![occ] The weight of history on forgotten machines --- agk's diary 11 July 2026 --- written on Dell Latitude D630 (2007) --- My old computer challenge is finished. * My daughter has a 2011 netbook edutainment system * and a CD player that works * My e-waste is nicely organized and ready for more * I found a home for the Motorola ES400 PDA * This Dell Latitude is awesome * HP Pavilion dv9700 works-ish but suxx * Found my old Olympus digital voice recorder Honestly, yesterday I got into the weeds, by which I mean the cables. Before OCC I scoured the closets and drawers of the house and brought every forlorn cable, device, and SD card out here, to the garage. You understand, I live in a humid subtropical rain- forest. Sweat is our constant summer companion, and mold stalks everything that's left in one place too long. Our house isn't "moldy." It's well-ventilated and occasionally air-conditioned, but stuff still must be wiped down from time to time. I keep laptop cables, odd dongles, usb cables, and various AC/DC wall worts in ziploc bags. Today I got every single one out, labeled its volts/amps, and wiped the cables down, before bagging them in new bags, in a more organized, consolidated way. We use this stuff I encountered in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina (2005), when mold was the city's primary resident, called "EM," some kind of micro-organisms that eat mold. Mix the concentrate with water in a mister, spray the cables, wipe down with a rag dampened with the stuff. The rubber's no longer musty and dusty. Dell Latitude D630 ------------------ I was looking for two particular power cables: for this machine, and for my spouse's old CD player. Found both. The power cable for this machine was wrapped in sketchy electrical tape when someone (can't remember its provenance) asked if I wanted it and I said yes. Turns out, under that tape the rubber had started to crack but the wires were not frayed. No imminent short risk. In the fridge was one last packet of Sugru, which is basically silicone caulk mixed with talc. It's moldable and hardens over 24 hours to a flexible silicone. It's too expensive, but I got 3 packets long ago, and the last one has now repaired this machine's charger cable. It's a Latitude, Dell's answer to the Thinkpad. I never turned it on before yesterday, but of course everything just works. The Core 2 Duo CPU @ 1.20- 2.20 GHz and 2GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM is fine for everything I do. The BIOS is flippin' awesome. I'm using FuguIta OpenBSD livesystem from a USB flash drive to write this in vi to sdf's public access NetBSD system, my normal workflow on the twelve year younger GPD MicroPC I usually use. This nearly twenty year old fren is a sweet ride. CD player --------- I promised my daughter I'd get the house phone working again before she starts kindergarten, so she can call the grandparents, her friends' houses, and us. I have a 7USD (cheap!) slimline phone and a Grandstream Handy-tone 286 to make it talk SIP. I used to use SDF's service, but wanted something more dependable. A friend suggested Callcentric, but enough about that. The point is, there's a record player in the garage and a radio in the kitchen, but there was no way for her to listen to the music she wants, independ- ently. I found this CD player in a closet, and found in the box of spaghetti (and wiped down) a power cable that makes it go. We cracked open the shoebox of CDs, and now she's a Tori Amos fan. Not an old computer, but I'm happy. She can check out CDs from the library, and I can rip and burn any she likes with this computer. When I said "rip and burn," she was alarmed, until I explained. Evy simplified further: "It means, copy." Motorola ES400 PDA ------------------ Jon Moller from Cincinnati gave me this thing in 2021 when we had an active correspondence. It should be cool. It's little, has a keyboard, runs Windows mobile, and he installed a bunch of MIDlets: gopher browser, SSH client, internet radio player, IRC client, etc. I've tried to like it, but I don't. Thanks to the OCC, it found a new home where it will be loved and cared for. Good news! HP Pavilion dv9700 "entertainment PC" laptop -------------------------------------------- This is a consumer laptop, not a business laptop like the lovely Latitude. Its BIOS sucks. Its fan comes on full speed and it turns into a space heater from the moment the BIOS or a DOS shell appears. It handles my SvarDOS-based writer's usb-dos fork, including the BabyType touch-typing tutor, SkyGlobe planetarium, Dyna2k international draughts, and the editors, word processors, and outliners (though you could cook an egg on it). It isn't good for edutainment. Graphics glitch in School-Mom Plus, one of the cooler programs. Animal Math runs through its intro song way too fast and freezes. I'll probably fool with it more, especial- ly if I learn how to get debugging info in FreeDOS. FUZOMA was a bust. My notes fail me. Either AntiX or FuguIta booted on it, but not both. FuguIta, I think. I think it may be crying for thermal paste. Which I don't have. Back on the shelf it goes, for now. The internet ------------ Now that I have machines and cables nicely organiz- ed, after OCC week I can keep working (much more slowly) on edutainment systems for kids in town whose parents expressed interest. These machines are offline by design, but I like SDF and my home BBS system (Community BBS, in Cleveland). I don't have ethernet running to my garage, and I don't care to fool with wireless cards, other than to strip them out of the machines. Instead, I have a GL-iNet 300m "Mango" mini router running OpenWrt that turns Wifi into ethernet for me. There are much older routers in the e-waste box that may do that for someone else. Ultimately, I have hopes of escaping commercial wireless networks entirely with a BBS system over LoRa in my town, with client USB livesystems. That's a task for another week. Olympus digital voice recorder WS-500M -------------------------------------- I'm guessing this thing was made in 2009. It was handed down to me when I was doing interviews in 2014, and it was awesome. It can record directly to MP3s, and has a built-in USB-A. Plug it in, it's mass storage. I was wondering if I still had it, because it's time to interview Kentucky Party candidates for public office for my 'zine. I found it! Now I can. Conclusion, the future, and a request ------------------------------------- I guess that's all. Creating for the OCC was so, so much fun. Often I plan to do things like this, but I don't know how, or I can't find something I need to do it, or I get stuck. There's like one person I can call, one person who lives in my town, and one person who runs my fav BBS, so three people I feel comfortable asking for help, and responses can take days or weeks. This has been like summer camp. I loved seeing other peoples' projects, hanging out on IRC, and the few helpful emails I got that helped me perse- vere until the HP Mini grew into what it is now. If we've been in touch, definitely let's stay in touch. I have some beat-up Dell latitudes, a Microsoft Surface, and some parts of two Toshiba netbooks, as well as the boxes I tried this week that need more troubleshooting to get into some shape where I can give them away. Friends have more e-waste to fill the shelf space when it appears. I have some work to do on the BBS system, I want to see if I can modify FUZOMA, and I want to make a DOS gaming livesystem. What can I do with the old routers to put them back into service as something someone wants and will treasure? I'll be working on this stuff more like once a week after OCC. Finally, I have a request for help. There's a computer that wants a new life but I don't know where to start, since I think the problem is firm- ware deep. I'm looking for ideas about things to try to resurrect it. Can you help me unbrick a Thinkpad? ----------------------------------- It's a Thinkpad X230 modified by the Insurgo people in Canada with with Coreboot, Qubes, and a LibremKey you need to put in to, I guess, unlock the bootload- er, mount /boot, and unencrypt everything? They call it a PrivacyBeast, which I really don't want to mean "disposable." I have the NitroKey, but a drop broke the screen four years ago. By the time I replaced it, I mis- placed the passphrase or typed it wrong too many times, or maybe something else went wrong. I don't care about the data on it or the old OS, I just want the hardware to work again, booting livesystems off removable media, or even booting something from a hard drive. There's a kid I want to give it to. I don't even know what information would be useful to someone who might want to help, but my email address is agk@sdf.org, so if that's you, you can ask. See y'all next year at OCC 2027. All our lil ol' guys'll be a year older! :)