Random Tech

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!

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.

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 "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  […]

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  […]

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 TerraMaster F5-221 has nice hardware (Intel Apollo J3355)  but poor software, which is a quite common story when it comes to NAS, it seems. It was clear I would replace the OS with something like TrueNAS or openmediavault which have open source roots, but in my research I found Unraid was mentioned quite a lot. Unraid is closed source, it's not free, but it's not very expensive either and it's based on Linux. Also, the app ecosystem is actually based on Docker, which is neat!

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  […]

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:

I got a Compaq Portable III for very cheap -- mainly because it was considered dead. Disassembling, cleaning and reassembling it somehow took it back to life, with the exception of the CMOS battery and the floppy drive. I'd usually not mention the CMOS battery, because it is obvious those old  […]

I got my hand on a AST Premium Exec 386SX/20 without power supply. Unfortunately the DIN-8 pin is not very standard: This is extracted from the following picture: The power adapter ref is AST CS714A. Sources: AST Premium Exec 386SX/20 missing power supply AST Premium Exec 386SX/20  […]