xbox Archives - The Silicon Underground

Optimize Windows 10 for better performance

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 08 Feb 2017 12:00:37 +0000

When I first installed it, I thought it was pretty pointless to try to optimize Windows 10. Of course, I installed it from scratch on a computer with an SSD and 16 gigs of RAM. Then I upgraded a couple

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PCs are dead! Tablets are hot! Tablets are dead! PCs are hot!

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 11:00:56 +0000

In a shocking turn of events, PCs are now outselling tablets. Last year it was the opposite. What’s going on? Priorities, that’s all. It’s the cycle of events in electronics. It’s happened before and it’s going to happen again as

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Testing gift electronics before wrapping them is an excellent idea

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 11:00:30 +0000

The late, great Consumerist blog recommended testing a Playstation 4 before gifting it. That’s always a good idea anyway, given that most failures happen very early in the life of an electronics gadget. If they survive the first 24 hours, they

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Now that Microsoft is IBM, it needs to avoid IBM’s big mistake

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 18 Jul 2013 11:00:47 +0000

Whether Microsoft likes it or not, it’s turned into IBM. The biggest difference I see is that when Microsoft makes a mistake, it catches up with them much faster than the same mistake did to IBM. But IBM’s biggest mistake

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Where Microsoft lost its way

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 11:00:00 +0000

John C. Dvorak wrote an analysis of how Microsoft lost its way with Windows 8 this week. All in all it sounds reasonable to me. His recollection of DOS and some DOS version 8 confused me at first, but that

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Lessons of the HP Touchpad

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 12:26:03 +0000

At full price ($499 for the 16 GB model and $599 for the 32 GB model) the HP Touchpad was a colossal flop. Like AT&T’s first PC clones of the mid 1980s, it was a me-too product at a me-too

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What to do when an Xbox DVD drive sticks

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 13:03:16 +0000

So I got this Xbox really cheap. When I got it home, I found out why--the DVD drive wouldn't open.

It's a good thing I didn't pay much for it.

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Replace your video game system’s power cord cheap

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 23:03:31 +0000

This weekend I found myself in search of a power cord for an original Playstation. It's the same plug that the Sega Dreamcast and Saturn and Sony PS2 use, and probably the Xbox as well, but it seems like online almost everyone wants $10 for a suitable replacement.

I found a cheaper option.

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Linux gets more attractive on the Xbox

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 15 Apr 2003 23:41:05 +0000

There's been another milestone in getting Linux running on Microsoft's Xbox game console. It's now possible to get it going if you bridge a couple of solder points on the motherboard to enable flashing the unit's BIOS, then you use the James Bond 007 game and a save game that exploits a buffer overflow, and with a few more tricks, you can unlock the hard drive, put it in a Linux PC, install Linux, then move the drive back to the Xbox and turn it into a cheap Linux box.

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