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Category Archives: Hardware
AT&T doublespeak
The local AT&T stores sold out of the iPhone 3G by around 9 AM. The salespeople are telling customers that they can order and pay for an iPhone today, and they will get it by “direct fulfillment”, which they explain … Continue reading
Posted in Customer satisfaction, Gadgets, Hardware
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Defending scoundrels
On the CCTALK mailing list, I found myself in the unusual position of defending some of the design decisions that went into the original IBM Personal Computer (PC), which was introduced in August 1981 and with which all modern PCs … Continue reading
The suboptimal way to open a Mac Mini
I wanted to clone an image of the internal hard drive of a new Mac Mini before booting it up. It is common knowledge that a putty knife is the tool to use, as long as it has a thin … Continue reading
Posted in Hardware, The Suboptimal Way
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The suboptimal way to buy ink
I’ve generally been happy with my Epson Stylus R300 printer. I chose it because of its ability to print onto printable CD-R/DVD-R media, which wasn’t common at the time. As with all inkjet printers, though, it subjects the owner to … Continue reading
Posted in Hardware, The Suboptimal Way
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The suboptimal way to get a copy of a journal article
In 1990, Bob Pease of National Semiconductor published a “design idea” in the June 14, 1990 issue of Electronic Design for the use of a FET for reverse-polarity protection, with the advantage that it will typically have much lower forward … Continue reading
Posted in Hardware, The Suboptimal Way
4 Comments
RAID Capacity Expansion, the Suboptimal Way, or How Not to Have a Fun Weekend
On Friday, I needed to add disk space to the RAID 5 array on my server. I’m using a 3ware 9550SX-8LP RAID controller, which I’ve generally been very happy with. It has support for online capacity expansion, so I decided … Continue reading
Posted in Disaster recovery, Hardware, The Suboptimal Way
7 Comments
When Ethernet Switches Go Bad…
(Sounds like a program the Fox network would air…) Some time between 2 AM and 11 AM PDT, both my server machines in the colo dropped off the network. It seems implausible that both would fail for any reason other … Continue reading
Jacque helps me set up an HP 16500C logic analyzer
As usual,Jacque ignored me most of the day, but as soon as the logic analyzer arrived he rushed over to help me set it up. (click for gallery with more photos)
“Will I dream?”
Today Guy and I removed the KW20 Master Oscillator from my KL10 (PDP-10 CPU, part of DECSYSTEM-20), so that it can temporarily be used in his KL10 until he can fabricate a suitable replacement. As we removed the KW20, I … Continue reading
Posted in Hardware, Retrocomputing
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AMD (ATI) 3D programming specs released!
AMD announced last year that they would publish the programming specs for their graphics chips. Last September they started that, with register-level documentation on several chips. While that was a good start, today they have made many of their customers … Continue reading →