Next on/. it'll be "Unicorns from Intel magically displace all PC's" or perhaps another annoying post or perhaps one of a million intentionally badly spelled bot generated emails that ends up in my gmail's spam filter selling "chaep druzz 4 yoou"
haha that reminds me of a media PC I had hooked to my 55" samsung crt bigscreen... the convergence boards in the TV blew every single year to the day in october, and the 2nd time around the tv repair guy blamed it on the media pc.... Still covered under our extended warranty though (One of the only extended warranties I will buy, as for a bigscreen tv they make sense) but as a result of that idiot I had to take my media PC off of it, and sure enough, one year later the convergence board still blew out sans PC.
I remember once leaving my NES on for a week straight trying to get to the end of the original super mario bros when I was a kid without using any warps, good times. I'm glad however that the wii one is getting a multiplayer, and I look forward to the level designs, I may actually have to buy a wii now instead of just fixing them for friends!
Computers promote piracy.. back before the internet, recording your programs on tape promoted piracy, then people selling blank floppy disks promoted piracy, then the original internet forums (bbs) were all about distributing software and therefore promoting piracy (at a blistering 300 bps if they were lucky) so then phone lines promoted piracy, then the internet happened, but a bigger deal (for piracy) was the fact CD burners showed up and...promoted piracy, I recall several organizations protesting the fact that burnable cd's would be compatible with manufactured ones, then a music sharing application made the internet viable to.. errr promote piracy easily, then the broadband revolution happened and..etc
there has always been piracy, there will be piracy for a long time after, and the only ones who will suffer because of it are paying customers, not form the pirates directly, but from tools implemented by the respected software manufacturers for preventing it (thus causing unhappy PAYING customers).
Seriously, why don't we just break down and say breathable air causes piracy while we are at it? it makes about as much sense, and removing all traces of it would cure piracy for good.... or at the very least would cure the problem of people caring about it (damn bots)
one problem with those 8 bit ide adaptors.... they have to use 16 bit IDE drives.... which makes them a pita.
I know I did get 32bit ide drives working on 286's with the help of a Y2k type replacement bios on an isa card made by SIIG... I got another one, perhaps I'll dust off my 5150 and see if it can use that (cheating I know, but trust me it's diffucult to find good working 16 bit ide drives that don't crap out).... also I am sorry, st/506 drives and controlers rll and mfm, although built tough are a bigger pita than 16 bit ide is... you can't just have a controller die and slap the drive on another controller.
^ to further elaborate on the DD 3 1/2 (720kb) option that I didn't mention, just don't go there, it's not a fun road to travel, stick with 5 1/4's if the option is between them and not a 1.44mb 3 1/2 drive.
Find out if your epson's got DD or HD 5 1/4 drives, and don't mix the two ever! a disk formatted with a HD drive will never work right with a DD drive again!
As far as images of disks and abandonware, google is your friend, I think you can *cough* still find images of boot disks for dos 5 and below just fine for the 5 1/4's (although there's nothing stopping you from running 6.22 on that machine)... The next thing you need to do is find out if you've got 360kb or 1.2mb floppy drives... Then find an older floppy cable that has the old edge style floppy connector and either pull one off the epson or find one elsewhere to attach to your PC and go into bios to see if it's an option (most likely 360kb). Then you'll need some blank 360k floppies.. I usually snag those at goodwills when I see them, but I am sure ebay is an option too..... if you want to go the 3 1/2 route though, find out if that sucker will support a 1.44mb drive, it's as easy as finding the drive, putting a newer style (or a double type) floppy cable in and setting it up...
HOWEVER if memory serves me, those epson's bios utility was on a floppy so your mileage may vary.
I personally like how it tells you straight up that you have to modify and hack up a stock 7800 though, especially the bit of 'and put it back together, if it's even possible' =D
lda #$7;lock in 7800 mode Was gonna say, there's a few codes listed in the dev kit that if given will "lock in" either 2600 mode or 7800 mode, pretty cool stuff...
Some of this code is pretty staggering, I can't even imagine the thought that went into the code of ms. pacman though, all machine language o_o
I'll go through all the games eventually just to see what was all done, some of it is elegant, some of it is trashy, and some I can't even figure out how it's supposed to work! old time hacks and bugs for the win I suppose!
I didn't say all overdrives! I was primarily thinking of the 486 socketed pentium overdrive, as well as the socket 4 pentium overdrive. I did not have a pleasant time with the 133mhz 486 overdrive either.
Then by that logic, this whole article is a massive 66%.66- failure, I thought it was using a different rubric than just number of products sold, as the following quotes demonstrate-
"IBM's original PowerPC platform never lived up to the hype. Even when Motorola and IBM processors populated Apple computers."
PPC chips have sold truckloads, this guy acts like the G5 was the first PPC chip ever made! I mean let's look at all the embedded systems it ended up in anyway, and I'm sorry, it's not like they sold only 2 macs with ppc chips in their lifetime (even if we just count G5's and ignore G4's, G3's, and 601-604's). Xbox, Gamecube, Wii, not even counting the cell that's in the PS3 because it was an evolution of a chip, several laserjet printers, several thin clients, routers, and other embedded devices are driven by ppc chips.
"It's not so much that Puma (aka Turion X2 Ultra coupled with ATI graphics) is a failure of epic proportions like Itanium, it's that the CPU component (separate from the ATI GPU component) fell so far short of the long, ballyhooed build-up it got."
So why the hell does the article mention it if this article supposedly called a chip (or platform) a flop just by numbers alone?
Now, if we were mentioning it by numbers, and specifically by numbers that didn't challenge the pc market, then the amd 2900 and intel i960, while both are excellent chips, never made it in a big way to the computer market as the main cpu driving things, would be called flops... not to mention the MIPS in the SGI boxes, the Sparc processors in SUN boxes, the Alpha procs in DEC and later compaq/hp boxes, all AS/400 cpu's, all which he doesn't call flops... Which is why I made the selections for "flop" processors I did. I thought he was looking at "failures of a processor/platform" which included how well the product worked or didn't, rather than just market penetration.
Therefore based on this failure of an article which you neglected to read or at least apply to the comment made, your slashdot comment fails by 100%. However since you are living in your own world, that math doesn't apply, in which case the article fails by 66% by your math, which means your comment fails by 33% in your world, which is considered failing in many finer parts of the world.
I actually built a 4x4 rig for my cousin with 2 fx72's and a asus 'quadfather' motherboard, fwiw, it's been rock solid stable and still is pretty quick.
AC how could you have forgotten to mention the socket 4 Pentiums, or the K5 on AMD's side, the Transmetta Caruso, the Cyrix MII, or the slot 1 PIII 1.13?? From the extraordinary cost alone, you could have also called most of the intel overdrives a flop too.
although the winchip (shudders) I hope no one was unlucky enough to have to depend on a box with one of those running it
(works up an old man's voice) When you pry them from my cold, dead hands!
All that's left to see is how reliable it ends up being, and what outside forces can cause a data change and how easily. Flash is only now starting to approach the reliability that it was advertised to have inherently when it was developed, so sorry for being a stick-in-the-mud.
Yeah I am on tekscopes, but I haven't needed to go there for advice in a quite a very long while. (I just love how all my questions were pretty much answered there). I also printed the manuals for my scopes via B.A.M.A and have the original one for my 535. (oh yeah, my 547 has a 4dig serial, I've always thought that was cool(#008103)
Yeah I see your point on the teks, I should have picked something else that's a bit more realistic as far as build quality is concerned.. I still have my columbia data mpc1600 going, as well as a taiwanese xt rip-off, many appleIIc's, my mac 512K, a couple of mac plus's, my cobbled-together but still working 286(that box gives me a new problem every year), and a amd 386 that's never let me down. I try to keep at least one pc of each generation running, so I'll see how I do in the next 50 years as well, but then again this is with constant tending. I think the greatest thing he'll have to face is the 'lytic capacitors on the mobo and in the psu as long as he removes the cmos backup battery, and if they survive ok and he documents that it might need new caps, breathing life into it shouldn't be that bad, even 50 years on... as long as his still is mostly lead based solder, there's a good amount of data for it, if it's not though, then he might have issues later on...
speaking of which I need to source some tunnel-diodes for my teks before those go bad ^_^
I still have my tek 535 and 547 'scopes, which still work as well as they did the day they were manufactured, despite being over twice as old as I am. I am surprised by all the nay-sayers here on/. myself actually. I collect old computers and enjoy seeing a totally different view on how things were, and in quite a few cases, how they should be today but aren't. There's nothing in this world like flipping on my appleII, which I bet if I put in a case would work perfectly in the next 50 years, and coding up an old applebasic program, or running an old game, which I still haven't beaten yet. Computing has progressed a very very huge amount in very little time, and it will be very cool, even if it doesn't end up working without some work, for a future generation to see what caves we lived in before what they produced took over... Just throwing away something we have today just because it might not work later, or there would be better things around anyway is not a good basis for improving humanity. We need reminders, like the trs-80, b-reactor at the hanford site, the saturn V rocket, the Colussus at bechelli park, old television sets, and yes, todays' pc, to remind us of things we done and how we did them so we can once again progress.
For long time storage, I would suggest taking apart the entire system and giving it a good cleaning to remove any dust, Also inspect all electrolytic capacitors for any leakage or damage, you don't want an out-of-box experience to have to include replacing all the capacitors (although it may end up needing it anyway) This will obviously include voiding the warranty on the power supply to clean it out properly (be careful of the capacitors inside as they could hold a deadly charge, even after 15 minutes if the internal resistors don't work correctly) and inspect it. You should remove things like the CMOS battery, usually a button lithium cr2032, which would leak and destroy circuits on the motherboard, or at least go dead, and you should also pack some spare parts and components with it (at least a spare motherboard, ram, cpu, power supply, optical drive, spare fans, expansion cards, etc) , along with the documentation for them, which might not be available then. Pack at least 2 hard drives, pre-loaded with all the software you want them to see, including iso's of the discs that you will include, as you don't know how long the cdrom/dvd media will actually last.. you might want to include a fully bootable flash drive or two with the software and os as well. Include a complete listing of the bios settings for when they do have to put a battery in... if you can, make a written writing with all the electrolytic capacitors values and voltages, as that might come in handy for later. Include as many operating systems as is possible, to give a flavor of what pc's used to be like and what used to run on them, make sure all the licensing information is both in paper and digital form for any piece of commercial software, as they may need it to run the software, even if the companies who made it are long out of business by then. if the pc uses a standard db15 for vga, you should leave a crt and a lcd if possible, and if it uses a dvi connection you should also leave a DVI-DB15 adapter. Make as many video output options as you can available in case things have changed.... Include a nice strong keyboard (like an old IBM Model M) along with a couple of the other keyboards you have (use different models and brands if possible), as the rubber membrane keyboards will likely not age very well. Include a ball and a optical mouse for snickers, and possibly a document on how each works...
Of my years of collecting old pc's, that's what I've always wished was done for me! =)
I love my model M's, For desktop use I use them exclusively. When I know I will be doing a good amount of typing on my laptop, I'll bring along a smaller (although less sturdy) IBM model M2. Since the last laptop bought that had a ps/2 port was in 2001, I've had to invest in usb to ps/2 adapters to continue using the beast. I noticed 1/2 of the ones I get can't even power a model M2, much less an old model M, it really irritates me! I also like my keyboard to double as a good weapon if necessary, which is probably why I also like 4D mag-lights.
Keep your IBM's going, you won't find a better keyboard for cheaper (often found for $3 or under at thrift stores), and I argue at all. (although I do also like my old WANG keyswitch keybords, my AppleIIgs's keyboards, and the first apple extended keyboard a heck of alot too). The keys of the IBM, no matter how bad or built up with grime they've gotten, can be cleaned with rubbing alcohol from my experience. I cannot say that the suggestion to "clean 'em in a dishwasher" is a good one, unless you want to turn it the keyboard into one which uses a bucking rusty spring mechanism. =)
Out of curiosity, does anyone sell a modular cable for the model M (not including the ones that are directly wired) that goes straight from the keyboard to usb? (This question is sort of two fold, as many of my old ps/2 cables are missing one or both oft their retention lugs), also is there a special nut driver to take it apart? none of the sockets or tools I own that fit the nut will even fit in the hole!
Slashdot Mirror
In other news Nerd Rage is a good bypass for the preview button.
(*why us this = why is this, )
Next on /. it'll be "Unicorns from Intel magically displace all PC's" or perhaps another annoying post
or perhaps one of a million intentionally badly spelled bot generated emails that ends up in my gmail's spam filter selling "chaep druzz 4 yoou"
Seriously why us this /. material?!
haha that reminds me of a media PC I had hooked to my 55" samsung crt bigscreen... the convergence boards in the TV blew every single year to the day in october, and the 2nd time around the tv repair guy blamed it on the media pc.... Still covered under our extended warranty though (One of the only extended warranties I will buy, as for a bigscreen tv they make sense) but as a result of that idiot I had to take my media PC off of it, and sure enough, one year later the convergence board still blew out sans PC.
I remember once leaving my NES on for a week straight trying to get to the end of the original super mario bros when I was a kid without using any warps, good times.
I'm glad however that the wii one is getting a multiplayer, and I look forward to the level designs, I may actually have to buy a wii now instead of just fixing them for friends!
Computers promote piracy.. back before the internet, recording your programs on tape promoted piracy, then people selling blank floppy disks promoted piracy, then the original internet forums (bbs) were all about distributing software and therefore promoting piracy (at a blistering 300 bps if they were lucky) so then phone lines promoted piracy, then the internet happened, but a bigger deal (for piracy) was the fact CD burners showed up and...promoted piracy, I recall several organizations protesting the fact that burnable cd's would be compatible with manufactured ones, then a music sharing application made the internet viable to.. errr promote piracy easily, then the broadband revolution happened and ..etc
there has always been piracy, there will be piracy for a long time after, and the only ones who will suffer because of it are paying customers, not form the pirates directly, but from tools implemented by the respected software manufacturers for preventing it (thus causing unhappy PAYING customers).
Seriously, why don't we just break down and say breathable air causes piracy while we are at it? it makes about as much sense, and removing all traces of it would cure piracy for good.... or at the very least would cure the problem of people caring about it (damn bots)
I initially read "Nasa has lost the moon tapes" /. article'
and I was thinking, 'didn't they just find them????' and 'not another old regurgitated
thankfully I read it wrong, I can't wait to see what I never got to see broadcasted live in the first place!
one problem with those 8 bit ide adaptors.... they have to use 16 bit IDE drives.... which makes them a pita.
I know I did get 32bit ide drives working on 286's with the help of a Y2k type replacement bios on an isa card made by SIIG... I got another one, perhaps I'll dust off my 5150 and see if it can use that (cheating I know, but trust me it's diffucult to find good working 16 bit ide drives that don't crap out).... also I am sorry, st/506 drives and controlers rll and mfm, although built tough are a bigger pita than 16 bit ide is... you can't just have a controller die and slap the drive on another controller.
^ to further elaborate on the DD 3 1/2 (720kb) option that I didn't mention, just don't go there, it's not a fun road to travel, stick with 5 1/4's if the option is between them and not a 1.44mb 3 1/2 drive.
Find out if your epson's got DD or HD 5 1/4 drives, and don't mix the two ever! a disk formatted with a HD drive will never work right with a DD drive again!
As far as images of disks and abandonware, google is your friend, I think you can *cough* still find images of boot disks for dos 5 and below just fine for the 5 1/4's (although there's nothing stopping you from running 6.22 on that machine)... The next thing you need to do is find out if you've got 360kb or 1.2mb floppy drives... Then find an older floppy cable that has the old edge style floppy connector and either pull one off the epson or find one elsewhere to attach to your PC and go into bios to see if it's an option (most likely 360kb). Then you'll need some blank 360k floppies.. I usually snag those at goodwills when I see them, but I am sure ebay is an option too..... if you want to go the 3 1/2 route though, find out if that sucker will support a 1.44mb drive, it's as easy as finding the drive, putting a newer style (or a double type) floppy cable in and setting it up...
HOWEVER if memory serves me, those epson's bios utility was on a floppy so your mileage may vary.
I personally like how it tells you straight up that you have to modify and hack up a stock 7800 though, especially the bit of 'and put it back together, if it's even possible' =D
lda #$7 ;lock in 7800 mode
Was gonna say, there's a few codes listed in the dev kit that if given will "lock in" either 2600 mode or 7800 mode, pretty cool stuff...
Some of this code is pretty staggering, I can't even imagine the thought that went into the code of ms. pacman though, all machine language o_o
I'll go through all the games eventually just to see what was all done, some of it is elegant, some of it is trashy, and some I can't even figure out how it's supposed to work! old time hacks and bugs for the win I suppose!
fwiw before updating today(!) I had firefox opened up for 3 weeks straight.. on xp(still running sp1 on this box because I never reboot) no less!
I didn't say all overdrives!
I was primarily thinking of the 486 socketed pentium overdrive, as well as the socket 4 pentium overdrive. I did not have a pleasant time with the 133mhz 486 overdrive either.
Then by that logic, this whole article is a massive 66%.66- failure, I thought it was using a different rubric than just number of products sold, as the following quotes demonstrate-
"IBM's original PowerPC platform never lived up to the hype. Even when Motorola and IBM processors populated Apple computers."
PPC chips have sold truckloads, this guy acts like the G5 was the first PPC chip ever made! I mean let's look at all the embedded systems it ended up in anyway, and I'm sorry, it's not like they sold only 2 macs with ppc chips in their lifetime (even if we just count G5's and ignore G4's, G3's, and 601-604's). Xbox, Gamecube, Wii, not even counting the cell that's in the PS3 because it was an evolution of a chip, several laserjet printers, several thin clients, routers, and other embedded devices are driven by ppc chips.
"It's not so much that Puma (aka Turion X2 Ultra coupled with ATI graphics) is a failure of epic proportions like Itanium, it's that the CPU component (separate from the ATI GPU component) fell so far short of the long, ballyhooed build-up it got."
So why the hell does the article mention it if this article supposedly called a chip (or platform) a flop just by numbers alone?
Now, if we were mentioning it by numbers, and specifically by numbers that didn't challenge the pc market, then the amd 2900 and intel i960, while both are excellent chips, never made it in a big way to the computer market as the main cpu driving things, would be called flops... not to mention the MIPS in the SGI boxes, the Sparc processors in SUN boxes, the Alpha procs in DEC and later compaq/hp boxes, all AS/400 cpu's, all which he doesn't call flops... Which is why I made the selections for "flop" processors I did. I thought he was looking at "failures of a processor/platform" which included how well the product worked or didn't, rather than just market penetration.
Therefore based on this failure of an article which you neglected to read or at least apply to the comment made, your slashdot comment fails by 100%. However since you are living in your own world, that math doesn't apply, in which case the article fails by 66% by your math, which means your comment fails by 33% in your world, which is considered failing in many finer parts of the world.
I actually built a 4x4 rig for my cousin with 2 fx72's and a asus 'quadfather' motherboard,
fwiw, it's been rock solid stable and still is pretty quick.
AC how could you have forgotten to mention the socket 4 Pentiums, or the K5 on AMD's side, the Transmetta Caruso, the Cyrix MII, or the slot 1 PIII 1.13?? From the extraordinary cost alone, you could have also called most of the intel overdrives a flop too.
although the winchip (shudders) I hope no one was unlucky enough to have to depend on a box with one of those running it
At one of the places I worked we also included "Baked" in the list of possible server conditions (usually signifying a corrupted database file).
Don't forget about your classic full system failure lines like FUBAR and SNAFU, which would have also been good descriptions.
--
kernel: lp0 on fire
(works up an old man's voice)
When you pry them from my cold, dead hands!
All that's left to see is how reliable it ends up being, and what outside forces can cause a data change and how easily.
Flash is only now starting to approach the reliability that it was advertised to have inherently when it was developed, so sorry for being a stick-in-the-mud.
Yeah I am on tekscopes, but I haven't needed to go there for advice in a quite a very long while. (I just love how all my questions were pretty much answered there). I also printed the manuals for my scopes via B.A.M.A and have the original one for my 535. (oh yeah, my 547 has a 4dig serial, I've always thought that was cool(#008103)
Yeah I see your point on the teks, I should have picked something else that's a bit more realistic as far as build quality is concerned.. I still have my columbia data mpc1600 going, as well as a taiwanese xt rip-off, many appleIIc's, my mac 512K, a couple of mac plus's, my cobbled-together but still working 286(that box gives me a new problem every year), and a amd 386 that's never let me down. I try to keep at least one pc of each generation running, so I'll see how I do in the next 50 years as well, but then again this is with constant tending. I think the greatest thing he'll have to face is the 'lytic capacitors on the mobo and in the psu as long as he removes the cmos backup battery, and if they survive ok and he documents that it might need new caps, breathing life into it shouldn't be that bad, even 50 years on... as long as his still is mostly lead based solder, there's a good amount of data for it, if it's not though, then he might have issues later on...
speaking of which I need to source some tunnel-diodes for my teks before those go bad ^_^
I still have my tek 535 and 547 'scopes, which still work as well as they did the day they were manufactured, despite being over twice as old as I am. I am surprised by all the nay-sayers here on /. myself actually. I collect old computers and enjoy seeing a totally different view on how things were, and in quite a few cases, how they should be today but aren't. There's nothing in this world like flipping on my appleII, which I bet if I put in a case would work perfectly in the next 50 years, and coding up an old applebasic program, or running an old game, which I still haven't beaten yet. Computing has progressed a very very huge amount in very little time, and it will be very cool, even if it doesn't end up working without some work, for a future generation to see what caves we lived in before what they produced took over...
Just throwing away something we have today just because it might not work later, or there would be better things around anyway is not a good basis for improving humanity. We need reminders, like the trs-80, b-reactor at the hanford site, the saturn V rocket, the Colussus at bechelli park, old television sets, and yes, todays' pc, to remind us of things we done and how we did them so we can once again progress.
I wouldn't want to bury a lithium ion battery with the possibility of moisture getting in, would you??
For long time storage, I would suggest taking apart the entire system and giving it a good cleaning to remove any dust, Also inspect all electrolytic capacitors for any leakage or damage, you don't want an out-of-box experience to have to include replacing all the capacitors (although it may end up needing it anyway) This will obviously include voiding the warranty on the power supply to clean it out properly (be careful of the capacitors inside as they could hold a deadly charge, even after 15 minutes if the internal resistors don't work correctly) and inspect it. You should remove things like the CMOS battery, usually a button lithium cr2032, which would leak and destroy circuits on the motherboard, or at least go dead, and you should also pack some spare parts and components with it (at least a spare motherboard, ram, cpu, power supply, optical drive, spare fans, expansion cards, etc) , along with the documentation for them, which might not be available then. Pack at least 2 hard drives, pre-loaded with all the software you want them to see, including iso's of the discs that you will include, as you don't know how long the cdrom/dvd media will actually last.. you might want to include a fully bootable flash drive or two with the software and os as well. Include a complete listing of the bios settings for when they do have to put a battery in... if you can, make a written writing with all the electrolytic capacitors values and voltages, as that might come in handy for later. Include as many operating systems as is possible, to give a flavor of what pc's used to be like and what used to run on them, make sure all the licensing information is both in paper and digital form for any piece of commercial software, as they may need it to run the software, even if the companies who made it are long out of business by then. if the pc uses a standard db15 for vga, you should leave a crt and a lcd if possible, and if it uses a dvi connection you should also leave a DVI-DB15 adapter. Make as many video output options as you can available in case things have changed....
Include a nice strong keyboard (like an old IBM Model M) along with a couple of the other keyboards you have (use different models and brands if possible), as the rubber membrane keyboards will likely not age very well. Include a ball and a optical mouse for snickers, and possibly a document on how each works...
Of my years of collecting old pc's, that's what I've always wished was done for me! =)
typed on a laptop keyboard, hence the errors!
I love my model M's, For desktop use I use them exclusively. When I know I will be doing a good amount of typing on my laptop, I'll bring along a smaller (although less sturdy) IBM model M2. Since the last laptop bought that had a ps/2 port was in 2001, I've had to invest in usb to ps/2 adapters to continue using the beast. I noticed 1/2 of the ones I get can't even power a model M2, much less an old model M, it really irritates me! I also like my keyboard to double as a good weapon if necessary, which is probably why I also like 4D mag-lights.
Keep your IBM's going, you won't find a better keyboard for cheaper (often found for $3 or under at thrift stores), and I argue at all. (although I do also like my old WANG keyswitch keybords, my AppleIIgs's keyboards, and the first apple extended keyboard a heck of alot too). The keys of the IBM, no matter how bad or built up with grime they've gotten, can be cleaned with rubbing alcohol from my experience. I cannot say that the suggestion to "clean 'em in a dishwasher" is a good one, unless you want to turn it the keyboard into one which uses a bucking rusty spring mechanism. =)
Out of curiosity, does anyone sell a modular cable for the model M (not including the ones that are directly wired) that goes straight from the keyboard to usb? (This question is sort of two fold, as many of my old ps/2 cables are missing one or both oft their retention lugs), also is there a special nut driver to take it apart? none of the sockets or tools I own that fit the nut will even fit in the hole!