Author: Dave Farquhar

IBM 486SLC2 CPU: When a clone isn’t a clone

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
IBM 486SLC2 CPU: When a clone isn’t a clone

The 486 SLC2 is an oddball 486 chip made by IBM. It isn’t something anyone seems to talk about much, maybe because I’m the only one who finds its story ironic. It’s the story of a proprietary upgrade that found second life on clone motherboards. Except the clone motherboards were made by IBM themselves. If IBM made it, is it still a clone?

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How to glue a crack in wood

Dave Farquhar DIY
How to glue a crack in wood

When wood breaks, gluing it is easy enough. But what if the wood is only cracked? How do you get the glue into the crack so you can make it hold and prevent further breakage? There are a couple of tricks that let you glue a crack in wood, even if you need to get the wood glue into small cracks.

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How plastic can rust, sort of

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
How plastic can rust, sort of

Strictly speaking, plastic can’t rust. By definition, rust is iron oxide, the combination of iron and oxygen. But plastic can combine with oxygen and oxidize. It’s not rust by stretch definition, but it’s the same concept. Here’s why it can happen, and what you can do about it.

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Best retro network card

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Best retro network card

What is the best retro network card? I will nominate the Intel 8/16 LAN Adapter. Depending on exactly what you need, there are other cards that can be just as good. And there are certainly faster cards. But the Intel 8/16 LAN Adapter is the most versatile. And it’s not terribly expensive.

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What is ASM in security?

Dave Farquhar security
What is ASM in security?

What is ASM in security? ASM stands for attack surface management. It solves a real security problem. But it may not be the security problem that you think it solves, and it also doesn’t solve it as completely as it sounds like it may. Let’s talk about what ASM does and whether you might want it.

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How to get rid of the small keyboard on Android

Dave Farquhar Android
How to get rid of the small keyboard on Android

I was minding my own business, dictating a blog post into my phone while I took my evening walk. At some point I brushed against the screen with my sweaty hand, and next thing I knew, this sidebar showed up on my keyboard, shrinking the already small keys. I didn’t ask for a shrunken Android keyboard with a sidebar. So here’s how to get rid of the small keyboard on Android.

The small keyboard on Android is called one handed mode. To disable one handed mode in Android, tap the three dots and toggle one-handed mode. Or tap the gear, select Preferences, and toggle one-handed mode.
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A personal announcement regarding the blog

Dave Farquhar Personal

A rather large backlog of comments is requiring me to make an announcement and make some changes. Since early this summer I have been dealing with a recurrence of my carpal tunnel syndrome, and that has forced a number of changes in the way I have to blog.

For the past several months, I have been using voice recognition to produce my content. This is working much better than it did the last time I tried to use it, but we are talking c+ quality as opposed to d minus quality. There is a significant uptick in the number of mistakes, there are large numbers of words it doesn’t understand, and hyperlinks are difficult. For the majority of my audience, I hope it is better than not posting at all.

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Roku remote stopped working? Try this

Dave Farquhar Hardware
Roku remote stopped working? Try this

We hadn’t used the Roku in one of our rooms in a couple of months, and when we went to use it the other day, the remote didn’t work. Not even after changing batteries. If your Roku remote stopped working, here’s how to fix it.

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Mental health and infosec

Dave Farquhar security
Mental health and infosec

In Australia, they have a national day called R U Ok. And one of my Australian coworkers used that as an opportunity to reach out to the rest of the company. We all thanked him. Mental health is a problem in the field of computer security, and IT as a whole, and we rarely talk about it. It’s time that we start. Let’s take the taboo out of mental health and infosec.

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Why aren’t computers getting cheaper?

Dave Farquhar Hardware
Why aren’t computers getting cheaper?

When you study the history of computers, one recurring theme is that computers get smaller, cheaper, and faster over time. So why is there a floor on computer prices? Why aren’t computers getting cheaper anymore, especially at retail?

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