What you need to know to safely replace or substitute AC adapters

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , ,

AC adapters inevitably break or get lost. That means you have to replace them to get your devices working again. But a lot of people don’t know how to do that safely. Here’s what you need to know when you need to substitute AC adapters.

This is important. Getting it wrong can damage your equipment, the adapter, or both. The damage can be immediate, or it can appear over time.

The specifications for your AC adapter (also not affectionately known as wall warts or power bricks) should be printed on the old one, and hopefully on the device too. If you lost the adapter and the specs aren’t on the device, try a web search on “ac adapter specifications” and the name of the product.

It used to be you could take the device to Radio Shack, and $25 and five minutes later you had a good replacement. Today you might try Batteries Plus for a similar experience. But if you’re willing to do the legwork yourself, often you can find a close-enough match for closer to $10.

So, with all that said, here are the handful of things you need to know when you’re shopping for an AC adapter. The specifications don’t have to match exactly, but you have to know when you can cheat and when you can’t. Read more

Fix host hijacks or host file hijacks for free

Dave Farquhar security, Software, Viruses, Windows , , , , , , ,

Sometimes your antivirus will tell you that you have host hijacks or host file hijacks, but not elaborate on how to fix them. Some people charge way too much to fix them. Here’s how to fix host hijacks or host file hijacks for free.

A former classmate’s computer suddenly stopped letting him get to search engines. Aside from that, his computer appeared to be normal.

Fortunately he had some antivirus and antispyware software installed, so he was able to run it and get a relatively clean bill of health, but he still couldn’t use Google or Bing or Yahoo.

One of the pieces of software he ran mentioned a host hijack or hosts file hijack, but didn’t offer to clean it up without ponying up some serious bucks.

That was enough to tell me how to clean it up though. You don’t have to buy anything. Read more

How to fix old Marx locomotives

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , , , , , ,
How to fix old Marx locomotives

I’ve been noticing that a post I made several years ago about my experiments fixing a Marx 490 train locomotive has been getting a disconcerting number of hits. Disconcerting, because I repeated some advice on how to fix old Marx locomotives from another web site that I later found, by experience, wasn’t all that good.

Here’s how I go about doing simple repairs on Marx trains today, now that I’ve done a few.

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McAlester, OK hates Fred Phelps

Dave Farquhar Christianity ,

I’m very sorry to report that when Fred Phelps and a few of his minions were waving their Thank-God-for-dead-soldiers signs at Sgt Jason James McCluskey’s funeral, somebody slashed his tires.

I’m also sorry to report that no shop in town was willing to service Mr. Phelps’ Honda minivan that day.

I’m sorrier still that the Tulsa World printed a photograph of said Honda minivan limping on two tires, with Kansas license plate 550 CUV plainly visible.

Sgt McCluskey died for you too, Mr. Phelps.

How to fix modern plastic toys

Dave Farquhar Saving money
How to fix modern plastic toys

Yesterday my son handed me a piece of broken toy train track. Last night I fixed it. At first I figured it would be easy–wood’s just a matter of gluing and clamping. But this one had a funky plastic connector. I got a lesson in how to fix modern plastic toys, and the best glue for plastic.

The plastics used in today’s toys are less brittle and arguably stronger than the polystyrene they used when I was a kid. The downside is that when they do break, it’s a lot harder to glue them. Normal super glues won’t work well, and the plastic cements for gluing model kits together–my old secret weapon–won’t work at all.
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Are Black Friday computers a good deal?

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Saving money , , , , ,

Black Friday is going to be here before we know it. And historically, that’s been a good day to snag a deal on consumer electronics. But does that hold for computers?

I’ve studied many Black Friday computers–I have two Black Friday specials from years’ past sitting in the basement as I write–and I have to say that when it comes to those, you’re getting what you pay for. Yes, they cost less than computers from September and October. But there’s a good reason for it. Read more

Fix or restore Lionel track

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Fix or restore Lionel track

It’s that time of year again. Time to get that old Lionel (or Marx or American Flyer) electric train running before the holidays sneak up. More often than not, the track isn’t in the best of shape. Fortunately, it’s not all that hard to fix or restore Lionel track.

Believe it or not, you can effectively remove rust from old Lionel track with a ball of aluminum foil. A small ball of aluminum foil plundered from your kitchen and five minutes of your time is likely to be enough to restore a loop of Lionel track from rusty, unusable junk to reliable operation.

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Increasing memory cache to improve Firefox performance

Dave Farquhar Software , , ,

I read today in Lifehacker about disabling Firefox’s disk cache and increasing the memory cache, as an alternative to putting the disk cache on a ramdisk. The trick can work, depending on the types of sites you visit. But the two aren’t quite interchangeable. The disk cache stores compressed images and (I believe) html. The memory cache stores uncompressed pictures for fast rendering, and no html. Content stored in one isn’t necessarily stored in the other. Read more