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Replace your UPS battery

Dave Farquhar Hardware June 19, 2017May 22, 2022APC, Batteries Plus, best buy, home depot, Micro Center, recycling, red wire, usb port

My UPS started squawking one Friday evening, the tell-tale sign that the battery was dead or dying. When that happens, it’s time to either replace the UPS battery, or replace the entire UPS. Hopefully you can just replace the battery. Here’s how to replace your UPS battery.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

dfarq.homeip.net

Micro Center’s Inland ProHT 88037 USB powered speakers

Dave Farquhar Hardware May 7, 2015July 13, 20161980s, Micro Center, usb port

Micro Center sells a pair of $5 USB-powered speakers. You’re either going to read the next sentence or you aren’t.

Still with me? Great. Let’s talk about them.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Build the best, most secure wifi in your neighborhood

Dave Farquhar DD-WRT, Servers and Networking March 24, 2015August 26, 2017AES, android, apple, cat5, DDWRT, lowercase letters, malware, Meraki Wifi Stumbler, Micro Center, netflix, Roku, SSID, TL, wi-fi

My neighbor asked me for advice on setting up wi-fi in his new house. I realized it’s been a while since I’ve written about wi-fi, and it’s never been cheaper or easier to blanket your house and yard with a good signal.

Blanketing your house and yard while remaining secure, though, is still important.

Dave Farquhar

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What I did for Mother’s Day

Dave Farquhar Hardware, security, Windows May 12, 2014August 28, 2018CIO, compaq, dell, hp, malware, Micro Center, psi, windows 7, Windows XP

Last month, Rapid7’s Trey Ford appealed to security professionals:

You have an opportunity to be an ambassador. When you see XP out there, have an adult conversation, educate in terms that others will appreciate. Your actions and words reflect on the entire community.
As the family CIO/CSO – look for the smart investment. There are options that will make your life easier. A small investment is a lot easier to stomach than compromised shopping/banking/credit card credentials (or identity theft.)

Dave Farquhar

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The world’s fastest budget PC

Dave Farquhar Hardware February 25, 2014February 23, 2014Broadcom, christmas, compaq, firewall, hp, intel, Libre Office, Micro Center, new hardware, office 2010, PCI Express, pcie, pentium d, pfsense, SUBSYSTEM, windows 7, Windows XP

So, a relative’s PC was getting a bit aged, and runs Windows XP, barely, so I talked them into an upgrade. I noticed that Micro Center had HP/Compaq DC5700s for $99. They were standard issue office PCs a few years ago, and there are a lot of them in the refurb channel. We went and got one over the weekend.

“What are you going to do with that?” the sales rep asked. “We only use them as cash registers.”

“Word processing,” I said.

“You sure you want to run Windows 7 on an 8-year-old PC?”

“I wrote the book on running Windows on older PCs. Literally. It’ll be fine.”

I hate calling rank like that, but sometimes it’s what you have to do.

And really, for $99, it’s awfully good. Web browsing is plenty fast, Libre Office runs fine on it, and think about it. Windows 7 retails for $100-$109. So it’s like getting the hardware for free. Or Windows for free, however you want to look at it.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Upgrading a D-Link DIR-615 to DD-WRT

Dave Farquhar DD-WRT, Hardware, security, Servers and Networking December 2, 2013January 31, 2022AES, CGI, code execution, d-link, dd wrt, DDWRT, firefox, Micro Center, Universal Plug and Play

Last year I bought my mother in law a D-Link router, an oddball DIR-615 revision E1 that was only sold at a few stores. It was supposed to be a Fry’s exclusive, but I bought hers at Micro Center. It worked for a while, then gave her trouble, so this year I was working with it again, and when I was setting it up, I noticed it had some security vulnerabilities–remote code execution, UPnP vulnerabilities, and who knows what else. So that got me some practice upgrading a D-Link DIR-615 to DD-WRT.

DD-WRT’s track record and attitude towards security research could be better, but I’d rather trust my mother in law to DD-WRT’s B+ security than D-Link’s F.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Unintentional showrooming

Dave Farquhar Retail October 28, 2013November 22, 20181990s, best buy, camcorder, kindle, Micro Center

My mom asked me a few weeks ago to recommend a tablet or e-reader. She’s really only interested in reading, so that pretty much answered half the question. You can read on a tablet, of course, but when you sit down to read on one, it’s almost a guarantee you’ll end up doing more than just read a book. You’ll see that e-mail notification and you’ll check it, and next thing you know, you’re on to something else.

So… Kobo, Nook, or Kindle? For me, it was an easy decision. The Nook was the best hardware at the time, so I went with a Nook. Ve hev vays to get the books we want onto the hardware we want, but Mom doesn’t want that hassle. She just wants to be able to buy the books she wants and read them right away. Amazon’s done a hardware refresh, so their hardware is as good as any other at this point, if not a little better, and they have the largest library of books, so it was an easy decision. The newest Kindle Paper White it is.

So, the day after it came out, she went to the nearest Best Buy to buy it… and ended up ordering it from Amazon. That practice is called “showrooming,” and retailers hate it, but sometimes they shoot themselves in the foot. This was one of them. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Read this if you have a D-Link router

Dave Farquhar security October 15, 2013August 3, 2017capacitor, d-link, Micro Center, tp link, vulnerability

Leave it to a security vulnerability to interrupt a perfectly good discussion, but it doesn’t get much worse than this. If you have an older D-Link router, it’s possible to completely bypass the authentication on its administrative web interface.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

OCZ is in trouble

Dave Farquhar Hardware February 6, 2013April 3, 2025intel, Micro Center, ocz, samsung

You know it’s bad when a story about a company ends with the words, “OCZ’s survival is still possible.”

Survival is supposed to be a given.
Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Follow-up on the Insignia NS20EM50A13 monitor

Dave Farquhar Hardware January 20, 2013January 20, 2013acer, hp, insignia, Micro Center, VGA

After about a month with an Insignia NS20EM50A13 monitor, I still mostly like it, but can note one annoyance. When booting up a system, the monitor sometimes likes to switch from the DVI input to VGA, without warning. If you happen to be sitting there when it happens, you notice it and can switch it back. But more than once I’ve rebooted, walked away, come back a few minutes later and wondered why I have a weird black screen in front of me instead of a logon screen. Read more

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

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