hints & tricks in no particular order
18/07
While using my 858D hot air rework station, I noticed the temperature display had changed from °C to °F unexpectedly. I tried following general instructions online, but the guidance I found (including a Reddit thread) didn’t match how my unit behaved. What I discovered On my particular 858D PCB, the °C/°F behavior is […]
03/09
When an Android device has Family Link supervision enabled, the option to factory-reset the device is blocked with an “action not allowed” error. Log-out from the child’s account on the device When logged in to your child’s account in a browser, go to https://myaccount.google.com/. Security -> your devices -> pick the […]
09/03
I'll summarize what I learnt while working on 3 different T4400, 2 of them being T4400C and 1 being a T4400SX (with a "last gen" plasma screen no less!) Power supply The power supplies on all three of them needed a recap, as the laptops would not start otherwise (or sometimes start and stop suddenly). The caps are […]
09/03
I expected it would be as easy as removing the batteries -- which is a must anyway on those old laptops because battery leaks are just another name for time bombs. Surprisingly for tech that old, the password doesn't seem to be stored in volatile memory. Let's dig! In the maintenance manual, it is said: Deleting the […]
08/02
Stolen from https://superuser.com/a/1725506, just don't want to forget! GPEDIT in the same location as the first setting mentioned (Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Search). Enable as before: "Do not allow locations on removable drives to be added to libraries" Enable these two […]
16/11
I decided to revisit my setup for watching Japanese TV. So far I've been using Wireguard on a Netgear R6220 which has OpenWrt installed; but I want to give OPNsense a try. This will be on a little Protectli Vault FW4C appliance. Most of the tedious steps to retrieve the NordVPN configuration remains valid. Get your […]
02/11
I had the misfortune of plugging this card halfway without realizing it, and to launch 3C5X9CFG to change its base address and IRQ. While flashing seemed OK, the card would then fail the EEPROM Vital Data Test, meaning corrupted EEPROM content, and a card that would no longer work properly. The EEPROM not only stores […]
11/08
Every year or so, I try to run all the machines in my collection. As can be expected, the failure rate is going up every year, and there is not always an obvious "recap" fix. Sometimes, however... The HP OmniBook 430 is a nice little machine featuring some nice additions such as MS-DOS on a ROM and a tiny integrated […]
08/08
Finally got a Spectrum +3 that was not outrageously expensive. Of course, in such case, it is safe to assume it won't work properly. I was not disappointed. The computer would display garbage characters on screen, which is a good sign. This means power, clock, CPU and video are just fine. This usually indicates some […]
13/05
The "hard disk on ISA" card was a trend in the late 80s. I've got one sitting there for years. The reference on the ISA card is WDC 61-000347. The HDD itself is a WD93028-X manufactured in September 1989. It does sound like it could work i.e. no weird noises, spinning OK, heads moving OK but the controller decides that […]
17/09
I own an OpenWrt router which I want connected to a VPN 24/7. Major VPN providers all support this scenario, however I currently have a NordVPN subscription so let's go with that for now. Wireguard is a bit more complex to setup than OpenVPN as NordVPN doesn't support this scenario. But performances are much, much […]
17/09
I own an OpenWrt router which I want connected to a VPN 24/7. Major VPN providers all support this scenario, however I currently have a NordVPN subscription so let's go with that for now. There are 2 main options to run NordVPN on an OpenWrt router: OpenVPN and Wireguard. OpenVPN is the easiest but also slowest […]
09/07
Unraid is a fantastic playground, and its docker ecosystem is very nice, making it much more attractive than say, Synology. I subscribed to NordVPN recently -- I've seen too many ads on YouTube maybe. Anyway, I now want to have a VPN available for my other docker apps. It is relatively easy: there is a NordLynx Docker […]
10/12
I recently acquired a TerraMaster F5-221 to replace two older NAS (a ReadyNAS and a Synology) that were running in parallel. Nothing really wrong with that except maybe for power consumption. However, when the OpenVPN started to act weird on both NAS, I decided an upgrade would be nice. According to reviews, the […]
18/08
This KB is taken from some old microsoft archive, mirrorred on https://jeffpar.github.io/kbarchive/kb/066/Q66530/ Back in the ancient MS-DOS days, If you did not SYS right after FDISK and FORMAT, you could well end up with a "No Room for System on Destination Disk" error. In one case, it turned out I had to use a 4.0 […]
18/08
As I bought a very handy TL866 II Plus USB flash programmer to replace my old and trusted Willem parallel programmer, I noticed this newer device could check and enforce chip IDs. As I already knew, many (if not all) of my EEProm chips are fake or at least remarked. Well, as long as they do work fine... What I […]
14/05
I need to test one of my projects on Safari on macOS. This time I cannot use BrowserStack, and I won't buy an iMac just for this. So... emulation it is! I mostly followed the tutorial at https://techsviewer.com/install-macos-10-15-catalina-on-virtualbox-on-windows-pc/ but there are a few caveats I want to address here. […]
25/04
The Tandy 1000SL is a neat XT compatible with a few tricks: advanced mode with 16 colors and a sound chip! Unfortunately, it only has 576 KB of available base RAM. So the trick is to find a MS-DOS with the best features for the lowest RAM. So I decided to make some tests: Total Reserved Used Free MS-DOS 3.20 570 454 44 […]
04/06
The Toshiba Libretto 50CT originally came with Windows 95. It was not meant to be used with MS-DOS, and it does not have a hardware volume control. The Libretto uses an OPL3 sound chip that is Sound Blaster compatible—or perhaps the other way around, since Sound Blaster uses OPL3. However, compatibility does not extend […]
19/03
I got a Compaq Portable III for very little money, mainly because it was considered dead. Disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling it somehow brought it back to life, with the exception of the CMOS battery and the floppy drive. I would not usually mention the CMOS battery, because it is obvious that batteries this old […]