Octopus Overlords

i've always been into electronics repair, but the increasing miniaturization of SMT makes it require yet more specialized training and equipment. but maybe that would be a good field to get into:

https://www.vice.com/en_in/article/pa79 ... life-v26n4

The problem is cost. She charges $300 to recover something, but how many hours can she spend on it before it becomes a losing proposition?

But for some, the cost is no object. And I'd imagine she had a TON of old device she had to scavenge parts from to revive others, not to mention the gray-market for replacement parts. Still, fighting the good fight.

$300 did seem like a bargain, to me, so i went to look up her pricelist:

and yeah, she is charging $300 or less for a majority of her work. and there's also a standard that if a technician can't repair the item, they don't charge you.

RTX Voice is now officially support GTX cards.

Victoria Raverna wrote:RTX Voice is now officially support GTX cards.

Sweet! I just assumed it was tied to the RTX GPU but I guess that means it’s software?

Best noise canceling software out there. Too bad they can’t install it on the kids’ school laptops.

Blast from the past! I was looking over some of my old Space Shuttle stuff and one of the items was an old 130+ page special printed by the Florida Today newspaper and released just before the April 12, 1979 first Shuttle launch. I thought our computer folks might appreciated seeing what Radio Shack was selling then. I owned both models at some point back then.

click to enlarge

jztemple2 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2020 12:37 am Blast from the past! I was looking over some of my old Space Shuttle stuff and one of the items was an old 130+ page special printed by the Florida Today newspaper and released just before the April 12, 1979 first Shuttle launch. I thought our computer folks might appreciated seeing what Radio Shack was selling then. I owned both models at some point back then.

click to enlarge

Yeesh, that $3,899 Radio Shack TRS-80 Model II now equates to a $13,958.96 PC in today's day and age.

Inflation is a hell of a drug.

jztemple2 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2020 12:37 am Blast from the past! I was looking over some of my old Space Shuttle stuff and one of the items was an old 130+ page special printed by the Florida Today newspaper and released just before the April 12, 1979 first Shuttle launch. I thought our computer folks might appreciated seeing what Radio Shack was selling then. I owned both models at some point back then.

click to enlarge

Same here, plus a few models of Tandy Cocos (color computers, i.e. color version of the TRS-80). Actually learned assembly on it (had to buy a special cartridge for the Coco). The BASIC on the TRS-80 wasn't that bad, can run Telengard on it, IIRC, or was it DND? It all blended together...

But back then, I lived in Texas. You can't sneeze without touching a Tandy back then.

Sometimes, it's hard to explain tech in terms that people would understand when they just hear bits and pieces and come up with their own fantasy-tech that doesn't exist, yet expect you to find it.

My dad said we need to buy some security cameras. So after some checking, I bought the Amazon/Blinkx indoor system. It worked well enough, until somebody started arguing at a card table downstairs and my dad expects me to "pull up footage to prove if someone cheated". I explained to him that these security cameras are NOT continuous recording type, but motion-detect cameras. He got mad at me for buying the wrong type.

I said fine, I'll buy you the right type, but these are WIRED cameras. I'm NOT installing them. Find a contractor to run the wires. Bought everything: master control unit, 4 cameras, hard drive.

They arrived, gave it to the guy downstairs, he didn't install them. He complained that they are wired systems. Fine. Not my problem.

Then my dad somehow heard from somebody who said there are systems that are full non-stop surveillance cameras that are wireless, and can run for DAYS non-stop on batteries and mounted with magnets. "You just take them down every few days to recharge". And I have to explain to him that those are also motion-detectors. Think about your phone. How long does the battery last? Less than a day, and that's with it sitting in your pocket.

He finally shut up, but it's pretty obvious he trusts some random guy more than he trusts his own techie son.

(What I didn't tell him is I have one of those magnet mount sets on standby... I have an Arlo camera kit when the Blinkx turned out to be rather... disappointing. )

The first time you told us this story I asked to hear more about your Dad's underground mahjong parlor.

Let's hear this story!

I still have a TRS-80 MC-10 micro computer with 16k RAM expansion and tape recorder that was handed down from my aunt...pretty low powered, but got my first taste of playing with BASIC as a kid. It was fun as 8yo to type in a program, watch it run (sometimes an interactive game), and be able to save it to tape for later. Seems pretty quaint now...

Mine is still in the original box, in good condition, so looks like I could sell it for $100-250. Not bad considering it retailed for $120 in 1982.

Z-Corn wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2020 2:07 pm The first time you told us this story I asked to hear more about your Dad's underground mahjong parlor.

Let's hear this story!

Hardly underground. It's on first floor.

My dad decided to rent the place out to someone else to run. He ran it for two months, owed us rent, and apparently he decided Chinatown's too dangerous in COVID times and just ran off. STILL owing us rent.

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2020 1:24 pm (What I didn't tell him is I have one of those magnet mount sets on standby... I have an Arlo camera kit when the Blinkx turned out to be rather... disappointing. )

I've got a couple of magnetic mount plug-em-in to recharge Arlos, and they're trash. I really regret having them. Eufy, apparently, is where I should've gone.

The Meal wrote: ↑Sun Sep 13, 2020 9:38 am

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2020 1:24 pm (What I didn't tell him is I have one of those magnet mount sets on standby... I have an Arlo camera kit when the Blinkx turned out to be rather... disappointing. )

I've got a couple of magnetic mount plug-em-in to recharge Arlos, and they're trash. I really regret having them. Eufy, apparently, is where I should've gone.

Yeah, but Arlo is ALSO a motion detector. And sam with the Eufy version. There's NO WAY a battery based system would be able to continuously record for "days".

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Sun Sep 13, 2020 11:38 am

The Meal wrote: ↑Sun Sep 13, 2020 9:38 am

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2020 1:24 pm (What I didn't tell him is I have one of those magnet mount sets on standby... I have an Arlo camera kit when the Blinkx turned out to be rather... disappointing. )

I've got a couple of magnetic mount plug-em-in to recharge Arlos, and they're trash. I really regret having them. Eufy, apparently, is where I should've gone.

Yeah, but Arlo is ALSO a motion detector. And sam with the Eufy version. There's NO WAY a battery based system would be able to continuously record for "days".

Be sure you read both company's reddit pages before you make the same mistake I made.

You can continuously monitor either camera (in real-time), but obviously you'd burn through battery in so doing. You cannot retroactively see recordings that didn't trip the motion sensors.

We use "wired" Logitech Circle cameras (best software of any of the four different camera vendors I've used) for similar circumstances as you'd run into in a Mah Jong parlor. However, if you've got privacy concerns related to cloud storage, you can't keep everything local using the Circle cameras. The Circle cameras (including the wired version) use wifi to transmit data, but they are plugged into the wall (or sit on a base which does the same). There is a wireless Circle camera, but I haven't heard good things.

Some time lapses from the Circles are available here.

Best luck.

I know. I bought one of those no-name Chinese system as the continuous recording system. I know THAT will record non-stop and be able to call back any time subject to HD space. That's the one I refuse to install myself.

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2020 1:24 pm
He finally shut up, but it's pretty obvious he trusts some random guy more than he trusts his own techie son.

Oh, tell me about it. My Mom had an issue that cropped up with her chromebook that prevented her from logging in from the homescreen, which apparently was a common issue and Google knew about it and offered both OS update and firmware updates. One of the fixes was to 'powerwash' aka factory reset. She was hesitant, because according to her research via comments from others who've had the issue, it hasn't always solved it. I kept telling her, multiple times, you have don't have much to lose seeing as everything is on the cloud and she hardly had anything saved to the local drive. Yet it took her several months and much exasperation on my part before she was able to get to the point of doing a powerwash, and when she finally did, she was glad and the stress of it not working correctly was gone.

i know a few 'insecure' people i do IT troubleshooting for - not naming names - who are very quick sometimes to tell me what i'm informing they should do is wrong because ...uh, because... erm IT'S JUST WRONG OKAY?? i guess they need to assert themselves as 'not completely ignorant in this area' somehow, once in a while. (nevermind it says it right there on the process webpage i've linked them to, and they still get mad when i start the troubleshooting process from the absolute basics, saying they 'aren't stupid, of course [they've] done this already' - a sizeable percentage of the time, they actually haven't.) i can't help but feel this is generally applicable to the larger American population.

"My car wont start. Are you calling me stupid because I don't even own a car!? How dare you sir, how dare you"

Users lie.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2020 5:37 pmUsers lie.

Screenshots or it didn't happen?

Loose screw between chair and keyboard.

Looking at the STeam desktop app pages for Baldurs Gate 1 & 2 Enhanced Editions both pages show I own a copy of each. I thought I did. But if I got to my library and look at the games listed to install I only see BG2 EE listed there. The first game is missing. SO I go to BG 1 EEs store page and click PLAY NOW...it starts a loading box then blinks back to the store page and never loads the game.

Any idea why this happens?

Now that you mention it yes ..Didn't help.

perhaps the game is on your "hidden" games list AND has become corrupted. Needs to have the validate local files performed

Felt REALLY stupid today.

I had a printer on the network, and I know it worked before.

But I can't see it on the network or print to it.

I tried doing all sorts of ****.

Turns out, the real problem was... I was on the WRONG SSID. My home network has THREE SSIDs: original (Wifi-N, came with existing DSL-Modem), upgrade (wifi-AC, additional wifi router I added), and "upstairs extender" (probably not needed, Wifi-N that extends the original's signal).

Turns out, printer is on upgrade, but my PC, for some reason, is on original, not upgrade. WTF... Spend like 2 hours for nothing.

Last night out of the blue I remembered I used to have a multi cd disc drive in one of my PCs. Had completely forgotten that. Its so faint a memory it is almost I feel I had one but cant remember much on it. I do remember loving it when I could put in all the cds to a multi cd game and not having to do it during install or game play. As I recall I just pushed a button. But I also dont think it worked as well as Id hoped or wanted or something. I mean I had completely forgotten it. Was the 90s before DVDs. Also it fit in a 5 1/4" bay. Was no loading motor or anything. Hell I cant remember how it worked lol.

Now off to the web to see if I can even find mention of them.

EDIT: Thought Id lost my mind there cause I couldn't find a single mention of them. Then came across a bunch of brands and such finally lol. Mine might have been this one as I loved TEAC drives back then.

http://www.dansdata.com/changer.htm

TEAC CD-C68E six-disc CD-ROM changer
Review date: 2 February 1999.

The TEAC CD-C68E is a six disc 8X CD changer - it holds six discs, but can only read one at a time. It fits in a standard 5.25 inch drive bay, just like any other CD-ROM drive, and it runs from the same IDE interface as every other cheap CD-ROM drive. It has an average seek speed of 190mS, not counting disc-changing time.

As I mentioned I think it annoyed me or something. I had thought ti would do something but I still had to fool with stuff. And each slot required a drive letter. That had something to do with the problems I remember. Like if my drives was D E F G H then the game if started the install from D it wanted the next disc in D also and not E and it gave me fits.

well of 19 songs I made MP3s out of from YouTube videos.....about 5 were pretty good. 3 were real bad and the rest were almost average but not quite . So I can listen to the cd for now but when Im really up to it I need to find original high bitrate MP3s

Was contemplating more WiFi controllable "smart plugs" (I had two of them, one for my window fan I can't reach, and one for my light I'm too lazy to switch on and off). here are my findings:

* The cheaper ones are usually really weak and are limited to no more than 10A overall, probably less. If you need to handle higher current, you need to find models that specifically say they can handle 12A or even 15A. Don't see any that handle 20

* Some of them will tell you the power consumption through the plug, but most are not smart enough.

* Most will talk to Alexa, Google Home (Nest home), or Apple HomeKit. Most may not even need a hub.

* Most will require a 2.4 GHz wifi, and are NOT compatible with 5 GHz wifi band.

I have some ideas about sensors and cameras and smart plugs, but given most of my house lights are just dumb lights, I really find no reason to add smart plugs to anything outside of my immediately room.

jztemple2 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2020 12:37 am Blast from the past! I was looking over some of my old Space Shuttle stuff and one of the items was an old 130+ page special printed by the Florida Today newspaper and released just before the April 12, 1979 first Shuttle launch. I thought our computer folks might appreciated seeing what Radio Shack was selling then. I owned both models at some point back then.

click to enlarge

What was so different between the model II and III? I find it surprising that the Model III would be so much cheaper.

Rumpy wrote: ↑Wed Oct 07, 2020 3:37 pm What was so different between the model II and III? I find it surprising that the Model III would be so much cheaper.

16K vs 64K memory.

Rumpy wrote: ↑Wed Oct 07, 2020 3:37 pm

jztemple2 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2020 12:37 am Blast from the past! I was looking over some of my old Space Shuttle stuff and one of the items was an old 130+ page special printed by the Florida Today newspaper and released just before the April 12, 1979 first Shuttle launch. I thought our computer folks might appreciated seeing what Radio Shack was selling then. I owned both models at some point back then.

click to enlarge

What was so different between the model II and III? I find it surprising that the Model III would be so much cheaper.

Model II was 64K, while Model III was only 16K. Check out the pages linked to the names, they point out that the Model III was a replacement for the Model I, while the Model II was a different machine.

It [the Model II] came with a Model II specific version of the TRSDOS disk operating system (which wasn’t that similar to Model I TRSDOS) and a powerful version of BASIC. Except for simple BASIC programs, the Model II wasn’t compatible with Model I software. Also unlike the Model I, the Model II had no cassette interface. Radio Shack made it clear that the Model II was not intended as a Model I replacement:

Was just going to post a long message about needing help getting my four year old Kindle to connect up to the wifi from my one year old router. It turned out that besides my Kindle not seeing the wifi from the router, my four year old iPod Touch could see and connect to the 5GHz radios in the router, but not the 2.4GHz one. I played around with the router settings, since I refuse to let some inanimate object get the better of me. I finally figured out that it was my password. I was using one that was ten letters, no digits. When I changed the 2.4GHz radio password to six letters plus two numbers, it worked . What the... well, it was probably mentioned somewhere in the users guide or something, but anyway at least now everybody can talk to everybody.

jztemple2 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 07, 2020 3:45 pm

It [the Model II] came with a Model II specific version of the TRSDOS disk operating system (which wasn’t that similar to Model I TRSDOS) and a powerful version of BASIC. Except for simple BASIC programs, the Model II wasn’t compatible with Model I software. Also unlike the Model I, the Model II had no cassette interface. Radio Shack made it clear that the Model II was not intended as a Model I replacement:

Wow, Ok. It must have been quite confusing for the consumer when they came out. That'd be like saying the PS3 is intented to be a direct replacement to the PS1. I don't think models would be quite marketed or designed the same way anymore. They'd be thinking more literally.

Imagine the confusion when they introduce even more models down the line! The TRS-80 Color Computer! (aka the CoCo) which ALSO came in 3 generations...

Another blast from the past, The Winamp Skin Museum really whips the llama's ass

In the late nineties and early noughties, no video game forum was complete without a ‘post your desktop’ thread, and no desktop screenshot was complete without a snazzy Winamp skin displaying your personality and illicit MP3 collection. What a treat it is to scroll through the tens of thousands of skins on the Winamp Skin Museum and see the exciting, strange, colourful, and horny range of old Winamp skins. It’s a simple website showing off a whopping 65,681 skins as you scroll down, down, ever down through ancient digital artefacts. But which will you admit to using?

https://octopusoverlords.com/forum/view ... p#p2757693 BAM