along with a PCSpeaker-to-Soundblaster-Card thing (it is a wire you run internally from the speaker output on the mobo to a 2-pin CDROMaudio-esque input on the top of the card itself), and it produced a very clean result.

So my choices are -- unacceptable video and audio from a slightly purer machine (EGA+386+DOS 3.31) vs. perfect video+audio from a slightly less pure machine (VGA+PentiumII+DOS6.22)...........

My other idea was putting a PZM mic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_microphone) inside of the PC case to record the speaker.

Regardless, I'm going to submit my VGA-on-a-PII VOB to determine the video quality. The only advantage to the PII over the 386 is that the PII does screen transitions more quickly. However, it does not speed up any other portion of the game. So, I still think a run on this would be "valid".
Thanks again, all. I just uploaded a quality test here:

https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/quality_test_maniac_mansion_pc.html
If you still want to record PC speaker audio directly, take a recording of your buzzy audio, toss it into audacity, and go to effects->normalize and check the box "remove dc offset" this should get rid of the buzzing sound. Though the tricky part is actually separating audio and video and then recombining when your done. I did that for the obsolete Commander Keen runs I did.

Though I'd say to just go with PII machine if you have things looking and sounding nice.
Thanks, Tranq! In your opinion, is a PII a "legit" machine to do a run from a 1989 game? Again, the only main difference in speed is that the screen transitions are 1/4 of a second on a PII versus 3/4 of a second on the 386. This adds up over the course of the run, though. Everything else is 100% the same speed. I've timed it out with a stopwatch.
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Load times will be cut out, so don't worry about that.

I can't verify your run unfortunately, I haven't played Maniac Mansion much. :<
Thanks, SW!

I just need a way to get video out of this 386 w/ EGA. I don't know if the composite jacks are broken, or if EGA officially outputs composite. I've read conflicting reports. The ATI Wonder, a popular EGA card with non-standard features, does output composite...but it is b/w instead of actual color. I have a standard EGA card (a Western Digital Paradise), and no matter what TV I hook it up to, there's no signal. My CGA card, on the other hand, outputs composite to the oldest of TVs (a 1984ish Magnavox) to the newest (my friend's monster 70" Sony LCD).
Ok, so I just said the heck with it and installed my IBM CGA card. The composite output quality is actually quite good. It is somewhat sharp, and the sync is perfect. The bad news is that LucasFilm did not optimize the coloring for composite. King's Quest I composite looks EGA-good. Chuck Yeager's AFT 1.0 looks decent, too. Maniac Mansion looks like...well...it is very purple. And red. And awful. Perhaps it was an after-thought for LucasFilm. I do not know.

tl;dr: So, for future reference, if the game was designed with CGA composite in mind, a CGA card is a great way to record really old DOS games. You get a steady NTSC output with a seemingly noise-free image. I'll post a quality check later in the week to prove that I'm not crazy (well, maybe crazy but no super crazy).
Hey, it is been awhile, and I wonder if anyone is still reading this, haha.

Anyway, I did a 6:51 run with CGA composite out. I have the full run up for the quality testing here: https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/quality_test__maniac_mansion_cga_composite_pc.html

The color palette is bad because LucasFilm Games hastily added composite support to Maniac and Zak. The image is fuzzy because, well, it is CGA composite mode, haha.
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Still reading this! Congratulations on your run. Smiley
Thanks, ShadowWraith! I submitted this for verification after nate approved the video quality. Even if it can't get verifiers, I was happy just to have this little experience with SDA. It has been very positive and encouraging.