Can't say I've ever bought an Apple thing on launch but what can I say, 2020's been weird.

I've been wanting a newer, more lightweight LGR work laptop for a while now and all the M1 talk intrigued my tech lust enough to give the new Air a try. 8-core, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD model. ahhh good, this'll do

Reel to reel tape recorder: 𝙖𝙘𝙦𝙪𝙞𝙧𝙚𝙙. And yeah I went for a Tandberg 10XD, at least for the time being! Doesn't do absolutely everything of course, but it can play 4-track 15 ips 10.5" reels with Dolby noise reduction. Top of the line machine in 1975, costing $1399 back then. The equivalent of nearly $7000 now.

Blerb! That Voodoo3 3500 TV AGP card I bought in LGR eThrifts? It showed up.



Time to unbox it! This is the only 3500 I've found complete in box under $300 after years of looking. Being sealed was a nice bonus but I knew it wouldn't last 😄

The whole reason I bought it was to open it, thoroughly enjoy it, and eventually give it the LGR treatment & share it with the world.

Oh wow, you don't see THIS show up for sale too often.

ebay.com/itm/Quantum3d-…

Quantum3d Obsidian2 X-24, the fastest single-slot Voodoo2 card ever made. Essentially two 3dfx cards in an SLI sandwich, it's a beast! Unfortunately this one doesn't come with the required "medusa cable" for VGA output, so that's unfortunate. See that funky d-sub connector on the right? You'd plug it in there to connect a monitor. Otherwise it's just composite/s-video out.

a Saturday morning internet rabbit hole put me down the path of Q-tips history and now I know they were originally called Baby Gays. All I wanted to know was whether or not Q-tips was still a protected trademark since it's become a generic term, but now I'm travelling down a whole new path of research and wish me luck

Just applied and sanded a new walnut wood veneer to one of my desks. Smells amazing. SNIIIFFFFFF

I have almost ZERO interest in covering The Sims 4 anymore, and even less interest in the new pack out today.

Dunno when or if there will be a video about it, as it feels pointless to continually repeat my thoughts on the series. There's only so many ways I can say "this sucks." And I dig Star Wars as much as the next guy. But the fact that it adds *nothing* to the way I personally play the game, is diverting some development time from things that actually need changing, and is also a heavy-handed $20 advertisement for a Disney park attraction?

Nah man.

Since I'm all hyped up on @ApogeeSoftware's Crystal Caves HD announcement, allow me to indulge in some of my Crystal Caves collection?

Starting with my childhood shareware copy! This was my first game, purchased at a local bookstore that had a rack of Titanium Seal shareware. Next up is the mail-order registered version, which came inside this lovely Apogee packaging. You'd order by phone or mail and soon get the full version on the disk of your choosing, a handy instruction sheet, and an Apogee software catalog inside this box.

Anyone remember Banner Mania? I believe this was the very first print program I ever saw on the PC! Vivid memories seeing it run on an amber monochrome monitor at our church, must've printed hundreds of dot matrix banners using this.

Ooh Wasteland 3 is out, that snuck up on me. And I was a backer, ha. It me

also wtf is this trend of PC cases? Does it have a name? Feels like a Gundam knocked up a Decepticon. don't mind me, just browsing Chinese computer parts stores

So yeah, Flight Simulator 2020! I gotta share some things.

This is where I grew up: Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Honestly one of the LAST places I expected to be represented in full 3D with photogrammetry, but here we are. This is the downtown area. To those asking, yes you can go down to ground level, I'm using the drone mode here. Grass, bushes, and trees can get really dense.

Blerb!



Bought myself a sealed and unused 15-inch Pixie CRT display. Let's open it up and test it out! With some Grand Theft Auto III on PC because why not. It's oddly nostalgic recording with Fraps on an older machine, haha. That watermark.

New LGR episode! It's finally time for a review of Microsoft Flight Simulator... from 31 years ago



Taking a look at Flight Sim 4.0 for MS-DOS PCs and its numerous expansions, add-on packs, and upgrades! I still love that Experimental Aircraft Editor. To those asking about later versions: I have those too and would like to cover some eventually! I'm particularly fond of FS98 and 2004.

2004 and later editions aren't shown here as they were released in small boxes. These shelves are big box only, smaller ones aren't worthy.

...so the new Flight Simulator is next level addictive. I haven't budged in six hours. I need to pee but who cares MUST EXPLORE THE WORLD Like wtf my entire hometown is rendered with 3D models. Scarily accurately.

My old street, my parents workplaces, the house I grew up is 3D. I seriously sent a drone up to my old bedroom window and the textures outside were correct. The garden I weeded as a kid is in the sim...

UFO remains one of the stranger sims in my collection. It's essentially Flight Simulator with... UFOs. Yeah man.

Made by SubLogic and Flight Sim dev Bruce Artwick himself! Fly around Earth in an alien spaceship, avoiding human detection and scavenging resources. DOS was weird. I love this "World of Flight" poster it came with. All of SubLogic's offerings circa 1989.

Quick test of a new capture card (Elgato 4K60 Pro MK.2) playing Epic Pinball on the Woodgrain 486. and Duke3D on the same machine in all its badly-performing glory, haha

From small Mac to tall Mac.

Finally got a Hard Disk 20, Apple's first hard disk for the Macintosh! A whopping twenty megabytes in 1985 costing $1,495 -- nearly $3,600 with inflation.

And it still works. TALLER MAC.

Also acquired a MacBottom SCSI, first available in 1986 with I believe a 20MB hard disk. Now to see if I can find some software to get it working. It does power on and spin up at least!

New LGR thing!



This one's about the 1987 PC CD-ROM experience. Specifically the Hitachi CDR-1503S/Amdek Laserdrive, both of which sold for just under $900. For that you got a whopping 153 KB/s transfer rate from discs spinning at a leisurely 200-535 RPM! As usual, the disks have been archived:
archive.org/details/hitach…

I've come into possession of a PC game I've never heard of: Schultz's Treasure. Apparently it's from 1983, got re-released in '87. Anyone played it? According to Microcomputing Magazine in October '83 it was "the closest thing to arcade-quality games... seen for the PC."

I dunno about that but mmkay, it's still neat

Ooh, now this is a nice start to a Saturday morning. An IBM 5154 EGA monitor and a Commodore Amiga 2000 HD 😃

Thanks to LGR viewer Brandon for rescuing these from the house of a former computer repairman and hooking me up with them for a good price! The 5154 is cosmetically nasty but underneath is a display of gold. Powers on, CRT looks great one first inspection. I'm sure it'll clean up nicely and become another go-to display on LGR.