David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen someone explain the benefits of defragmenting your computer hard drive. I do see a lot of misconceptions out there. I explained defragmenting in my 1999 book, so I’ll explain it again.
Part of the misconception is that things have changed. The tools have changed, yes. But the need hasn’t.
The Atari 2600 power supply wasn’t as durable as the rest of the Atari 2600, which is nearly bulletproof. By far the most common issue with the Atari 2600 is a dead AC adapter. Fortunately, a suitable Atari 2600 AC adapter isn’t hard to find, even today.
After you replace it with something new, or at least newer, a dead Atari console usually springs right back to life. And if you’re wondering, the same problems apply to Atari 2600 clones like the private-label Sears Video Arcade and the Coleco Gemini and they can also use the same replacement power supplies.
The Atari 2600 CPU was a nondescript MOS 6507 chip. Neither Intel nor Motorola had a CPU chip in the early 1970s that could meet Atari’s price point. MOS Technology didn’t have one either, but they asked Atari what they could afford. Then they made one.
The 6507 is so nondescript, some of them don’t even have the number “6507” anywhere on them.
Marx made several variants of its Girard station. One was just a tin building. The better one had lights. The best one had lights and a train whistle. Here’s how to wire a Marx Girard station with both lights and the whistle. This works on the Oak Park station too.
I wire it a little bit differently than Marx did in its instructions. Marx’s way works, but can cause the light to dim when you push the whistle button. My way doesn’t dim the lights.
Radio Shack released one of the first home computers, the TRS-80 Model I, in 1977. Between 1977 and 1979, it sold 100,000 units. Radio Shack sold them just as quickly as Tandy could make them. You can count Radio Shack and its parent company Tandy among computer companies that failed, but they enjoyed a good run. For a time, Radio Shack computers, later marketed as Tandy computers, were very popular.
Radio Shack and Tandy computers included the TRS-80 Model I from the inaugural class of 1977, the pioneering Model 100 portable, and the Tandy 1000 series, which helped bring PC clones into homes.
There were several reasons why Radio Shack computers were hard to compete with in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s.
How long do roofs last on houses? That’s an important question to ask when you’re buying a house, and an important thing to keep in mind if you own your home. A safe assumption is 20 years, though it varies depending on the roof type.
Your roof, air conditioner, and furnace are the big three expenses for a home. The roof lasts the longest of the three, but is also the most expensive.
How many properties can one person manage varies. It depends on your personality, whether you have a day job, and what your day job is. That said, I can give you some guidelines.
It may not be a hard question to answer. If you’re asking the question, there are really only two reasons. Either you are probably just starting out, or you’re close to your limit.
There was a big dustup a while ago about power failures killing SSDs. It turns out that when this happens, you can usually unbrick it. If your SSD died, here’s how to recover or fix your dead SSD in 61 minutes using the power cycle method.
Yes, it really does take 61 minutes to revive a dead SSD, but you only have direct involvement for a few minutes. The rest of the time, you can do something else while you wait for the drive to do its thing. This trick will even let you recover drives that won’t show up in Windows Device Manager or disk management if you transplant them into another machine.
I recently decided to collect the 1948 Bowman baseball set. It has a number of things going for it. With 48 cards in the set, it’s attainable. Of those 48 cards, 18.75% of them are Hall of Famers. It’s also one of the two first postwar major-issue sets.
A partial box of unopened 1948 packs surfaced recently in Tennessee, so that’s as good of an excuse to talk about the set as any. No one knew any unopened 1948 Bowman packs survived. It sold at auction for $521,180.
I’ve talked a lot about the advantages and disadvantages of old milestone operating systems. But what were the advantages and disadvantages of Windows NT 3.1? That’s a fair question.