iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

NES top loader composite mod finished tonight. Of course I planned to record it for YT and the X-T3 decided it was having none of that today. Really need to budget to replace that POS... Anyway, not bad from a budget 80s console that was never supposed to have composite video in the first place lol

Legend of Zelda for the NES - main start screen, on a composite modded NES Top Loader. Other than some very faint jailbars and dot crawl (not pictured), it's a solid signal.

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The main station with all the modern hardware. Yeah, cables are still visible in some places. And please just don't look *behind* the TV where I can't easily cable manage. But from the chair, it's acceptable IMO. The stray cable running down is for the capture card connected to my laptop, fwiw.

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And finally the component video stack. SNES Jr will be here soon. Genesis, the video is kinda noisy through the 32x and not the best through the model 2 either. Both might need recaps. PS1 is solid, Wii is solid but soft (normal for those). All in all pretty pleased.

Earthworm Jim Special Edition playing on the Sega Genesis CD. The signal looks fairly clean in this still but when you play IRL you notice some signal noise, worse with the 32x attached. The genesis tower of power will need some maintenance soon.

The only analog system I run in 16:9, the Wii, shwoing the Skyward Sword menu through a component connection. The Wii never was a particularly sharp console. I may try to sharpen it up a bit more through the retrotink later.

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My composite signals. Waiting to see if anything comes of the HD Retrovision component cable for dreamcast. Until then it's just composite in the stack. Atari 2600 needs some hardware help to clean up the signal, but for now it's workable. NES TL will go with this stack soon.

Atari 2600 heavy sixer playing Space Invaders on a composite output (modded). This needed a lot of help on the retrotink to get a decent signal. Considerable red bleed and faint jailbars, but the blacks are clean and the brightness is excellent with some signal processing.

Crazy Taxi running on the Dreamcast. Found out I have an intermittent disc drive while testing this out, but otherwise the signal is decent for composite. I'll have to work on the crop to get rid of the black bars.

For my S Video signals, just the PS1 and N64 for now. I have a second S Video AV cable coming for the Gamecube for my DOL-101, but it'll be a few days. These look really nice for such old tech. N64 definitely softer, I might try to RGB mod one in the future.

PS1 signal, through S video. Signal is exceptionally sharp on the menu screen of Final Fantasy VII.

Gameplay of Ocarina of Time on the N64. Color is good but overall signal is soft. This is fairly normal for most N64s

Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 27/09/2026

Okay, it took an entire day (and technically this is only the retro half of the room), but you know what? That does look better than I feared it would Just need a few more cables, & the 7800. Oh and I should probably do that NES TL composite mod so I can actually use the cables I routed. Yeah...

My finished retro side of the gaming den, consisting of a white Kallax 4x2 in horizontal orientation. The top of the kallax holds a row of consoles and AV switchers, and the top row of cubes uses shelf inserts to provide a total of 3 distinct rows of console and av capacity.

Top surface, from left to right: 1 Pelican system selector pro with two Pelican universal system selectors stacked on top, a red Nintendo Wii (component) and black PlayStation 2 slim (component), both positioned on vertical stands, the Sega Genesis model 2 with 32x and sega CD attachments (component), and an Atari 2600 Heavy Sixer (composite modded).

Upper shelf, left to right: Sega Dreamcast (Composite, soon to be component), N64 (S Video), a blank space for an in-transit Atari 7800 I plan to composite mod, and an NES Top Loader (soon to be composite modded).

Lower shelf, left to right: PS3 slim (HDMI), a Japanese and north American GameCube (both DOL-001, sharing a GCVideo HDMI adapter and an S Video out), a PS1 (S video), and a SNES Jr (RGB Component modded).

The bottom set of kallax cubes is dedicated to controller, AV, memory, and adapter storage in 2 large door inserts and 2 sets of double drawer inserts.

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 26/09/2026

Current status: regretting my life's decisions immensely. This isn't even half of the wires that need to go back here...

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 26/09/2026

The AV routing...let's just say I'm relying heavily on the pelican system selector line and a retrotink 4k, plus a shitload of HDMI switching capability. It'll all go through an elgato capture card so I can easily grab footage of, well, just about anything.

Ps1 - S Video
Ps2 slim - Component
Ps3 slim - HDMI 1080P
Ps5 - HDMI 4K
NES TL - Composite modded
SNES Jr - Component RGB modded
N64 - S Video
Gamecube DOL-001 - HDMI & S Video (shared)
JPN GC DOL-001 - HDMI & S video (shared)
Wii - Component
Wii U - HDMI 1080P
Switch - HDMI 1080P
Switch 2 - HDMI 4K
Sega Genesis/CD/32X - Component
Atari 2600 - composite modded
Atari 7800 - composite
Dreamcast - component

Pelican Composite/S Video1:
In 1: PS1 (S)
In 2: N64 (S)
In 3: GC (S)
In 4:
In 5:
Out: S Video

Pelican Composite/S Video 2:
In 1: NES TL (RCA)
In 2: Atari 2600 (RCA)
In 3: Atari 7800 (RCA)
In 4:
In 5:
Out: RCA

Pelican system Selector Pro:
In 1: PS2 Slim (Component)
In 2: SNES Jr. (Component)
In 3: Genesis (Component)
In 4: Wii (Component)
In 5: Dreamcast (Component)
In 6: Pelican S Video
In 7: Pelican RCA
In 8: (Front hot swap)
Out: All to retrotink 4k

HDMI 5 in 1 out (1):
In 1: GC
In 2: Wii U
In 3: PS3
In 4: Switch
In 5:
Out: to Retrotink 4k

Retrotink 4k:
In: all analog, and sub-4k consoles via HDMI(1)
Out: to HDMI(2)

HDMI 5 in 1 out (2):
In 1: Retrotink 4k
In 2: Switch 2
In 3: PS5
In 4:
In 5:
Out: Elgato 4K S -> TV and PC

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 26/09/2026

It feels like it was only a few months ago I was setting this kallax shelf up thinking it'll hold every retro game console I'll ever want Yeah that didn't happen. The last slot is going to an Atari 7800, and I officially have no room for an og Xbox or 360, or a 3DO if I ever get so lucky. Oops.

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 21/09/2026

On a related note, I really wish retro stores would stop carrying these awful "Old Skool" power supplies. This is the 5th one I had for various consoles & every single one fails after a few years. When they start to act up like this they can take out the voltage regulators on your consoles too!

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 21/09/2026

Well, that was interesting. I had an Atari 2600 that wasn't outputting color even when the color switch was on. Opened it up, connected it to the TV to try and figure out what was wrong, and it shows in full color. I literally did nothing but take it apart and it started working!

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 20/09/2026

I've been spending a lot of time on trying to print these cards, and though I did come up with a reliable printing method for printing the rare stuff, nothing beats having the originals where possible!

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 20/09/2026

I was out doing some furniture shopping and just dropped in to a game store on my way home, and what did I find? A nearly complete set of NES E Reader cards for the GBA! Custom cases and artwork and everything. This kind of stuff rarely comes up at all, let alone so well cared for. I had to grab it!

Honestly, from afar the results speak for themselves. That looks 1000x better than it did before, and it sure as hell beats a bunch of blank cases on the shelf. Now I just have to go through and clean all the messy labels off of these games...maybe soon.

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Placed side by side with my original copy of Suikoden IV, my reprint isn't 100%. I had to shrink it down a bit to fit on a standard page with my printer's minimum margins, but if it bothers me too much I can always go source a ream of larger photo paper instead. For now, this looks great to my eyes.

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I only bought after I managed to haggle with the store owner for a discount off a fairly decent haul, but this label has always bothered me. So I tried printing my own. And wouldn't ya know, using glossy photo paper instead of standard copy paper makes all the difference lol

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 28/08/2026

Ok, so game case art reprints...on the one hand, it's nice to get an actual case for your more expensive games. On the other hand, when reputable retro game store print labels like this...yikes The cut is awful, the blacks are crushed, and the resolution stinks. And they wanted cib pricing for it.

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So I've been busy... Well, not today. Today I got nothing done for the project 😭 But the past 2 weeks I've been quite busy indeed. Started a fresh run of crystal and made it to the lighthouse. Also got a Japanese copy of sapphire to go with box and colosseum, so I can do stuff like this:

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 24/08/2026

Amazon: "Shipped: 3 lawn and garden items" Me: "Aw yeah, can't wait to dial in the correct dc voltage for my lawn, and protect the flower bed with my solder mask while I shop vac up all the weeds!"

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 16/08/2026

The clock is ticking...can I complete the Master Pokedex Challenge I started in 2023 (and procrastinated on for 3 years) in time? I'll post regular updates here on bksy only, and to save time I won't be making any videos on it for now (that would just cut my time down even more!)

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 16/08/2026

Tagging and cataloging these takes a long time and I'm not even 20% through what I have recorded already. I'll try my best to complete this challenge in the next 6 months, but turning them into videos will have to wait. I hope I have the disk space to get all the older gen stuff recorded at once...

A screenshot of a video management and cataloging software showing a list of recorded gameplay clips from a Pokémon Crystal playthrough as part of a "Master Dex Challenge" project.

The left sidebar displays an organized folder hierarchy for various Pokémon generations and games. The main panel lists video files with details like thumbnails, file names, timestamps, and durations—spanning events such as the Jasmine gym battle, Lake of Rage, Rocket Hideout, Mahogany Gym, and the Goldenrod Radio Tower.

A large red rectangle highlights the far-right "Metadata" column, showing tag and pencil icons next to earlier files. A smaller red rectangle at the bottom highlights the file Crystal1-Route44.mkv, illustrating that metadata tagging and cataloging abruptly stops right after the Radio Tower Team Rocket takeover (Crystal1-RadioTower.mkv), less than halfway through the first Pokémon Crystal playthrough.

Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 16/08/2026

So...checking my project I have already recorded 51 hours of footage for all tasks in the 3DS and older era. Sounds like a lot, but it's not even one full game yet!

A screenshot of the video management software Kyno displaying a summary report window over a library of Pokémon recording files for the "Master Dex Challenge" project. The "Report" dialog box indicates a total of 177 video items spanning a cumulative duration of 51 hours, 9 minutes, and 26 seconds (51:09:26), with a total file size of 9.81 GB. In the background, the workspace highlights the "Gen 7 and Below" category, showing recorded gameplay files and thumbnails from the first Pokémon Crystal playthrough.

Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 15/08/2026

Who says you can't get fit playing video games? Whoever they are, they're wrong. After 6 weeks of regular beat saber practice I've elevated my gameplay to expert level and it's quite a workout! I couldn't even make it through one expert song 6 weeks ago. Tonight I did 6 in 25 min, 3 back to back.

A Polar Flow fitness app screenshot showing a heart rate graph over 25 minutes. The graph repeatedly spikes into the red maximum intensity zone, showing 12.5 minutes spent at maximum heart rate and a peak of 183 bpm during a Beat Saber session.

The cool thing about this LXI TV is that it has a digital rgb connector, which I had hoped to use with some of my Apple II systems. Sadly my only rgb video expansion card is broken, I don't have the right connector anyway, and it's hard to find another card at a reasonable price. Maybe some day...

And finally, the recording is moiré-free! (Or at least it should be) Thanks @lgr-yt.bsky.social for your excellent how-to video on filming CRTs!

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I actually had to pull a softer CRT out of storage for this, I could not dial it in well with the sharper 9" display I was using before! This Sears LXI TV has seen better days, I got it from someone who bought it on eBay and it got damaged in shipping. It still needs some work but it runs now!

After dealing with a finicky K1C for over a year that just would not lay down proper first layers at the edges no matter how much I tried to dial it in, I finally gave up and got a prusa. Yep, first try. Didn't have to calibrate anything, 20 minutes to first print. Why didn't I buy this one first?!

Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 07/08/2026

Some of y'all have no idea how difficult this was to pull off. I had 4 (FOUR!!!) cameras that simply couldn't do it properly! The one that did? An iPhone 13 mini with a third party camera app 🤣

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 05/08/2026

Ok this "record a bunch of repair & mod work on my old computers and retro consoles and throw it on YouTube" thing is more complicated than I bargained for. After I spent an entire weekend reworking my repair bench to be camera ready, my set looked so nice, until I had to light the overhead view! 😭

Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 24/07/2026

Recently got a sega genesis, with the 32x and sega CD! Never had one when I was a kid but I wanted one! Even on a modern tv w/ a retrotink it looks incredible! My first pick is Earthworm Jim SE. I've only ever played the GB games so this should be a treat. Guess I'm not getting any sleep tonight 🤣

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 10/07/2026

Make it stop! 😭😭😭

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 10/07/2026

Can you believe I've had this commodore 1802 sitting around for like 2 years now and never once thought to plug in any retro consoles? Once it's dialed in it looks nice! Only problem is there's no sound, so I still have to fire up the retrotink just to get audio #retrogaming #commodore #nintendo

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 25/06/2026

I picked up that new star fox game everyone's been talking about.

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 25/06/2026

Some stores like B&H and Adorama haven't yet updated their pricing, if anyone needed something. Out of curiosity I checked my receipt from last month. Paid $5k for my 16" mbp with the maxed out CPU and memory on sale $400 off. Same laptop today, $7k 😱 I'm glad my old one broke when it did now...

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 10/06/2026

Finally have a bit of time to sit down and enjoy a new game for once. I suppose today's as good a day as any given the direct this morning?

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 09/06/2026

Sooo close to defeating Brock on attempt 105, and had an incredible Sceptile that felt like the one. Unfortunately, ran into STAB flame wheel from a faster Camerupt and that was that... Have had a rotten run of luck to start this off! #pokemon #ironmon

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 07/06/2026

@thejwittz.bsky.social I'll have you know this is entirely your fault. Wonder how many tries it'll take to beat Brock?

Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 22/05/2026

And because it's DisplayPort 1.4, I can do full 144hz on my 38" ultra wide AND 240hz 4k on my other monitor (with DSC), with native gsync ultimate passthrough support!

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 22/05/2026

All that for admittedly awesome seamless switching between 3 computers, with room for 1 more. Maybe a nuc or mac mini at some point? I might be able to find room under the desk 🤣 (You have no idea how expensive that stupid kvm is...if work wasn't letting me expense half of it I'd never buy myself)

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 22/05/2026

....Yeah, y'know what? I'm not cable managing that. That's a trap. Such sacrifices are necessary to have a triple monitor kvm for up to 4 PCs on a 60"x30" desk lol. The fact that it plus all my peripherals, 2 audio interfaces, a mic pre, and 2 stream decks fit on this desk at all is a minor miracle

Don't look: so many wires in a rats nest behind my monitors and vertical dual laptop stand that I am not even TEMPTED to try and cable manage it! Not to mention all my AV gear, a mic pre, 2 ch audio interface, 12 ch multi track mixer, two laptop docking stations, my switch 2 dock, and a dozen USB peripherals mixed in somewhere...even if I try it'll all get ripped out the moment something needs to be swapped out...

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 13/05/2026

People: "I love apple, their stuff JUST WORKS y'know?" Sigh..Do you have *any* idea how convoluted it was for me to achieve THIS because the peer to peer wifi connection kept failing on migration? Did you know that even Apple Support SWEARS migrating over TB is impossible??? (It took 45 minutes 🤬)

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 13/05/2026

I was just dealing with this with an ai chatbot yesterday. It gave me explicit instructions to type "Agent" to talk to someone, but every time I tried it refused to do so. I tried this half a dozen times before I gave up and just filed for a return instead.

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 08/05/2026

Why didn't I pay for stupidly fast internet sooner? I'm actually limited by my local link speeds now...guess I have an excuse to upgrade to 2.5gig routers?

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 03/05/2026

I think my e-liter friend and I may have survived the apocalypse. (For those of you keeping score at home that was one booyah bomb approximately every 13.5 seconds over the 5:11 match, plus constant pressure from the explosher in between w the splashdown threat) #Splatoon #Splatoon3

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 30/04/2026

New Series: The Splatling Gauntlet! 🦑 I’m benching the Hydra to see how I fare in an Anarchy series with every other weapon in the Splatling class. First up? vHeavy. Link in the replies below! #Splatoon #Splatoon3

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 29/04/2026

So, uh...this happened. Ttek division really is dead lol. I really need to move to takoroka division next season. #splatoon #splatoon3

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Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 28/04/2026

I guess my RM carrier decided it wasn't hard enough for us already 😭😭😭 #Splatoon #Splatoon3 #SplatoonClips

Nick Charles @nickcharlesyt.com · 28/04/2026

Hey! Hey! Get off my tower! That goes for you teammates, too lol #Splatoon #Splatoon3 #SplatoonClips