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[feelotraveller]

and the people who handle the risk are asleep at the wheel.

Then the obvious solution to this is more self-driving cars!!!

Tay² for President!

[alway]

Good news: A solution to insecure IoT devices has been found: https://security.radware.com/ddos-threats-attacks/brickerbot-pdos-permanent-denial-of-service/

A pair of botnets was seen in the wild hacking into devices in a similar manner to the Mirai DDOS botnet that brought down a large portion of the web a few months back. When they gained access, they then ran commands which deleted and corrupted their drives, broke their internet connectivity, and set the maximum number of threads the device could run to 1. Effectively bricking them.

[Sergarr]

A virus method of patching? Sounds weirdly familiar...

[martinuzz]

Good news: A solution to insecure IoT devices has been found: https://security.radware.com/ddos-threats-attacks/brickerbot-pdos-permanent-denial-of-service/

A pair of botnets was seen in the wild hacking into devices in a similar manner to the Mirai DDOS botnet that brought down a large portion of the web a few months back. When they gained access, they then ran commands which deleted and corrupted their drives, broke their internet connectivity, and set the maximum number of threads the device could run to 1. Effectively bricking them.

Hah!

[Max™]

A virus method of patching? Sounds weirdly familiar...

Like having computer troubles and installing an old version of windows?

Hah, I don't actually know shit about windows anymore, last bit of involvement I had was helping a friend of the mother-in-law who had a seemingly mid-death laptop so I just tossed the harddrive in an old netbook we had and told her to grab her files and stuff off using that.

Is "Tech Archaeologist" a job description yet?

[wierd]

1960s tech almost qualifies as authentic antique now... Give it a little more time.

Now, how good are you REALLY with vintage stuff?  Can you configure an IBM XT to use an 8bit trident ISA VGA card?

[Starver]

Now, how good are you REALLY with vintage stuff?  Can you configure an IBM XT to use an 8bit trident ISA VGA card?

I'll stick with my Hercules, cheers...

[martinuzz]

Don't bother with 256 colors VGA on an XT. It only became viable on a 80286 AT. EGA was a good choice for  XT if you wanted colors. Much better than CGA, although it can't beat Hercules.

[TheBiggerFish]

A virus method of patching? Sounds weirdly familiar...

Like having computer troubles and installing an old version of windows?

Hah, I don't actually know shit about windows anymore, last bit of involvement I had was helping a friend of the mother-in-law who had a seemingly mid-death laptop so I just tossed the harddrive in an old netbook we had and told her to grab her files and stuff off using that.

Is "Tech Archaeologist" a job description yet?

I believe it's "Legacy systems specialist" so far.

[Max™]

1960s tech almost qualifies as authentic antique now... Give it a little more time.

Now, how good are you REALLY with vintage stuff?  Can you configure an IBM XT to use an 8bit trident ISA VGA card?

I can take apart and put back together anything I've encountered, ranging from a Ford 302 V8 to pocket watches, pellet guns, and various desktop and laptop computers. I was oddly proud of figuring out when a branch hit the window AC and chipped one of the fan blades (whrROWwhrROWwhrROW) the reason I hate to throw out useful parts became clear to everyone else since I was able to yank out the damaged fan and swap in the intact one from the old unit I kept in the attic, though I had to use the clip from a desk fan to secure it (and only knew it would fit because I had to salvage bearings from that fan to repair a broken reciprocating mechanism with GODDAMN PLASTIC GEAR TEETH BLKJHLKJSDF) but it works properly now. It turns out being a legendary +5 jury-rigger is also handy when trying to do silly shit with raws and scripts. If it can't be clamped, shimmed, repurposed, or overhauled... it's probably a lump of jelly.

I can see there being an ever greater need for stuff like knowing which systems have the right harnesses and cables and mounts to hook up an old obscure hard drive long enough to transfer data to a newer medium, along with the relevant methods to accomplish said transfers from access to preservation and so on, though it feels like it's all obvious stuff... I guess maybe it isn't?

[martinuzz]

You were either lucky, or you checked before putting in the old fan, that it used the same voltage. A mate of mine once literally fried his computer by putting in an incompatible fan. The dumbass 

[Max™]

Oh no, I didn't have to replace the entire motor housing, I woulda just rebuilt the old one if I had to go that far, I mean the actual blade assembly is on a shaft and usually has various balancing/securing mechanisms involved so it's pretty hit and miss if two different brand units will have swappable parts, but desk fans are a treasure trove of similarly sized pieces. When I screw around with electricity, especially anything involving several kilograms of motor, I make sure to do a bit of digging around online to nail down exactly what the bits are. It helps that the vast majority of "different" brands are actually using the same parts for all sorts of components until you get up into major mechanical hardware and actually get stuff where it's cheaper for a company to develop something/make it themselves/get it custom made instead of pulling from the bins of [PARTS_SUPPLIER:37] or whatnot.

[Starver]

A computer (that I still use, maybe 15 years after this incident) had its CPU fan break. Blades, as an edge-connected whole, disconnected from the centre spindle (or vice-versa, I suppose) , so that it whirred up in a fruitless attempt to deal with the rising temperature alongside no airflow. Luckily enough, it was while I was there, and I heard it happen (the snap and the rising whir of the spindle).  A quick trip to Maplin (RS equiv.) later, it was replaced, pretty much no fuss as it wasn't much more than the generic fan of <xx> millimetres without any fancy proprietariness.

Then, quite soon after, the PSU fan gave up (can't remember how I found out), it might even have been the same day... Hard to tell if it was independently failing or a domino effect (wrong way round for the obvious knock-on). And I opened that up (taking care of possible residual mains-magnitude voltages from some of the pots) to find that I was in luck, in that it was a generic fan of <yy> millimetres that needed replacing (again, not proprietary). Another trip to the store got the bit, and they've been running since then, exceeding the original empirically-determined MTF by at least 50%!

[wierd]

Don't bother with 256 colors VGA on an XT. It only became viable on a 80286 AT. EGA was a good choice for  XT if you wanted colors. Much better than CGA, although it can't beat Hercules.

Nopey nope! VGA cards of that era have EGA and Hercules emulation in them, which is why they always consume A000-B7FF. You configure the XTs bios to "EGA present" with the dipswitch block, and that 8bit VGA will turn right on. Several games from that era will even paint VGA graphics on an XT, and not rely on EGA emulation.

This is useful if you want to play an authentic system, but cannot source a vintage monitor.

[Jopax]

Nothing specific, but a rather neat talk on the possibilities and where they might go in regards to the tech used in developing art assets for games