Author: Dave Farquhar

Gluing end to end

Dave Farquhar DIY
Gluing end to end

Conventional wisdom says you should only glue wood side to side, not end to end. That said, you can indeed glue end grain and it’s not guaranteed to be a disaster. Here’s why you might want to glue end to end, and how.

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Why is it so hard to find computer parts?

Dave Farquhar Hardware
Why is it so hard to find computer parts?

Back in July, I went to Micro Center to get a video card for my son. The selection wasn’t great. They had a few $50 cards. They had three $110 cards. Not three different ones. Three GT 1030s. Total. And nothing else under $2,500. And they didn’t have a ton of those either. Other parts were less scarce, but not what I’m used to. So why is it so hard to find computer parts?

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Word line wrap not working? Here’s the fix

Dave Farquhar Office
Word line wrap not working? Here’s the fix

I ran into a problem with Word line wrap not working. Even though the text had spaces in them, Word was treating some of the spaces from my copy and pasted text like they weren’t spaces.

When line wrap doesn’t work how you expect in Word, it’s usually nonbreaking spaces or other special characters in the text. The obscure show formatting button can help you find them.

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Windows 11 on unsupported hardware

Dave Farquhar Windows
Windows 11 on unsupported hardware

When Microsoft announced Windows 11, they also announced some pretty severe hardware requirements. Windows 11 would only be supported on the three most recent CPU generations, and would require a TPM chip. At the end of August 2021, Microsoft announced a way to work around it. Then they did their best to try to talk you out of doing it. Let’s talk about running Windows 11 on unsupported hardware.
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Can a computer last 10 years? It depends

Dave Farquhar Hardware
Can a computer last 10 years? It depends

Can a computer last 10 years? People tend to have very strong opinions about that. It is a matter of perspective in some ways. And a lot of it depends on the type of hardware you buy, and what you expect it to do. And at one time, that was an absurd idea. But not so much anymore.

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Why Dwight Gooden isn’t in the Hall of Fame

Dave Farquhar Baseball
Why Dwight Gooden isn’t in the Hall of Fame

Why isn’t Dwight Gooden in the Hall of Fame? That’s a fair question. I saw him pitch when he was at his best. And when he was at his best, he was at least as good as anyone else I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. Furthermore, one of his comparables is Roy Halladay, who is in the Hall of Fame. What’s the difference?

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First generation IBM PC monitors

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
First generation IBM PC monitors

IBM produced and sold four monitors for the original IBM PC line. Yes, 4. These monitors were the familiar IBM 5151, IBM 5153, IBM 5154, and the obscure IBM 5175. In this blog post, I’ll explain these early and iconic IBM monitors for MDA, CGA, EGA, and the 5175, and how they relate to one another.

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Reveal codes in Word like Wordperfect

Dave Farquhar Office

If there’s one thing people miss when they switch from Wordperfect to Microsoft Word, it’s the old Reveal Codes function. This lets you view and fine tune document formatting and fix weirdness. Word has a similar function that nobody talks about. Here’s how to enable the closest thing to reveal codes in Word.

This trick works in recent versions of Word newer than Word 2007. So it’s been around a little while.

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386SX vs 386DX: a misunderstood difference

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
386SX vs 386DX: a misunderstood difference

The question of the 386SX vs 386DX is a confusing one. It always has been, even going back to when the chips were new. It doesn’t help that Intel wasn’t consistent. With the 386, SX vs DX has nothing to do with math coprocessors. It has everything to do with width of the data bus.

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Aztech sound cards: Underrated OPL3

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Aztech sound cards: Underrated OPL3

Sometimes when you go through a pile of old parts, you find a diamond in the rough. An Aztech sound card is a great example. They sound like they ought to be standard fare ’90s junk, with poor compatibility and poor sound quality. But it turns out they have a genuine Yamaha OPL3 chip in them. They may be the cheapest way to get a real OPL3 left.

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