Author: Dave Farquhar

Marx 59 stock car

Dave Farquhar Toy trains
Marx 59 stock car

The Marx 59 stock car is derived from the 555 refrigerator car. It ran from 1939 to 1952, and was essentially a refrigerated car/boxcar with different lithography and slightly revised tooling to put slats in the door and sides. Reusing an existing design with minor changes to make something that looked new and different was a hallmark of Marx, and one of the ways it produced variety in its product line while keeping prices down. Read more

Is Purple Power safe on paint?

Dave Farquhar DIY
Is Purple Power safe on paint?

Purple Power is an extremely versatile and effective cleaner. But is Purple Power safe on paint? That’s not exactly a yes or no answer. In this blog post, I’ll talk about the caveats of using Purple Power on paint.

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Why my Ethernet cable is blinking orange

Dave Farquhar Hardware
Why my Ethernet cable is blinking orange

It can be a little bit jarring to see a blinking light on your Ethernet cable when the device you plugged it into isn’t even powered on. Why is my Ethernet cable blinking orange? For that matter, why is that light constantly blinking? Is that bad? In this blog post, I will explain what the two lights on an Ethernet port mean.

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Pentium MMX retro gaming PC

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Pentium MMX retro gaming PC

The Pentium MMX represents a sweet spot in retro computing. Prices aren’t too far out of hand yet, and with one system and a utility, you can slow it down to match speeds with various other vintage systems, including the 386 and 486 generation, for running speed-sensitive games. This means one system can run DOS games going back to approximately 1987 or 1988, and still do relatively well with DOS and Windows games up to approximately 1998.

It also means you can use relatively inexpensive and still-plentiful PCI cards. PCI-based 486s exist but they are uncommon and getting expensive. And 386 PCI motherboards don’t exist.

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Marx 555 refrigerator car

Dave Farquhar Toy trains
Marx 555 refrigerator car

The Marx 555 refrigerator car was Marx’s longest running 6-inch refrigerator car, running from way back in 1935 to 1952 when Marx refreshed the line. Marx reused the same refrigerated car design on its boxcars, and several boxcar designs continued after 1952. Read more

MFM vs IDE hard drives

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
MFM vs IDE hard drives

IDE was the standard PC hard drive connection type for around a decade and a half. The only standard that outlasted it was SATA, which is a direct descendant. IDE was a much greater departure from the standard it replaced, which we commonly call MFM.

IDE was an acronym for Integrated Drive Electronics. The earlier standard, which we colloquially call MFM but would more properly call ST506, put most of the drive control logic on the host interface, which was whatever controller card you connected to the computer to interface it to the drive.

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Insignia RCA to HDMI converter review

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Insignia RCA to HDMI converter review

Best Buy sells two devices under its Insignia house brand to help you use HDMI equipment with older devices. One of them is intended to allow you to connect old game consoles, VCRs, video cameras, or other devices with RCA outputs to an HDMI TV. This is my Insignia RCA to HDMI Converter review.

Note that Best Buy has another device that does the opposite. When you are buying one in the store, be very careful that you are buying the device you intend to get. The RCA to HDMI converter has a model number ending in zero: NS-HZ330. There’s a device with a different model number that does the opposite.

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Garage door goes back up? Try this

Dave Farquhar DIY
Garage door goes back up? Try this

It’s annoying when you push the button on your garage door opener to close it, and the door comes down a bit, seems to change its mind, and then the garage door goes back up on its own. There’s a workaround for this and there is also a fix. Fortunately this is usually something you can fix yourself.

Your garage door goes back up on its own because its sensors can’t see each other. Holding down the opener’s button usually overrides this, and for a permanent fix, make sure the sensors near the door are aligned and clear of debris.

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Miniscribe Brick: A hard drive scandal

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Miniscribe Brick: A hard drive scandal

The Miniscribe Brick refers to an accounting scandal perpetuated by Miniscribe Corporation, a defunct manufacturer of hard drives. CEO Quentin Thomas Wiles and CFO Patrick J. Schleibaum served time in Federal prison as a result of fallout from Miniscribe’s accounting practices, which included counting bricks as hard drive inventory.

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Marx The Reliable freight set 2905

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , , ,
Marx The Reliable freight set 2905

In 1974, Marx introduced a steam freight train set, catalog number 2905, it called The Reliable that ran on a 6 volt lantern battery and sold through discount stores. If you have one today, it’s worth more than its original retail price, even adjusted for inflation.

The Marx Reliable was part of the Great American Railroads series. It had catalog number 2905 and was sold only in 1974 and 1975.

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