Author: Dave Farquhar

MS-DOS 3.31: The DOS you couldn’t have

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
MS-DOS 3.31: The DOS you couldn’t have

When it comes to the best operating system to use for a vintage PC, if it has a 286 or better processor, there is little reason to use anything older than MS-DOS 5 or PC-DOS 5. But with an XT, it’s a little different. The best MS-DOS version to use is one you may have never heard of. MS-DOS 3.31 was an upgrade you couldn’t buy.

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What is the Up South

Dave Farquhar St. Louis
What is the Up South

What is the Up South? Where is Up South? The phrase has its origins in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. During those decades, Black migrants were moving from southern states into midwestern cities, seeking jobs, education, and an exit from the Jim Crow south.

What they found was that the Jim Crow laws in midwestern cities like St. Louis were in effect. The housing and schools were segregated. Maybe there were fewer restrictions than in the deep south, but there were still restrictions on them.

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Revive the paint on electric trains

Dave Farquhar Toy trains
Revive the paint on electric trains

Sometimes a vintage toy electric train has paint that’s too good to restore, but looks too bad to leave as-is. The question, then, is how to revive the paint. While some people use oil, there are commercial products intended for the task that will do a better job.

Paint will absorb oil to some extent, but it can affect the sheen and any oil that doesn’t soak in will attract dust over time, causing other problems. It’s better to use products intended for reviving automotive paint, which will also work on trains and has fewer undesirable side effects.

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Update Windows third-party utilities semi-automatically

Dave Farquhar security, Windows
Update Windows third-party utilities semi-automatically

I used to have and recommend a tool for updating all your third party software on Windows machines. Unfortunately that tool went end of life several years ago. But Microsoft, of all people, has a tool that works suitably. Usage is similar to apt or yum on Linux. It’s called Microsoft App Installer, and at the command line, it takes the form of the command winget.

App Installer is a free tool that updates what Windows Update won’t. That means open source apps, but also some third party apps, and even some difficult-to-update Microsoft apps, like the Visual C++ runtime. It is capable of updating more than 3,000 apps.
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Lionel 6111 and 6121 log and pipe cars

Dave Farquhar Toy trains
Lionel 6111 and 6121 log and pipe cars

The Lionel 6111 is a rather common, unheralded Lionel postwar freight car. But it’s fun, at least as an oddity. It’s also a very versatile car.

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Fixing my IBM 5170 motherboard

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Fixing my IBM 5170 motherboard

After years of searching, I was able to locate an untested IBM 5170 motherboard about 2 hours away. Being untested, of course I was taking my chances. But I was able to get it working. Here’s how I fixed my IBM 5170 motherboard so I could restore my IBM 5170 with a true-blue IBM board to replace the clone board in it.

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Resume downloads with wget

Dave Farquhar security
Resume downloads with wget

I was downloading from a very intermittent webserver and the download kept quitting less than 80% in. And if my timing wasn’t perfect, the web browser wouldn’t resume it. Then I thought to try to resume my downloads with wget.

wget is a command line tool for Linux, other Unix-like operating systems, and Windows. It is good for resuming downloads and can even do it automatically.

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Mississippi Nights, St. Louis

Dave Farquhar St. Louis
Mississippi Nights, St. Louis

Mississippi Nights was a St. Louis nightclub that featured live music. It was open from 1979 to 2007.

Mississippi Nights stood at 914 1st Street, on Laclede’s Landing. Originally a country venue, it is primarily remembered as a rock club, particularly for hosting modern rock, both national and local acts.

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Will vintage American Flyer trains run on Lionel S gauge Fastrack?

Dave Farquhar Toy trains
Will vintage American Flyer trains run on Lionel S gauge Fastrack?

I heard a good question the other day. Will vintage American Flyer trains run on Lionel S gauge Fastrack? Given that the trains and track were made by different companies more than half a century apart, it’s fair.

Lionel S gauge Fastrack is designed for both modern production American Flyer trains and vintage Gilbert American Flyer trains from the 1946 to 1967 period.

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Connect a Tandy 1000 to a television

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Connect a Tandy 1000 to a television

The Tandy 1000 is easy to connect to a television. That was part of its original design. It worked better from a marketing perspective than a technical perspective, but that’s one reason it was successful. It can work better today than it did in the ’80s. Here’s how.

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