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Strongit

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  1. Like
    Strongit reacted to da na in Show off your old and retro computer parts   
    I recently bought a laptop with IDE and have been exploring options. IDE SSDs are good, but expensive. CF/SD to IDE adapters have proven to be good solutions for older OSes, but I've found anything newer than Windows 98 is noticeably slow on a CompactFlash or SD card. Plus, higher capacity CompactFlash cards get pretty expensive. So, I settled for an mSATA to IDE SSD. mSATA drives are not too expensive and have far better performance for the price than camera cards. The little adapter + mSATA drive here cost me around $25 combined.

    The SSD slots into the adapter like it would into any other mini PCIe slot.

    The drive could be installed with the bare PCB, but it also comes with a plastic 2.5" size shell if your device has a caddy the drive needs to screw into. And just like that, it installs.

    And just like that, it is recognized in the BIOS by the name of the SATA SSD inside of it. 

    A 32GB IDE SSD from a reliable brand is around  $60, for $25 I got a drive of the same speed and almost twice the capacity. Definitely worth it to buy one of these adapters.
  2. Agree
    Strongit reacted to da na in Show off your old and retro computer parts   
    One of my favorite things about my HP z840 workstation is its handles.
  3. Agree
    Strongit reacted to sub68 in Will it cause any damage?   
    essential oils act like smoke from cigrettes just go into fans and just gloop up. Not good and I wouldnt do it.
  4. Like
    Strongit reacted to ShadowCaptain in Experiences with non-techies   
    I'm sitting at work, well I say work...
    Funny story, once at school me and my friends all had Asus EEE machines? (remember the origional 4gb 7" ones?) and we had halo 1 CE installed and were playing a multiplayer game. The head teacher came in, saw us playing when we were meant to be in class and just casually went "I love playing medal of honour" then walked off
     
    Probably the best moment of my lfie
  5. Like
    Strongit reacted to Askew in Experiences with non-techies   
    Just a wild multi coloured post coming through.
  6. Like
    Strongit reacted to flibberdipper in Experiences with non-techies   
    No. Not this again. Just... Stop.
  7. Like
    Strongit reacted to Patrick3D in Experiences with non-techies   
    Back in 1997 I worked as an upgrade technician at a Computer City store (owned by Tandy Corporation was similar to CompUSA), here's a few quickies:
     
    1.) Lady brought in her computer for a ZIP drive installation, we were required to check out the condition of a system before accepting it for any work so we couldn't be blamed for pre-existing damage. Upon opening the case one of the RAM sticks fell out. Turns out she broke the memory bracket while installing the memory herself and then wedged a piece of cardboard between 2 sticks to try and hold the memory in the broken slot in place.
     
    2.) Guy had a monitor that was overheating, pretty common issue with cheap CRT monitors from China at the time. He brought the monitor in to see if the repair department could fix it. His temporary solution for trying to prevent it from overheating was to drill holes all over the case, cutout the left side of the case, and duct tape a small $10 box fan from K-Mart to the side. I asked him where he bought the fan and went out and bought one for myself that weekend. :lol: Handy fella though!
     
    3.) Young lady in her mid-20's came in and begged me to help her shop for a laptop as she knew the sales people would just prey on her and sell her something she didn't need. I asked her the usual questions such as what she had been using, what she needed the new laptop to do, what features she was most interested in, etc... Found the best model that met all her needs and cost $300 less than most of the other laptops. She bought it and then came back that weekend with her baby, Mom, and Dad and wanted to introduce me to them as the "hero" that helped her find the perfect laptop (she was very happy with it).
     
    4.) A few years after leaving Computer City I was doing some in-home repair work for a client and after repairing her Windows ME system she insisted that her teenage son take me up to his room and play PS2 games with me. She figured her son would benefit spending time with a gamer that had made a career out of fixing computers in an effort to get her son interested in the same career.  :wacko: We played Gran Turismo 2.
     
    5.) Just a few years ago I was on the phone providing some remote support to a female remote sales worker, she was so overjoyed with how easy the whole process was to have the issue fixed (I was using a 3rd party remote desktop tool to take care of everyhing) that she yelled out loud: "I LOVE YOU"! The phone went silent and then I heard her husband laughing his ass off and she apologized saying she was caught up in the moment. :rolleyes:
     
    One nice thing about fixing people's computers is over the years I've gotten: 2x-3x the money I asked for, fresh baked cookies, beef jerky, a bottle of whiskey, and plenty of laughs.
  8. Like
    Strongit reacted to bmxtricky5 in Experiences with non-techies   
    My mom still calls a IT guy even though i can fix it........ she still thinks i will break her pc if i touch it...... even though i have built my own pc.... hers is so fragile lol... i am lucky to have good grandparents though mine can adapt and learn.... one of my grandparents is actually really into tech... only a few days ago i was talking with him about litecoin/bitcoin mining and he knew all about it..
  9. Like
    Strongit reacted to Beskamir in Experiences with non-techies   
    Yep you don't lower the settings. The dev lowers the settings for everyone.
  10. Like
    Strongit reacted to Solrix in Experiences with non-techies   
    About 2 months ago I went into best buy just to look around and I was checking out the video cards I was already looking at buying the gtx 650 ti boost and they had it in stores granted it was 40$ more than new egg. So one of the people that work at best buy walks up to me and was talking to me about computer stuff and he seemed to know a bit about computers (he built his and was a gamer) and he told me not to buy it in store and go buy it off newegg and save the money. So in the mix of all the negative story's about best buy and other computer dealers I just wanted to throw a good story out there that not all of them are jerks
  11. Like
    Strongit reacted to piplupgao in Experiences with non-techies   
    oh god we better not start this argument up again
  12. Funny
    Strongit reacted to 8tg in Show off your old and retro computer parts   
    I have bit off more than I can chew 

     
    this is such a complicated machine, it’s genuinely impressive what some of the workarounds were at the time to create such a thin and light laptop 
  13. Like
    Strongit reacted to tkitch in Show off your old and retro computer parts   
    I just scored a BITCHIN deal on craigslist, haven't tested it yet, but I've inventoried:
     

     
    Antec / Chenming Aluminum case, in nearly perfect condition.   Only a couple light scratches on the plastic, even!
     
    Mobo:  Abit IC7
    CPU:  Intel P4 3.0GHz /512/SLKW6
    RAM:  2x 512MB Geil DDR400 CL2.5 DIMMs
    GPU:  Hercules Prophet 9800 Pro 128MB 
    Sound:  Creative Audigy 2
    Other:  10/100 PCI NIC, 802.11 B/G PCI WiFi, Haupage WinTV Tuner
     
    All said and done?  40$ on Craigslist!
  14. Agree
    Strongit reacted to tkitch in Let's talk about 'Bottlenecks'   
    I still say we just ban the word bottleneck and get it over with.
  15. Like
    Strongit got a reaction from Adam1984 in Whats your favourite specific PC component of all time   
    I really liked the Intel E8400. I managed to get mine up to 4 GHz and it chewed through everything until GTA 4. It was used for so long for so many things and was just rock solid.
  16. Like
    Strongit reacted to PwnyTheTiger in Vintage Toshiba 740CDT Floppy Drive   
    If you can get to a dos prompt natively, through emulation with the drive you intend to throw in the old machine you can format it, run fdisk to make the proper partitions AFTER using format /s to format the drive and make it bootable. Then try throwing the backup image on, but without the MBR transferring over (it might or might not be) I'm not sure if it would work anyways.
     
    Otherwise....
    Attach hard drive as only drive to newer PC.
    Boot off DOS floppy/cd/USB/something to get into DOS. The other commenter provided a way to make a bootable DOS usb stick, but there's plenty similar.
    If you already have a functional partition/etc on the drive you can skip this part. Use fdisk to create the partition on it and make sure it's set active. DOS fdisk has an annoying limitation that only the primary drive can be set bootable/active, which is why you have to have it as the only drive
    If it's a new partition, format /s the new partition such that it can boot DOS itself. If it's an existing partition, you can use sys on it.
    Now we need to get the Win98 cab files on it. If you have no CD or anything burnable, you can set things up such that Windows 7 boots again and have the to-be-Win98 drive as a secondary drive.
    Extract a Windows 98 ISO from somewhere like winworldpc.com and copy the entire win98 directory to the to-be-Win98 drive.
    Pop the drive back in the Win98 computer and get booted to DOS on it. From there you can run Windows 98 setup and bob's your uncle.
    Used to do this all the time back in the day for machines with no CD-ROM drive, but you're going to need a way to boot DOS natively on the new box ideally. You can possibly also use something like Virtualbox or QEMU and hardware passthrough of the drive to do it, but we're starting to get into multiple levels of complication with that and it's best avoided.
  17. Like
    Strongit got a reaction from iHardware Shelden in Show off your old and retro computer parts   
    I'm using this old Tecra 740CDT to run some dos games and whatever Windows 98 games will run.  I was a bit surprised with the core speed reported by CPUZ since the specs list it as a Pentium 60.  I got it from the local police service who was throwing it out a couple years ago.  Needs a new floppy drive and I'm trying to source a cardbus USB card that works but other than that it's running pretty good.  4 GB hard drive, 2 GB compact flash I use for transferring files, 144 MB of memory and, believe it or not, the battery actually still works.  I can get around an hour out of it.
     
    The scary part?  I managed to kludge it online with an ethernet card, lightweight browser and a madcatz wireless access point.


  18. Like
    Strongit got a reaction from Consilium in Show off your old and retro computer parts   
    I'm using this old Tecra 740CDT to run some dos games and whatever Windows 98 games will run.  I was a bit surprised with the core speed reported by CPUZ since the specs list it as a Pentium 60.  I got it from the local police service who was throwing it out a couple years ago.  Needs a new floppy drive and I'm trying to source a cardbus USB card that works but other than that it's running pretty good.  4 GB hard drive, 2 GB compact flash I use for transferring files, 144 MB of memory and, believe it or not, the battery actually still works.  I can get around an hour out of it.
     
    The scary part?  I managed to kludge it online with an ethernet card, lightweight browser and a madcatz wireless access point.


  19. Like
    Strongit got a reaction from Gegger in Show off your old and retro computer parts   
    I'm using this old Tecra 740CDT to run some dos games and whatever Windows 98 games will run.  I was a bit surprised with the core speed reported by CPUZ since the specs list it as a Pentium 60.  I got it from the local police service who was throwing it out a couple years ago.  Needs a new floppy drive and I'm trying to source a cardbus USB card that works but other than that it's running pretty good.  4 GB hard drive, 2 GB compact flash I use for transferring files, 144 MB of memory and, believe it or not, the battery actually still works.  I can get around an hour out of it.
     
    The scary part?  I managed to kludge it online with an ethernet card, lightweight browser and a madcatz wireless access point.


  20. Agree
    Strongit got a reaction from Kilrah in Show off your old and retro computer parts   
    I'm using this old Tecra 740CDT to run some dos games and whatever Windows 98 games will run.  I was a bit surprised with the core speed reported by CPUZ since the specs list it as a Pentium 60.  I got it from the local police service who was throwing it out a couple years ago.  Needs a new floppy drive and I'm trying to source a cardbus USB card that works but other than that it's running pretty good.  4 GB hard drive, 2 GB compact flash I use for transferring files, 144 MB of memory and, believe it or not, the battery actually still works.  I can get around an hour out of it.
     
    The scary part?  I managed to kludge it online with an ethernet card, lightweight browser and a madcatz wireless access point.


  21. Agree
    Strongit reacted to kelvinhall05 in This guy has a PROBLEM - Tech Hoarders   
    is he selling stuff tho
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