Author: Dave Farquhar

Spinrite 6: An overdue review

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , ,
Spinrite 6: An overdue review

Spinrite 5 is an old friend. It got me out of some jams in the late ’90s, but as new versions of Windows that defaulted to NTFS came into my life, Spinrite 5 ceased being an option, since it only worked on FAT-formatted drives.

I’ve had occasion now to use Spinrite 6, its successor, which still runs under old-fashioned MS-DOS but now understands a multitude of filesystems. Other than that, it hasn’t changed much: It’s an obsessively thorough repair and maintenance tool for hard drives.

SSDs will eventually make Spinrite unnecessary, but there are still a lot more conventional hard drives being shipped each year than SSDs. Read more

A question for you old-timers

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , , ,

Dvorak was in rare form this week, as he writes something that reads more like an e-mail virus alert chain letter. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2376702,00.asp

Read on for the money quote.

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Misguided security, episode 14

Dave Farquhar security, War Stories , ,

I was working in a data center, where we had a couple of Cisco VOIP phones. I don’t know who put them in or when–it’s possible they predated me. We never got them working, but nobody ever really tried, either.

The idea was that two guys working on servers in different datacenters across the WAN might need to talk. The reality was that we didn’t do that very often and usually had other ways to do it–a cellphone being the most obvious option. Our networking guys always had much more pressing issues than getting the VOIP phones working, so the phones just sat there and looked pretty. Until the wrong guy noticed them one day, that is.

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Spam, spam, spam, spam!

Dave Farquhar Spam

I’m noticing a trend with my spam comments lately (you never see them because I have a plugin that catches them, and lets me delete the day’s batch with one click). Begging and desperation.

Let me elaborate.
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E.R. Johnston, the train dealer, the myth, the legend

Dave Farquhar St. Louis, Toy trains , , , , , , , ,

Something today made me think of Johnston Electric, a legendary, long-gone train store in St. Louis’ Dutchtown neighborhood that sold Lionel, American Flyer, and HO scale trains.

I was in the old Marty’s Model Railroads store in Affton one afternoon several years ago while Marty was going through a box of trains he had bought earlier in the day. He found some manuals, catalogs, and other paperwork, which he set aside. Then he pulled out an old newspaper page. “I wonder why he saved that?” he asked. He set the paper down, then something caught his eye. “Oh, that’s why,” he said, and pointed at an ad on the page.

An ad for E. R. Johnston from 1948
An ad for E. R. Johnston from 1948

“Johnston’s,” it read at the bottom. “3118 Chippewa Street.”

“I spent many, many hours at that place when I was younger,” Marty said.
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What is On30?

Dave Farquhar model railroading , , , , , , , ,
What is On30?

To a newcomer, and even many people with years of experience, the phrase “On30” is confusing. Basically, it’s O scale models (1:48) of narrow-gauge (30 inches in this case) railroads.

And that probably raises a few more questions, so I’ll try to answer them. Read more

Read this if you use ICQ

Dave Farquhar security , ,

If you still use ICQ for some reason, there’s fake antivirus malware being distributed through it. The story is making its way through various news sources.

You basically have two options, beyond not clicking on anything that claims to be an antivirus warning while ICQ is running. Stop using ICQ, or do the malware domains hosts file hack.

Glue for plastic models and buildings

Dave Farquhar Model Building, Toy trains
Glue for plastic models and buildings

I saw a question for the millionth time on a forum about what glues to use on plastic models and buildings. So I’ll cover the topic here, where it won’t get purged after 8 months.

Ask the question at a hobby shop, and the answer comes down roughly 50/50 whether to use some type of super glue (cyanoacrylate, often abbreviated CyA or CA), or some type of MEK-based plastic weld, such as Tamiya Extra Thin or the late, lamented Tenax 7R. Every once in a while, someone pipes up about the tube cement I used as a kid. You don’t want to use that stuff. If you’ve ever tried, you know why–it’s messy, dries slowly, and the bond isn’t as strong as it could be. Read on and I’ll give you the advantages and disadvantages of both alternatives, plus some secrets.

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Inexpensive flash storage for older PCs

Dave Farquhar Hardware ,
Inexpensive flash storage for older PCs

I saw this lament in my referrer logs, of all places. Perhaps someone read it, then wondered if I had an answer? I’m not the only one searching for inexpensive flash storage for older PCs after all.

The exact solution the author sought,  a USB-IDE converter to attach a thumb drive as an IDE device, doesn’t exist as far as I know. But I can think of two things that are almost as good.

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The circulating privacy threat warnings miss the boat

Dave Farquhar security , , , , ,

This week I’ve had multiple people send me warnings they saw on Facebook about a new privacy threat, which, after I read about it, really appears just to be something that aggregates information already available about you.

Perhaps not coincidentally, PC Magazine has a piece telling you what you need to do if you’re really concerned about privacy and really want to disappear. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2376023,00.asp
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