Author: Dave Farquhar

Cleaning vinegar vs distilled vinegar

Dave Farquhar DIY
Cleaning vinegar vs distilled vinegar

I was shopping for vinegar the other day and noticed a lot of unanswered questions regarding the difference between cleaning vinegar and distilled white vinegar. In this blog post, I will explain the difference between cleaning vinegar vs distilled vinegar and when it’s okay to substitute and when substitution is dangerous. I’ll also share a trick for saving money.

In both cases, the main ingredient in white vinegar is grain alcohol fermented a second time to form acetic acid.

Read more

What happened to Tipton Appliances

Dave Farquhar St. Louis
What happened to Tipton Appliances

Variously known as Tipton Electric Company, Tipton Appliances, Tipton Centers Inc., and Tipton Supercenters, Tipton was a St. Louis-based retail store specializing in home appliances and electronics. It had aspirations of going national the way Best Buy and Circuit City did in the late 1980s. But when its stock price faltered, it ended up merging with Silo, another now-defunct home appliance and electronics chain, on August 11, 1987.

Read more

Marx Happi-Time 9616 train set

Dave Farquhar Toy trains
Marx Happi-Time 9616 train set

Marx train set 9616 was an electric train set Marx that Sears sold in 1953 and 1954. But you may also hear collectors refer to it as Happi-Time train set 9616, because that’s what Marx printed on the box.

Read more

MFM vs RLL hard drives

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
MFM vs RLL hard drives

The most common type of hard drive for most of the 1980s was called MFM. At least that’s what we commonly call them today. That was to distinguish them from a similar type we called RLL. How much difference there was between the two was always a bit controversial. But let’s look at MFM vs RLL hard drives.

Read more

Cusanelli’s, St. Louis

Dave Farquhar St. Louis
Cusanelli’s, St. Louis

A very old white building stood for decades, and allegedly centuries, near the intersection of Lemay Ferry road and Bayless in the inner ring St Louis suburb of Lemay. The historic building, most recently home to Cusanelli’s, was demolished in 2023 after more than three years of vacancy. But colorful rumors about its history persist.

Read more

Mac Bluetooth stopped working? Four ways to fix it

Dave Farquhar Macintosh
Mac Bluetooth stopped working? Four ways to fix it

So you get to your virtual meeting on time, but nobody can hear you. Or you get connected and your Mac insists on using its built-in speakers and microphone, and not your headset. I’ve been there. Here’s what I do if my Mac Bluetooth stopped working. It’s usually possible to get the Bluetooth working again without too much disruption.

Fixing Mac Bluetooth is generally a matter of turning your Bluetooth off and back on, resetting the Bluetooth stack, deleting and re-adding your Bluetooth devices, and/or rebooting. Sometimes it takes a combination of those things, so following a process can help.

Read more

Marx 9625 train set

Dave Farquhar Toy trains
Marx 9625 train set

Marx train set 9625 was an entry-level electric train set Marx that Sears sold in 1952. It was one of the last Marx electric sets to use designs that originated before World War II.

Read more

Triton Turbo XT

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Triton Turbo XT

The Triton Turbo XT is an interesting piece of 1980s oddware. The picture kind of gives it away. But that’s not a TI-99/4A perched in front of an XT clone for no reason. The Triton Turbo XT was an upgrade to make your TI-99 IBM compatible. Sort of.

Read more

How many Atari Jaguar games are there?

Dave Farquhar Retro Gaming
How many Atari Jaguar games are there?

The Atari Jaguar console was an infamous flop that led to Atari exiting the console business. One of the problems the console had was not having enough games, and not having enough AAA titles. But how many Atari Jaguar games were there?

Read more

Why Eric Davis isn’t in the Hall of Fame

Dave Farquhar Baseball
Why Eric Davis isn’t in the Hall of Fame

Eric Davis was one of the most exciting players in baseball in the 1980s, and a feel-good story in the late 1990s when baseball really needed one. He looked like a future Hall of Famer when he broke into the major leagues. So why isn’t Eric Davis in the Hall of Fame?

Read more