This is the USB modem I purchased about 5 months before the lightning strike. It was plugged into a rear USB port and had the phone line connected. All I use it for is an occasional FAX as phone modems are so obsolete, they are not installed in computers any longer. It was still hot to the touch hours after the strike. The circled areas are the burned components . The component board sets on...
Continue reading...Computer/Software
Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me
Just like the Hee-Haw song, “If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.” I wrote a few entries back that I had to replace the 500 Gig hard drive in my lightning struck main computer. Not so bad at about $70.00. The new drive was an OEM version so a good price. Well, that NEW drive just failed. Yes, still under warranty but I had to schlep all the way back...
Continue reading...More Cubes, More HP, But Why?
The computer rebuild is over. The old box now contains a new AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2 GHz Socket AM3 Quad-core microprocessor. Wow, that’s a mouthful. What it means is it is state of the art (SOTA) for about a week or so… and impressive to computer geeks. The amazing part of the rebuild (required because of the lightning damage) is the $650 cost is far less than the cost of...
Continue reading...Quiet, I’m Tapeing
I had a very learning experience weekend. I decided to do some conversion of VHS movie video to DVD format. All perfectly legal as the tapes were very old wedding tapes in need of preservation in a more stable digital format. A client asked me to do these so they were not done just for personal satisfaction. As it turned out it was a great how-to and equipment selection learning experience. I trans-coded three tapes....
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