Scratchy the Micron

Scratchy the Micron

Have you heard of Crusty the Mac, the indestructable Macintosh SE? Let me tell you the story of Scratchy the Micron. Scratchy was a Micron Transport Trek 2 laptop, one of the best laptops money could buy in 1998. And you needed a lot of money to buy one. It cost $2,999 when it was new in 1998, the equivalent of $5,600 in today’s money.

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Why Gateway computers failed in the enterprise

Why Gateway computers failed in the enterprise

YouTuber Mike Tech was attempting to refurbish a couple of Gateway 2000 desktops recently, and he observed that one of them had features you normally only see in business class PCs. And he expressed surprise, because Gateway is a brand we typically associate with consumer PCs. But I can confirm Gateway did attempt to compete in the business/enterprise PC market. Here’s why that didn’t go so well for them.

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Marx steam freight train set 50885

Marx steam freight train set 50885

Marx train set 50885 is very similar to some variants of another set, 52875, and set 50875. But it has a distinct number on the box, so let’s walk through set 50875, which featured a 2-4-2 steam locomotive with a slopeback tender pulling three freight cars and a caboose.

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Commodore 8050 disk drive

Commodore 8050 disk drive

The Commodore 8050 disk drive was the second-highest capacity floppy drive Commodore made for its 8-bit computers. It was a dual drive unit that connected to the IEEE-488 bus used on the PET and CBM line of computers. Each drive stored half a megabyte of data on 5.25 inch single sided quad density disks. When you listed the directory on a Commodore equipped with an 8050, the disk read 2102 blocks free. They were marketed for educational and business use.

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How Tenable sets plugin severity

How Tenable sets plugin severity

How Tenable sets plugin severity is a question customers have been asking me for years, dating back to the days I worked for Tenable partners. It can be a bit complicated, so in this blog post I will explain what goes into Tenable plugin severity.

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What happened to ARCnet

What happened to ARCnet

ARCnet was the first commercially available local area network standard, beating both Ethernet and Token Ring to market. Conceptually, it had similarities with both, and because it was inexpensive and efficient, it was popular for a good 15 years or so. ARCnet was an abbreviation for Attached Resource Computer NETwork.

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Marx 4915S Steam type electric train set

Marx 4915S Steam type electric train set

Youtuber SMT Mainline recently encountered a Marx 4915S Steam type electric train set when recording a video. He said he didn’t know much about it but thought it was neat. In this blog post, I’ll give some background on Marx train set 4915S.

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What peer benchmarking is in vulnerability management

What peer benchmarking is in vulnerability management

Successful vulnerability management is deceptively simple. It comes down to being able to answer yes to two questions: Are you fixing the right things? And are you fixing them fast enough? But how fast is fast enough? In this blog post, I’ll explain how I use peer benchmarking to help companies figure out how fast is fast enough. I’ll also explain how to know if your security policies are less popular than speed limit laws, and why that will make them fail.

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Rax restaurant chain from the 1980s

Rax restaurant chain from the 1980s

Rax was a fast growing fast food restaurant chain in the 1980s. It was based out of Columbus, Ohio, and it was a direct competitor to Arby’s. The chain still exists today. But the total number of stores in Ohio, Illinois and Kentucky where it survives is lower than the number of stores they once had just in the St. Louis metropolitan area.

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Trace an outlet to a circuit breaker

Trace an outlet to a circuit breaker

There are times when you need to trace an outlet to a circuit breaker. Maybe you need to replace the outlet. Maybe you need troubleshoot. Or maybe you are adding additional outlets and want to make sure you don’t overload the circuit. In this blog post, I will describe two ways to determine what circuit an outlet is on. I’ll also tell you how to know if two outlets share the same breaker.

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