David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
Commodore (in)famously owned its own chip manufacturer, MOS Technology, later known as Commodore Semiconductor Group. MOS was pivotal to helping Commodore keep prices low in the early 1980s, as it lowered Commodore’s overhead, and ensured a steady supply of chips. In 1983 and 1984, MOS produced 74LS logic chips. These chips are very failure prone. Here’s how to find MOS 74LS logic chips, and more importantly, what to replace them with.
So I bought the Ryobi 13 inch ONE+ cordless lawn mower that I warned you about. I had my reasons for buying it. And I have to say, if you go in with the right expectations, it’s pretty great for what it is.
Vintage computer games and vintage toys display better in their original boxes. But frequently those boxes are in less than ideal condition, especially if you got it at a good price. A pristine box can be worth more than the contents. I recently lucked into a couple of vintage Commodore game cartridge boxes. Their best days were behind them, but I was able to make them presentable again. Here’s my approach to game box repair.
I fixed up quite a few battered books in my day to make them more suitable for resale. The tricks I learned fixing books helped me with fixing game boxes and toy boxes as well.
I was installing Windows 10 on an HP Z210 workstation and kept getting error 0x8007025. There’s not a lot of information about that error, so here’s how I fixed it.
In the 1960s, the once-great Louis Marx toy company produced a line of plastic figurines of U.S. presidents. These Marx presidential figures garnered a bit of a cult following, and they retain one today.
I saw an interesting perspective this week on the hobby of collecting retro games, from another retro enthusiast. Prices on retro games, he observes, are increasing. That’s making him ask a tough question: Is collecting retro games worth it?
Any hobby seems like a waste of time to the right (or wrong) person. If a hobby, such as collecting retro games, helps you to unwind and get focused, and you can get some of your money back out of it as you lose interest or approach end of life, then I have to argue that hobby is worth it.
Super glue and epoxy are two specialty glues that certainly have their uses. But each of them have some pros and cons that will affect your opinion of them. Is epoxy stronger than super glue? Let’s take a look at super glue vs epoxy and when to use each, so you can get the best results possible from each.
The Compaq Presario 425 and 433 are popular machines with retro enthusiasts. They are Compaq 486s from 1993, and they look like exactly what they are. They’re well built, have recognizable branding, and don’t take up a lot of space. In some ways they’re the ideal 486 today. Let’s look at why they weren’t necessarily the ideal 486 for 1993, but they, along with the rest of the Presario line, helped transform Compaq anyway.
Many modern computers don’t require any tools to work on. But that’s not always the case, especially with vintage computers, or less-expensive DIY cases. A nut driver, also known as a hex driver or hex nut driver, makes things easier. So what is the right size nut driver for computers? Or do you need more than one?
Cyrix was a scrappy, up and coming CPU manufacturer in the 1990s. They never had Intel’s name recognition, but for a few years they made life more difficult for its larger rivals, Intel and AMD. For a while, Cyrix processor chips were a popular choice for value-conscious PC buyers.
Cyrix contributed a lot of confusing alphabet soup to the 1990s CPU market, and their chips usually weren’t the highest-performing chips available. But they usually did provide good value for the money, even though Cyrix never was a premium brand.