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Thrift-store PCs

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Saving money December 22, 2010October 11, 20191990s, capacitors, dell, estate sales, garage sale, garage sales, IBM, lionel, memory slots, micro atx, recycling, usb port, Windows XP

In the comments of a recent post I did, reader Glaurung Quena brought up a good topic: secondhand PCs, acquired cheaply, strictly as rebuild fodder.

I like the idea, of course, because I’ve been doing it for years. In the 1990s I built a lot of 486s and Pentiums into former IBM PC/ATs, basically until all the board makers relocated the memory slots into a position that wasn’t clear on the original PC/AT due to a beam that supported its drive bays. And of course the adoption of ATX and MicroATX killed that, at least for a while.

But now ATX has been around as long as the old AT architecture had been when ATX came along, and efforts to replace ATX haven’t been successful. So that trick makes more sense again. Buy a secondhand machine cheaply, intending to re-use the case, and regard anything else inside that happens to be reusable strictly as a bonus. Read more

The 15-second rule and other (non) myths

Dave Farquhar Hardware December 21, 2010October 17, 20171980s, commodore, IBM, power button, random data, video memory

Cnet investigated some computer wise tales, myths, conventional wisdom, or whatever else you want to call it. The one I take the most issue with is the 15-second rule. They asked Geek Squad, and, as a long, long-ago Best Buy employee, the answer they gave to the 15-second rule is, well, what I would expect. Read more

Bye bye, Zack Greinke

Dave Farquhar Baseball December 20, 2010December 20, 2010American League, Carlos Beltran, Jermaine Dye, John Buck, Kansas City

My favorite Kansas City Royal is still George Brett.

It should be Zack Greinke, but it can’t be anymore. He’ll be pitching Opening Day for the Milwaukee Brewers. Part of me knew this was inevitable. Mostly I’m glad he won’t be pitching for the Yankees.
Read more

Upgrading an HP Mini 110 with an Intel X25-V SSD

Dave Farquhar Hardware December 19, 2010December 22, 2015firefox, hp, intel, netbooks, ocz, toshiba, Windows XP

I installed an Intel X25-V in an HP Mini 110 and found it to be an inexpensive way to hotrod an aging netbook. Any drive in my current SSD Roundup will work even better today. It’s an inexpensive way to hotrod an aging netbook. Any drive available today will be considerably larger than the stock 16 GB SSD, and also considerably faster. Read more

Overused (and underused) resume buzzwords

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized December 17, 2010December 17, 20101990s, India, ISO, job duties, John Dvorak

This week the list of 10 most overused resume buzzwords came out. John C. “Don’t call me John Dvorak” Dvorak offers his usual snarky analysis.

Here’s mine. Read more

Who is Bob Feller? An American hero

Dave Farquhar Baseball, Human Interest December 16, 2010September 26, 2017cleveland indians, Pearl Harbor, walter johnson

The answer: On December 7, 1941, this ace of the Cleveland Indians and the winningest pitcher in the American League, was driving to meet with his general manager to sign a contract for the 1942 season and decided to enlist in the Navy. The question: Who is Bob Feller?

How to connect Commodore disk drives

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing December 15, 2010April 24, 20241541, 1571, commodore, commodore 64, power brick, vic 20

Connecting a single drive to a Commodore C-64, 128, or VIC-20 is pretty easy: Plug a 6-pin serial cable from the port on the back of the computer to one of the two ports on the back of the drive. It doesn’t matter which port you use. The second port is for “daisy chaining” additional peripherals, such as a printer, or multiple drives. And even though a fast load cartridge speeds up the drive, it plugs into the computer.

Older drives like the 1540, 1541, and 1571 are self-contained. Plug a power cable (which, conveniently, is no different from the power cable used on a most desktop PCs) into the back and power it on. Later 1541-IIs and 1581s use an external power brick. The two drives’ power bricks are interchangeable; however, they do differ from the power brick used by the computer itself. Fortunately, the original power bricks are labeled with the compatible devices, either on a silver sticker on top or molded into the underside.

It’s multiple-drive setups that get trickier. Read more

Using two or more transformers together on a train layout

Dave Farquhar Toy trains December 14, 2010November 22, 2016american flyer, lionel, marx, train layout

Using two or more transformers together on a train layout seems like a good thing to do. It’s a common practice in consumer electrical devices to chain multiple batteries together to get more power. So it stands to reason that you could chain multiple small American Flyer/Lionel/Marx transformers together to get more power.

It doesn’t work that way–you can’t chain two 90w transformers together to get 180 watts. But there are still reasons you might want to use multiple transformers; say, to control different blocks of track on your electric train layout.
Read more

How to clean viruses off other people’s systems safely

Dave Farquhar security, Viruses, Windows December 13, 2010antivirus, bitdefender, christmas, firewall, Microsoft Security Essentials, spyware, USB flash drive, WAN

What should you do when someone hands you a computer, tells you they think it has a virus, and asks you to clean it?

Proceed carefully, that’s what. You don’t want to infect your other computers with whatever it has.

To get it gone safely and effectively, you really need two things: an antivirus live CD, and a spare router.
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Upgrade diary: HP Pavilion a305w

Dave Farquhar Hardware December 12, 2010December 30, 2015amd, antivirus, black friday, dell, hp, intel, Microsoft Access, Microsoft Security Essentials, symantec, windows 7, Windows XP

Wow, what a slug. Want me to tell you how I really feel?

Typical Black Friday special from years past. Cheap, but what a limiting future. Here are your handful of options. As far as I can tell, there are about eight of them.