Author: Dave Farquhar

Need a Commodore motherboard? Believe it or not you’re in luck

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , ,

Individual Computers is working on, of all things, a replacement Amiga motherboard that will fit in an Amiga 500 or Amiga 1200 case.

The board will use the AGA chipset that the Amiga 1200 used, but the board will be built using a modern process, modern materials, and as many other modern components as possible.

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Unchecky is another tool to help with staying out of trouble with malware

Dave Farquhar security , , , , ,

I found a mention of a tool called Unchecky as a minor point in a story about something else entirely. Unchecky helps to solve the problem with downloaded programs including a bunch of extra junk you don’t want.

I won’t be running it myself. But the next time I fix a computer, I’ll probably install it on that one.

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Password management advice from CSO Online

Dave Farquhar security ,

Over at CSO Online, there’s a nice war story about tracking down and resetting 300 passwords.

I could pick nits at a few of his details, but that’s annoying and counterproductive. His overall advice is very good–manage your passwords, set them to something random, keep in mind that some sites just won’t allow for a very strong password so do the best you can, and protect your main e-mail password and your password management system password with all the diligence you can muster.

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What the NSA can crack, and how to protect against it

Dave Farquhar security , , , ,

Ever since the Snowden leaks, there’s been considerable speculation about what cryptography the NSA could break, and why. Finally, there’s a study that goes into deep detail about what it is the NSA probably can break, and why, plus how to protect against it.

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‘PC Does What?’ seems doomed to fail

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , ,

A coalition of Dell, HP, Intel, Lenovo, and Microsoft are trying to figure out how to reverse the downward trend of PC sales, and what they came up with was a marketing campaign called “PC Does What?”

The problem is it’s not 1995 anymore, and it’s going to take more than a marketing campaign to change that.

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The midlife crisis-wrecking Caravan

Dave Farquhar Humor/Satire ,

Around the time I got my driver’s license, my mom’s family hauler was a 1988 or 1989 Dodge Caravan, the old non-stretched version, with a 4-cylinder turbocharged Mitsubishi engine in it.

I have several coworkers who are car enthusiasts and love to share their car stories, so I shared mine.

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You might need a new router

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Servers and Networking , , , , , ,

Do you need a new router? If your Internet is slow after upgrading to a faster service, and if your wifi range and reception is poor, or your Internet connection just generally misbehaves a lot, you might need a new router.

Even the New York Times, of all places, has published articles extolling the virtues of new routers. If your wi-fi at home is bad, they say, think about picking up a TP-Link Archer C7 router. I like the Asus RT-AC66U myself,  but in my experience, and the experience of my colleagues, a new router makes a huge difference.

When one longtime friend upgraded to a TP-Link Archer, he told me his wi-fi improved so much his wired network was suddenly struggling to keep up with it. That’s fixable. He’s a candidate for Gigabit Ethernet.

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What to do after you get breached and sign up for the free credit monitoring

Dave Farquhar security

After a large company that has your data gets breached, the standard next step is to give you credit monitoring.

It’s not enough to protect yourself, but you can make it enough. Read more

Having trouble installing Windows 7 from USB? Disable USB 3.0.

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , ,

I had trouble installing Windows 7 from USB on an Asrock Q1900M motherboard. It was the most difficult time I’ve had in years. Creating a bootable USB stick from my Win7 DVD went flawlessly, and the Asrock booted off it just fine by hitting F11 to pull up the boot menu, but then Windows prompted me for a driver, and when I navigated to the drivers directory that Asrock provided, none of the drivers would load. The mouse didn’t work either, and the only reason the keyboard worked was because I still use PS/2 keyboards.

The solution was to go into the UEFI, dive into the USB configuration, and disable USB 3.0. After I did that, Windows could see the USB drive and other USB devices just fine. This issue is likely to get more common as time goes on.

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If you use Truecrypt, migrate to Veracrypt

Dave Farquhar security ,

I’m playing catch-up with this one, but if you’ve been relying on the quasi-open source Truecrypt encryption solution, you need to migrate to Veracrypt as quickly as possible.

For some reason, it doesn’t seem to be common knowledge that Veracrypt is derived from Truecrypt and is, for all intents and purposes, the successor to Truecrypt.

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