In line with that AC says above, old viruses were much worse that todays 'malware' trend. This one reminds me of a script my sister ran off IRC on her system, which replaced all pictures on C: drive with a text string. Today, they use up a bit of your bandwidth and hunt out your credit card numbers or whatever, slowing your system down. However, many of the old boot-sector viruses would make a system unbootable, routinely erasing or replaced data.
There were no 'good old days' when it comes to idiots playing with code.
I have a picture from my highschool days, Trenton AFB in Ontario, of the 'urinal' in C-130 Hercules. The airmen told us similar stories of missing and rotting out the frame beneath. Urban legend? Seems plausible, would google it out but at work.:)
Co-relatedly, I have a paperback from the 70's (it's called "Computers".. and is blue). The introduction quotes the processing speed of our brain at 3mhz. Zip-zip-zip!
Of course, for so complex a measure, I'd want to know methodology before accepting this value.
Zinc is one solution, aluminum is a valid alternative - but there is also impressed current, often used on aluminum hulled vessels (as zinc is essentially useless for them). No worries, the ships are safe!
A bit off-topic, but I have a small collection of 'choice' Inter-Action magazines from Sierra. One gives the MPC1/MPC2 specifications (minimum requirements for multimedia PC's: i.e., a 1x CD-ROM drive and soundblaster card.
What reminded me of this in your post is a particular article recommending quad speed CD-ROM drives as future-proof, as they could feed an MPEG2/4 decoder card fast enough for full-screen video, 'the most anybody will ever need'.
As an adium, the control bars are typically persistent, usually with bright colours (white lettering, or white background).. not the best thing to pipe through to plasma sets.
Advert's are insane, watching TV live is near impossible. Here's a gem from yesterdays / today's 'Days of our Lives'..
"Inside, we have the least subtle product placement ad in the history of TV. Morgan gets cramps. Stephanie whips out her box of Midol and goes on and on about how it will relieve her cramps, her backache and cure all her ills." source: http://www.prevuze.blogspot.com/
A little OT, but in the same sort of ghetto-vein as "two tins on a string", a 9v bat. in series with two phones allows voice communications. No ring or anything, obviously. But it works.
The best bet is probably just to allow it to gracefully degrade. However, if a revival is to be attempted: If it's slow and shutting down, it's probably just dust (assuming good software practices).
Disassemble it, blow the dust off everything, remove the heatsink from the CPU for thoroughness, and make sure you get inbetween all copper fins. If there's little dust, or just proactively, toss a drop of sewing machine (light machine) oil into the fans ~ there will be a little circle, probably under a sticker, that can be pryed off.
If the system is mechanically well, the next most likely canidate is the hard drive. Check the S.M.A.R.T. log for failures.. a new hard drive can do wonders for a system under an I/O bottleneck: 4200rpm drives are disasters.
Beyond these measures, most anything else is going to cost more than it's worth. I take in old laptops (mostly bricked) for repair and distribution to those less fortunate in the neighbourhood. There are a lot of "excess" laptops around, that can be had for less than $200CAD or so, often free. I currently get 1/3 upto a usable state, though often this means soldering (power connectors and voltage regulators have a tendency to break from the PCB).
(I'm on 2007 T60. After removing most of the 'thinkvantage' stuff, I can understand one's affection for thinkpads!)
Having run Gentoo for years on a whack of systems, and being a student who has spend a few summers working away... Gentoo is more a case where you'd better 'emerge -u world' semi-regularly; old versions lose their ebuilds, circular dependencies, blocking packages.. it's a ball to wait even 4 months!
Slashdot Mirror
In line with that AC says above, old viruses were much worse that todays 'malware' trend. This one reminds me of a script my sister ran off IRC on her system, which replaced all pictures on C: drive with a text string. Today, they use up a bit of your bandwidth and hunt out your credit card numbers or whatever, slowing your system down. However, many of the old boot-sector viruses would make a system unbootable, routinely erasing or replaced data.
There were no 'good old days' when it comes to idiots playing with code.
I have a picture from my highschool days, Trenton AFB in Ontario, of the 'urinal' in C-130 Hercules. The airmen told us similar stories of missing and rotting out the frame beneath. Urban legend? Seems plausible, would google it out but at work. :)
Co-relatedly, I have a paperback from the 70's (it's called "Computers".. and is blue). The introduction quotes the processing speed of our brain at 3mhz. Zip-zip-zip! Of course, for so complex a measure, I'd want to know methodology before accepting this value.
Zinc is one solution, aluminum is a valid alternative - but there is also impressed current, often used on aluminum hulled vessels (as zinc is essentially useless for them). No worries, the ships are safe!
A bit off-topic, but I have a small collection of 'choice' Inter-Action magazines from Sierra. One gives the MPC1/MPC2 specifications (minimum requirements for multimedia PC's: i.e., a 1x CD-ROM drive and soundblaster card.
What reminded me of this in your post is a particular article recommending quad speed CD-ROM drives as future-proof, as they could feed an MPEG2/4 decoder card fast enough for full-screen video, 'the most anybody will ever need'.
As an adium, the control bars are typically persistent, usually with bright colours (white lettering, or white background).. not the best thing to pipe through to plasma sets.
A little OT, but in the same sort of ghetto-vein as "two tins on a string", a 9v bat. in series with two phones allows voice communications. No ring or anything, obviously. But it works.
The best bet is probably just to allow it to gracefully degrade. However, if a revival is to be attempted: If it's slow and shutting down, it's probably just dust (assuming good software practices).
Disassemble it, blow the dust off everything, remove the heatsink from the CPU for thoroughness, and make sure you get inbetween all copper fins. If there's little dust, or just proactively, toss a drop of sewing machine (light machine) oil into the fans ~ there will be a little circle, probably under a sticker, that can be pryed off.
If the system is mechanically well, the next most likely canidate is the hard drive. Check the S.M.A.R.T. log for failures.. a new hard drive can do wonders for a system under an I/O bottleneck: 4200rpm drives are disasters.
Beyond these measures, most anything else is going to cost more than it's worth. I take in old laptops (mostly bricked) for repair and distribution to those less fortunate in the neighbourhood. There are a lot of "excess" laptops around, that can be had for less than $200CAD or so, often free. I currently get 1/3 upto a usable state, though often this means soldering (power connectors and voltage regulators have a tendency to break from the PCB).
(I'm on 2007 T60. After removing most of the 'thinkvantage' stuff, I can understand one's affection for thinkpads!)
Having run Gentoo for years on a whack of systems, and being a student who has spend a few summers working away... Gentoo is more a case where you'd better 'emerge -u world' semi-regularly; old versions lose their ebuilds, circular dependencies, blocking packages.. it's a ball to wait even 4 months!
Commmeeeoonnn IPV6! Why are the media rogues benefitting most from multicasting? :P