1 00:00:09,876 --> 00:00:10,543 Welcome to 2 00:00:10,543 --> 00:00:14,214 User Friendly 2.0 with host Bill Sikkens. 3 00:00:14,280 --> 00:00:17,250 Technology architect. 4 00:00:21,955 --> 00:00:23,823 And this is User Friendly 2.0! 5 00:00:23,823 --> 00:00:25,191 I am your host Bill Sikkens. 6 00:00:25,191 --> 00:00:26,226 Joining me Bill, Gretchen. 7 00:00:26,226 --> 00:00:29,229 Welcome to this week's show. Hello there. 8 00:00:29,763 --> 00:00:32,132 So we've got to start out with some sad news. 9 00:00:32,132 --> 00:00:36,036 I'm afraid today because we've lost two of the greats and entertainment. 10 00:00:36,269 --> 00:00:39,706 And both passed away at the age of 80. 11 00:00:39,739 --> 00:00:42,909 First one is the legendary Dolly Parton. 12 00:00:42,909 --> 00:00:45,545 Dolly Parton has died at the age of 80. 13 00:00:45,545 --> 00:00:47,147 She died Tuesday in Nashville, 14 00:00:47,147 --> 00:00:50,984 following what her representatives described as a brief battle with cancer. 15 00:00:51,317 --> 00:00:55,655 Born in rural Tennessee in 1946, Dolly Parton rose from a childhood of poverty 16 00:00:55,655 --> 00:00:57,590 in the Smoky Mountains to become one of the most 17 00:00:57,590 --> 00:00:59,959 recognizable entertainers in the world. 18 00:00:59,959 --> 00:01:01,428 And while we think of her as a 19 00:01:01,428 --> 00:01:05,732 country music legend, country star really just doesn't begin to cover it. 20 00:01:05,899 --> 00:01:09,702 She wrote classics including Jolene, Code of Many Colors, 9 to 5, 21 00:01:09,702 --> 00:01:11,638 and I Will Always Love You. 22 00:01:11,638 --> 00:01:15,175 She became a successful actress, appearing in films including 9 to 5, 23 00:01:15,241 --> 00:01:17,343 The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and Steel. 24 00:01:18,611 --> 00:01:21,748 She was also a remarkably successful business 25 00:01:21,748 --> 00:01:25,752 woman whose name became synonymous with Dollywood. 26 00:01:25,752 --> 00:01:28,254 But one of Dolly Parton's greatest legacies 27 00:01:28,254 --> 00:01:30,123 may have happened away from the stage. 28 00:01:30,123 --> 00:01:33,793 Her Imagination Library has provided books to millions of children, 29 00:01:33,793 --> 00:01:37,263 and she quietly put enormous amounts of her wealth and influence behind 30 00:01:37,297 --> 00:01:41,634 literacy, education, disaster relief, and medical research. 31 00:01:41,935 --> 00:01:45,638 Dolly also possessed a rare ability in modern American culture. 32 00:01:45,672 --> 00:01:49,876 People from widely different backgrounds seem to agree that they liked her. 33 00:01:50,043 --> 00:01:52,946 She could poke fun at herself, never seemed embarrassed 34 00:01:52,946 --> 00:01:56,182 by where she came from, and built an extraordinarily career 35 00:01:56,216 --> 00:01:59,619 largely by being unmistakably Dolly Parton. 36 00:02:00,353 --> 00:02:02,755 And sadly, we've also learned today 37 00:02:02,755 --> 00:02:06,292 of the death of Tim Curry, also at the age of 80. 38 00:02:06,693 --> 00:02:09,696 For generations of movie fans, Curry will be forever. 39 00:02:09,829 --> 00:02:11,598 Doctor Frankfurter and The Rocky 40 00:02:11,598 --> 00:02:15,869 Horror Picture Show one of the great cult film performances of all time. 41 00:02:15,935 --> 00:02:19,639 But Tim Curry has one of those careers where almost everybody remembers him 42 00:02:19,639 --> 00:02:21,107 for something different. 43 00:02:21,107 --> 00:02:23,910 Maybe he's Wadsworth and Clue. 44 00:02:23,910 --> 00:02:26,579 Maybe he's the terrifying Pennywise in the 1990 45 00:02:26,579 --> 00:02:29,582 television adaptation of Stephen King's It. 46 00:02:29,616 --> 00:02:33,386 Maybe you remember him from legend, The Three Musketeers or Home Alone two, 47 00:02:33,386 --> 00:02:38,625 and an entire younger generation knew him unmistakably voiced through animation, 48 00:02:38,691 --> 00:02:42,662 particularly in Nigel Thornberry in The Wild Thornberrys. 49 00:02:42,662 --> 00:02:44,330 And yeah, he was a voice actor. 50 00:02:44,330 --> 00:02:47,033 A very good one, too. Agreed. 51 00:02:47,033 --> 00:02:48,401 Corey was a Curry. 52 00:02:48,401 --> 00:02:52,539 Rather was also an accomplished stage performer, earning the three 53 00:02:52,739 --> 00:02:56,876 Tony Award nominations, including recognition for Amadeus, 54 00:02:57,143 --> 00:03:00,146 My Favorite Year and Spamalot. 55 00:03:00,413 --> 00:03:04,050 His career changed dramatically after he suffered a major stroke in 2012, 56 00:03:04,050 --> 00:03:06,853 which affected his mobility and left him using a wheelchair, 57 00:03:06,853 --> 00:03:08,221 but he continued working, 58 00:03:08,221 --> 00:03:11,357 making appearances and maintaining a wonderfully warm relationship 59 00:03:11,357 --> 00:03:15,361 with the fans who had followed him or his work over the decades. 60 00:03:15,828 --> 00:03:18,398 There's something particularly striking about 61 00:03:18,398 --> 00:03:21,834 losing Dolly Parton and Tim Curry so close together. 62 00:03:22,402 --> 00:03:25,572 One gave us Jolene, the other gave us Frankfurter 63 00:03:25,572 --> 00:03:29,709 and Pennywise, and somehow both became fixtures of popular culture, 64 00:03:29,709 --> 00:03:34,981 whose work Cross generations Dolly Parton and Tim Curry both gone at 80 65 00:03:34,981 --> 00:03:38,518 and both leaving behind the kind of work that isn't going anywhere. 66 00:03:39,018 --> 00:03:41,554 And they are two legends that will be missed. 67 00:03:42,522 --> 00:03:42,822 All right. 68 00:03:42,822 --> 00:03:44,891 What do we have in the news? 69 00:03:44,891 --> 00:03:49,362 Oh, well, Dish Network is in bankruptcy, 70 00:03:49,796 --> 00:03:53,032 so this is actually not a new topic. 71 00:03:53,066 --> 00:03:56,636 This has happened back in June when this was officially filed. 72 00:03:56,636 --> 00:04:00,240 But we've had a lot of questions coming in about this, wanting to know 73 00:04:00,240 --> 00:04:03,876 what is actually going on here, because there's a lot of different 74 00:04:04,611 --> 00:04:07,680 stories, let's just say, that are floating out out there. 75 00:04:07,714 --> 00:04:12,418 And one of them is, is Dish Network going to stop broadcasting and a company 76 00:04:12,418 --> 00:04:15,421 that they own called sling, which you may have heard of, sling 77 00:04:15,421 --> 00:04:18,424 TV is obviously a very well known over the top 78 00:04:18,791 --> 00:04:21,794 provider of television channels and other content. 79 00:04:21,794 --> 00:04:25,665 So what's actually happened here is they filed chapter 11 bankruptcy, 80 00:04:25,665 --> 00:04:28,067 and that's the kind of bankruptcy that is restructuring. 81 00:04:28,067 --> 00:04:32,672 It doesn't mean they're suddenly shutting down and locking their doors there 82 00:04:33,673 --> 00:04:35,275 with creditors and some 83 00:04:35,275 --> 00:04:38,978 other things that are required to try to get their company back on track. 84 00:04:39,112 --> 00:04:42,382 So yeah, it does mean that sling TV is bankrupt too, 85 00:04:42,382 --> 00:04:45,618 because they're part of the filings, but neither is shutting down. 86 00:04:45,618 --> 00:04:48,621 What the problem really here is, is that 87 00:04:48,721 --> 00:04:51,424 people aren't using linear television like they used to. 88 00:04:51,424 --> 00:04:54,594 So Dish Network is, of course a competitor for cable television. 89 00:04:54,594 --> 00:04:58,097 Satellite based has been around for a long time. 90 00:04:58,264 --> 00:05:01,301 And at the end of the day, 91 00:05:01,534 --> 00:05:04,537 just with churn and cord cutting and everything else, 92 00:05:04,871 --> 00:05:08,508 they are starting to have problems and need to restructure. 93 00:05:08,741 --> 00:05:10,810 So I don't see them shutting down. 94 00:05:10,810 --> 00:05:12,612 I don't think we're going in that direction. 95 00:05:12,612 --> 00:05:16,683 Certainly not sling TV, but we are seeing in the general 96 00:05:16,949 --> 00:05:21,120 overall linear television things that a lot of channels are shutting down. 97 00:05:21,254 --> 00:05:24,257 More and more people are using on demand services. 98 00:05:24,557 --> 00:05:28,061 You know, the idea in 2026 of having to wait for a certain time 99 00:05:28,194 --> 00:05:31,931 for a show to air is just not something we're used to anymore. 100 00:05:33,032 --> 00:05:33,433 You know, 101 00:05:33,433 --> 00:05:37,070 you watch what you want on demand and that type of a thing. So 102 00:05:38,071 --> 00:05:41,074 but just to give an idea of where this is going 103 00:05:41,107 --> 00:05:45,678 at the end of June, which is when they filed this TV 104 00:05:45,778 --> 00:05:48,781 had 4.684 million subscribers, 105 00:05:48,915 --> 00:05:51,918 1.7 million sling TV subscribers. 106 00:05:51,918 --> 00:05:55,054 So it's a total of 6.391 million combined. 107 00:05:55,355 --> 00:05:58,991 And in the second quarter, 108 00:05:59,425 --> 00:06:03,563 they lost 161,000 subscribers, while sling lost about 80,000. 109 00:06:03,596 --> 00:06:06,065 Now it's a little unusual for sling because people are still going with that. 110 00:06:06,065 --> 00:06:08,201 I think they'll be able to turn that one around. 111 00:06:08,201 --> 00:06:11,971 But again, linear television is something that's 112 00:06:12,505 --> 00:06:16,376 definitely from the last decade, if not before. 113 00:06:16,642 --> 00:06:19,379 So it's going to be interesting to see, you know, how 114 00:06:19,379 --> 00:06:23,082 they end up doing with this and what should go on before the moment. 115 00:06:23,116 --> 00:06:28,955 If you have dish TV, you are not at risk of losing your channels. 116 00:06:28,955 --> 00:06:31,824 The one little thing that I have noticed across the board on 117 00:06:31,824 --> 00:06:35,661 this is blackouts of channels, especially local channels. 118 00:06:35,661 --> 00:06:39,065 They seem to be a lot less interested in renegotiating some of this stuff 119 00:06:39,065 --> 00:06:41,234 at this point, I think probably because of the money. 120 00:06:41,234 --> 00:06:45,538 And so, you know, we could start to see some stuff like that. 121 00:06:47,473 --> 00:06:48,374 All right. 122 00:06:48,374 --> 00:06:51,778 Robots can outrun humans, but can they plug in a cable? 123 00:06:52,412 --> 00:06:54,947 That's a very good question. 124 00:06:54,947 --> 00:06:58,584 It's a strange question, but the strange question and there's this competition. 125 00:06:58,584 --> 00:07:00,520 So Reuters is reporting this. 126 00:07:00,520 --> 00:07:03,523 Reuters. Reuters. 127 00:07:03,556 --> 00:07:07,260 Anyway, it's one of those two ways anyway. 128 00:07:07,360 --> 00:07:08,961 But Reuters. 129 00:07:08,961 --> 00:07:12,198 Reuters I knew I was saying it wrong Reuters. 130 00:07:12,498 --> 00:07:16,035 So they have these competition and these have been going on for a while. 131 00:07:16,035 --> 00:07:20,440 The latest one was held August 23rd in Beijing, where humanoid robots 132 00:07:20,440 --> 00:07:23,075 are put in competition with each other over things. 133 00:07:23,075 --> 00:07:26,979 They have proven that they can run quicker than the fastest humans. 134 00:07:27,013 --> 00:07:30,516 The fine motor control and that type of thing is getting a lot better. 135 00:07:30,516 --> 00:07:35,321 But one of the next things coming up is the ability to compete in more. 136 00:07:35,621 --> 00:07:37,457 What you would find in the office stuff. 137 00:07:37,457 --> 00:07:40,259 Can they plug in a network cable, as the headline says? 138 00:07:40,259 --> 00:07:42,161 Can they do some of these different type of things now? 139 00:07:42,161 --> 00:07:46,399 About a year ago, a competition like this was held and it didn't go well, 140 00:07:46,432 --> 00:07:48,835 but it seemed like it was more the AI is running. 141 00:07:48,835 --> 00:07:50,903 The robots got bored and just decided not to do it. 142 00:07:50,903 --> 00:07:52,638 So we'll see what happens this time around. 143 00:07:54,073 --> 00:07:54,774 All right. 144 00:07:54,774 --> 00:07:58,811 Yeah, I think I'd get bored of doing the same task over and over. 145 00:07:58,911 --> 00:08:03,115 Looks like broadcaster is fighting to retrieve 146 00:08:03,149 --> 00:08:07,987 70 years of footage after its storage provider disappeared. 147 00:08:08,020 --> 00:08:09,121 Tell us about that. 148 00:08:09,121 --> 00:08:14,560 So this is in reference to PBS and what? 149 00:08:15,361 --> 00:08:18,731 This is where these things become important to have backups. 150 00:08:18,865 --> 00:08:22,068 This been like a major thing of it, but it's the same idea. 151 00:08:22,101 --> 00:08:22,335 Okay. 152 00:08:22,335 --> 00:08:25,338 So you have your memory card from your, 153 00:08:25,538 --> 00:08:28,541 you know, camera back when we had those are your phone now these type of things 154 00:08:28,541 --> 00:08:31,777 and something gets stolen lost damage that kind of a thing. 155 00:08:31,911 --> 00:08:35,581 You would be out those photos or whatever the case may be. 156 00:08:35,882 --> 00:08:36,883 Modern equipment 157 00:08:36,883 --> 00:08:40,920 like your phone providers, usually back up to the cloud automatically. 158 00:08:40,920 --> 00:08:44,624 And for the bigger companies like PBS and other broadcasters, 159 00:08:44,624 --> 00:08:47,760 they use cloud based services as well for archival 160 00:08:47,894 --> 00:08:52,298 and running different things that are in aspect of being a broadcaster. 161 00:08:52,331 --> 00:08:55,334 And what's happened here is it would be kind of like 162 00:08:55,334 --> 00:08:58,471 if you had everything backed up on your phone or other device, 163 00:08:58,471 --> 00:09:00,706 and the company that was doing the backups for you 164 00:09:00,706 --> 00:09:03,676 suddenly went away and you couldn't get access to your your information 165 00:09:03,676 --> 00:09:06,979 anymore at all times, at times a little bit. 166 00:09:06,979 --> 00:09:09,949 And you have 70 years of footage that seem to have disappeared 167 00:09:09,949 --> 00:09:12,985 and that they can no longer get access to at EBS. 168 00:09:13,185 --> 00:09:15,988 And that's what's going on here. 169 00:09:15,988 --> 00:09:18,057 It's a problem. 170 00:09:18,057 --> 00:09:20,192 It's about 50TB of footage. 171 00:09:20,192 --> 00:09:24,730 Again, a 70 year archive includes things like their coverage 172 00:09:24,730 --> 00:09:30,403 of the Great Flood of 1993, the Covid 19 pandemic, irreplaceable stuff, and so on. 173 00:09:30,503 --> 00:09:33,940 So, you know, it's 174 00:09:35,775 --> 00:09:38,144 one of those things that they have to be careful. 175 00:09:38,144 --> 00:09:40,379 I am working with a client right now where we're trying to figure 176 00:09:40,379 --> 00:09:44,250 out or not trying to figure out, but we put into place a backup situation. 177 00:09:44,250 --> 00:09:45,718 Well, it's not 70 years of stuff. 178 00:09:45,718 --> 00:09:48,154 It would cost them their business to something like this happen. 179 00:09:48,154 --> 00:09:52,024 So we have both their online normal cloud backups, 180 00:09:52,158 --> 00:09:54,360 the online cloud system that runs their things. 181 00:09:54,360 --> 00:09:57,196 We are also putting into place a storage array 182 00:09:57,196 --> 00:09:59,231 that they have control over that automatically 183 00:09:59,231 --> 00:10:02,702 back up once a month from the stuff that's out on the main system. 184 00:10:02,802 --> 00:10:05,304 It's a little bit of money to do that, but it saves the data. 185 00:10:05,304 --> 00:10:08,307 And then they're going to another step where 186 00:10:08,307 --> 00:10:11,811 once a month they rotate in basically an offline hard drive, 187 00:10:11,811 --> 00:10:15,181 which backs that up, and then it's physically disconnected from the network. 188 00:10:15,181 --> 00:10:17,316 Because remember, if you're losing your data 189 00:10:17,316 --> 00:10:19,452 because the hackers got in, they know you have backups 190 00:10:19,452 --> 00:10:22,054 and they know they're online, that's not going to do you a lot of good. 191 00:10:22,054 --> 00:10:23,923 You need the offline backups too. 192 00:10:23,923 --> 00:10:25,625 But you still want cloud backups 193 00:10:25,625 --> 00:10:29,161 because if your office burns down or there's a catastrophic problem. 194 00:10:29,462 --> 00:10:31,030 Bill in Reno, 195 00:10:31,030 --> 00:10:33,899 I know you guys have just been dealing with that with the fire right now. 196 00:10:33,899 --> 00:10:36,402 These things happen and can be completely unexpected. 197 00:10:36,402 --> 00:10:39,772 Then you want the cloud backup, so it's just the best way of covering it. 198 00:10:42,375 --> 00:10:45,311 These in space. 199 00:10:45,311 --> 00:10:45,478 Yeah. 200 00:10:45,478 --> 00:10:48,381 And I was thinking trying to remember why this would make me think of the Muppets. 201 00:10:48,381 --> 00:10:52,184 And then I was like a pigs in space. 202 00:10:54,854 --> 00:10:59,358 So over the years, NASA has been putting up different animals 203 00:10:59,358 --> 00:11:02,662 to see how they react to things, bees being no exception to this. 204 00:11:02,662 --> 00:11:06,298 And it's actually worked out quite well. 205 00:11:06,298 --> 00:11:09,635 They've been able to build their hive and do all the different things 206 00:11:09,635 --> 00:11:10,469 they would on Earth. 207 00:11:10,469 --> 00:11:11,037 And you know, 208 00:11:11,037 --> 00:11:14,373 some of these experiments are actually becoming more and more important now 209 00:11:14,573 --> 00:11:18,778 because of the fact that we are starting to talk about 210 00:11:19,311 --> 00:11:23,115 having life in space, establishing, you know, places to live. 211 00:11:23,716 --> 00:11:24,850 Mars has been talked about. 212 00:11:24,850 --> 00:11:27,019 The moon, I think will be more likely first, 213 00:11:27,019 --> 00:11:30,423 but at the end of the day, we're going to need 214 00:11:30,456 --> 00:11:33,192 food, we're going to need animals and all of these type of things. 215 00:11:33,192 --> 00:11:34,493 We need to know how they work. 216 00:11:34,493 --> 00:11:35,161 And well, 217 00:11:35,161 --> 00:11:36,996 I think it's kind of cool about these experiments 218 00:11:36,996 --> 00:11:39,398 is it's not something where it injures the animal either. 219 00:11:39,398 --> 00:11:43,502 It's just, you know, they do the experiment and then bring them back. 220 00:11:43,803 --> 00:11:46,505 So yeah, but it's 221 00:11:46,505 --> 00:11:49,709 kind of interesting to see it just it didn't seem like a bug them a whole lot. 222 00:11:49,842 --> 00:11:52,712 The colony was in a contained environment 223 00:11:52,712 --> 00:11:56,682 and they were able to go about their normal business. 224 00:11:57,349 --> 00:11:58,017 Cool. 225 00:11:58,017 --> 00:12:00,786 Which is interesting considering Zero-G. 226 00:12:00,786 --> 00:12:05,291 Yeah, yeah, I think that's a big reason why they wanted to conduct an experiment 227 00:12:05,291 --> 00:12:05,624 like this. 228 00:12:05,624 --> 00:12:07,893 Because again, you know, you can do stuff in the lab 229 00:12:07,893 --> 00:12:12,531 and try to figure things out, but you really don't know what it is. 230 00:12:12,865 --> 00:12:17,336 Some backups or some backups, some background information of this is 231 00:12:17,336 --> 00:12:20,740 this is not the first time insects have been sent to space. 232 00:12:20,740 --> 00:12:25,311 This experiment actually started to be conducted a while ago, back in 1984. 233 00:12:25,344 --> 00:12:28,948 But the first time they did this was with Fruit Flies in Space 234 00:12:28,948 --> 00:12:32,618 in 1947, which were the first animals sent to space. 235 00:12:34,820 --> 00:12:35,421 All right. 236 00:12:35,421 --> 00:12:38,991 Thinking of stuff that makes us think about space. 237 00:12:39,058 --> 00:12:43,395 Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is about to open. 238 00:12:44,029 --> 00:12:46,599 So thinking about space, this would be Lucas 239 00:12:46,599 --> 00:12:50,336 of the George Lucas of Star Wars, among other things. Yes. 240 00:12:50,336 --> 00:12:53,272 And you should see the building they're building or they built. 241 00:12:53,272 --> 00:12:55,674 It looks like a spaceship, in my opinion. 242 00:12:55,674 --> 00:12:57,676 Kind of, you know, it's cool. 243 00:12:57,676 --> 00:12:59,945 Scheduled to open September 22nd. 244 00:12:59,945 --> 00:13:04,283 So here in a couple of weeks, Exposition Park in Los Angeles. 245 00:13:04,283 --> 00:13:06,385 So if you're down there, certainly worth checking out. 246 00:13:06,385 --> 00:13:08,320 I can imagine how Opening Day is going to be. 247 00:13:08,320 --> 00:13:10,456 You guys, we should go drive down on the 22nd. 248 00:13:10,456 --> 00:13:11,157 Want to go? 249 00:13:11,157 --> 00:13:13,993 I want to see this. Let's see if maybe we can make that happen. 250 00:13:13,993 --> 00:13:15,661 But let's see. 251 00:13:15,661 --> 00:13:20,366 The museum is founded by George Lucas and his wife, Melody and. 252 00:13:21,534 --> 00:13:24,336 Ariel Investments, believe is the company that they're doing it under. 253 00:13:24,336 --> 00:13:26,672 But it's not just about space. 254 00:13:26,672 --> 00:13:29,742 No, it's about, you know, narrative art. 255 00:13:29,775 --> 00:13:31,477 You know, it's visual. It's. 256 00:13:31,477 --> 00:13:32,278 Yeah, yeah. 257 00:13:32,278 --> 00:13:36,282 So, you know, a thing like that, I you know, what they're talking about, 258 00:13:36,282 --> 00:13:40,419 including in this is illustration, comic books, movie concept art, 259 00:13:40,419 --> 00:13:41,554 photography, children's 260 00:13:41,554 --> 00:13:45,157 books, illustrations, posters and other forms of visual storytelling 261 00:13:45,391 --> 00:13:48,060 and share space with paintings and other traditional artworks. 262 00:13:48,060 --> 00:13:50,663 This sounds absolutely incredible. 263 00:13:50,663 --> 00:13:54,133 There's more than 40,000 works, so it's a fairly large museum, 264 00:13:54,733 --> 00:13:58,838 and it's going to feature over 1200 objects in over 30 galleries. 265 00:13:58,904 --> 00:14:01,907 So yeah, that's going to be a day or two to see all that, I think. 266 00:14:02,074 --> 00:14:03,776 Yeah, I was about to say we'd need 267 00:14:03,776 --> 00:14:07,813 at least two days because it looks like there's a garden of grounds 268 00:14:07,813 --> 00:14:11,183 that looks like it would be amazing to walk through as well. 269 00:14:11,350 --> 00:14:16,155 So and, and for anybody asking, is there going to be Star Wars here. 270 00:14:16,155 --> 00:14:17,990 Yes there is, Bill. Go ahead. 271 00:14:17,990 --> 00:14:21,827 I would say I mean, other than the fact that it's in LA, I would 272 00:14:21,894 --> 00:14:26,298 I would do some serious things to be a curator at that museum. 273 00:14:26,732 --> 00:14:27,333 Yeah. 274 00:14:27,333 --> 00:14:30,069 So, you know, I mean, maybe make it worthwhile. 275 00:14:30,069 --> 00:14:31,270 Not that we're anti LA. 276 00:14:31,270 --> 00:14:34,840 There's a lot of good people in Los Angeles, but I too big of a city for me. 277 00:14:34,840 --> 00:14:37,943 But yeah it's too stressful. Yeah. 278 00:14:38,210 --> 00:14:39,979 But again there's going to be Star Wars. 279 00:14:39,979 --> 00:14:41,814 And if there wasn't that would be really weird. 280 00:14:41,814 --> 00:14:46,518 So they're going to be featuring props, costumes, artwork and other materials 281 00:14:46,619 --> 00:14:49,955 from Lucasfilm's going back more than four decades. 282 00:14:49,955 --> 00:14:53,993 And that will include material from the first six Star Wars movies, the first four 283 00:14:53,993 --> 00:14:58,597 Indiana Jones films, plus Willow, Red tails, Howard the Duck and others. 284 00:14:58,631 --> 00:15:03,602 And one of the initial expositions is appropriate called Star Wars in Motion. 285 00:15:03,602 --> 00:15:04,703 Yeah, so we're going to have to find out 286 00:15:04,703 --> 00:15:08,540 more about this and see what's going to be there. 287 00:15:08,540 --> 00:15:11,977 Among the announced pieces are the Luke Skywalker's land speeder 288 00:15:12,077 --> 00:15:15,981 and the first physical build of General Grievous wheel bike. 289 00:15:16,615 --> 00:15:18,017 Oh, nice. 290 00:15:20,319 --> 00:15:22,187 Our transparent solar panels. 291 00:15:22,187 --> 00:15:23,422 Real? Yeah. 292 00:15:23,422 --> 00:15:27,493 I can't remember if this was a listener question or where this actually came from. 293 00:15:27,826 --> 00:15:31,030 Me might have been Gretchen. 294 00:15:33,999 --> 00:15:37,670 So this was a Instagram 295 00:15:37,670 --> 00:15:41,140 video, which always is like, okay, we should probably double check that. 296 00:15:41,140 --> 00:15:43,542 There's a lot of real material on Instagram 297 00:15:43,542 --> 00:15:47,713 and there's a lot of absolutely fake stuff on Instagram, and it's up in the middle. 298 00:15:47,713 --> 00:15:51,917 So it's sometimes, you know, creates a situation where it's like, okay, 299 00:15:51,951 --> 00:15:55,154 at least I can count on the gravity stuff being real. 300 00:15:55,187 --> 00:15:56,522 This is true. 301 00:15:56,522 --> 00:15:56,855 Yeah. 302 00:15:56,855 --> 00:16:00,159 And gravity unfortunately has to try to convince people that sometimes. 303 00:16:00,159 --> 00:16:01,560 But gravity is real. 304 00:16:01,560 --> 00:16:04,229 You know, I both flown the pack. It's real. 305 00:16:04,229 --> 00:16:09,702 But the idea of a transparent solar panel, yes, it is actually real. 306 00:16:09,702 --> 00:16:11,537 It's a thing that's been out for a while. 307 00:16:11,537 --> 00:16:14,707 And there's several universities have been testing this out. 308 00:16:14,707 --> 00:16:17,509 It's something that does create power. 309 00:16:17,509 --> 00:16:19,778 The thing of it is it's a little bit 310 00:16:19,778 --> 00:16:23,282 where you don't maybe see this mainstream yet is the fact that they produce 311 00:16:23,282 --> 00:16:27,519 less power than a standard solar panel, because a standard solar panel is able to 312 00:16:28,554 --> 00:16:30,022 more closely contain 313 00:16:30,022 --> 00:16:33,025 the light, whereas a clear solar panel that flows through it. 314 00:16:33,025 --> 00:16:35,995 However, some of the applications that are being considered 315 00:16:35,995 --> 00:16:39,031 for this or the glass on the side of skyscrapers 316 00:16:39,098 --> 00:16:42,201 or it doesn't matter really, because whatever you have up 317 00:16:42,201 --> 00:16:44,470 there is going to produce energy where it doesn't now. 318 00:16:44,470 --> 00:16:46,538 And even though it might be less than a standard 319 00:16:46,538 --> 00:16:48,474 solar panel, it's still going to be a lot of power 320 00:16:48,474 --> 00:16:52,411 and could certainly help to contribute to the power requirements of the building. 321 00:16:52,411 --> 00:16:55,748 I've also seen a work up where they're talking about 322 00:16:55,748 --> 00:16:59,018 using this type of technology for a data center, 323 00:16:59,018 --> 00:17:01,520 and actually encapsulating the whole building in a glass. 324 00:17:01,520 --> 00:17:04,757 It's kind of a cool concept if you look at the artwork, 325 00:17:04,790 --> 00:17:09,161 because you'd walk into what is basically a glass building. 326 00:17:09,161 --> 00:17:11,830 So it's all full of natural light and that kind of thing. 327 00:17:11,830 --> 00:17:14,867 But all of that glass is producing a good portion of the electricity 328 00:17:14,867 --> 00:17:17,002 that's running the data center underneath. 329 00:17:17,002 --> 00:17:21,306 So I think, I think I saw a work up two of like a building 330 00:17:21,340 --> 00:17:25,377 like the MGM Grand in Vegas, you know, or was it the Luxor? 331 00:17:25,544 --> 00:17:26,512 The pyramid? 332 00:17:26,512 --> 00:17:28,881 The pyramid is the Luxor, okay. 333 00:17:28,881 --> 00:17:29,782 The Luxor, 334 00:17:29,782 --> 00:17:34,353 where they were using that same technology to because it's mostly glass, right? 335 00:17:34,386 --> 00:17:36,388 Yeah. And absolutely. 336 00:17:36,388 --> 00:17:37,623 So, you know, 337 00:17:37,623 --> 00:17:39,658 and that was the biggest negative I could even find on it 338 00:17:39,658 --> 00:17:42,661 because I was trying to look for both sides of this as well. 339 00:17:42,661 --> 00:17:45,464 It doesn't produce as much power because it's transparent. 340 00:17:45,464 --> 00:17:49,134 Well, so what right now the glass in your window probably produces no power. 341 00:17:49,201 --> 00:17:51,136 So. Yeah, exactly. You know, 342 00:17:52,371 --> 00:17:54,840 and they aren't that much more difficult to manufacture 343 00:17:54,840 --> 00:17:57,276 and actually don't cost that more than much more 344 00:17:57,276 --> 00:18:00,312 when you're looking at it from the concept of like a skyscraper, 345 00:18:00,712 --> 00:18:03,582 if you were to redo your home windows with it, it would be a little bit more money. 346 00:18:03,582 --> 00:18:06,652 But even though it's still in the range of affordable. 347 00:18:06,718 --> 00:18:09,154 So let's say you were going to do energy store on your home. 348 00:18:09,154 --> 00:18:11,890 So you're doing low glass replacement, which is something 349 00:18:11,890 --> 00:18:13,025 I'm thinking about doing. 350 00:18:13,025 --> 00:18:15,661 I might actually look into this technology and see if it'd be worth it. 351 00:18:15,661 --> 00:18:18,430 I don't know if I have enough glass coverage to where it would be worth 352 00:18:18,430 --> 00:18:21,300 all the back end equipment, but it'd be kind of something interesting. 353 00:18:21,300 --> 00:18:24,470 At least find out about, hey, you can do it on my house. 354 00:18:25,504 --> 00:18:26,238 What else would you. 355 00:18:26,238 --> 00:18:29,074 The color in the wires, wouldn't it? 356 00:18:29,074 --> 00:18:31,343 Yeah. Well, you and you're going to have installation like that. 357 00:18:31,343 --> 00:18:34,746 You have cable runs, but you also have equipment that has to 358 00:18:34,780 --> 00:18:37,182 go somewhere that receives the power and does something with it. 359 00:18:37,182 --> 00:18:40,052 Usually charging a battery is the way that works. 360 00:18:40,052 --> 00:18:42,721 Yeah. You know, so so there's some investment in there. 361 00:18:42,721 --> 00:18:46,425 So would the amount of glass space on a residential home 362 00:18:46,458 --> 00:18:49,428 be enough to accommodate that on its own? 363 00:18:49,428 --> 00:18:51,063 Probably not. 364 00:18:51,063 --> 00:18:53,732 What I'm thinking is, is adding it to an existing solar 365 00:18:53,732 --> 00:18:57,803 panel installation, though, and then conceivably using the same back 366 00:18:57,803 --> 00:18:59,872 end equipment that's already running the solar panels 367 00:18:59,872 --> 00:19:03,342 and just adding that as an input, then it might make it make sense to do it. 368 00:19:03,342 --> 00:19:04,910 So we'll see. 369 00:19:04,910 --> 00:19:05,677 All right. 370 00:19:05,677 --> 00:19:07,546 And here's another unusual thing. 371 00:19:07,546 --> 00:19:11,116 World's first hands free umbrella. 372 00:19:11,216 --> 00:19:12,751 Yeah again an Instagram. 373 00:19:12,751 --> 00:19:14,119 Now this is a funny one too 374 00:19:14,119 --> 00:19:17,956 because the video I saw on Instagram is clearly AI generated. 375 00:19:18,290 --> 00:19:21,193 Okay, I wasn't sure it looked a little off, 376 00:19:21,193 --> 00:19:23,295 but I was thinking, oh, that's a cool idea. 377 00:19:23,295 --> 00:19:28,300 But the engineer and the idea of this is actually real. 378 00:19:28,300 --> 00:19:32,838 And there are some real videos of him showing this off with what 379 00:19:32,838 --> 00:19:36,909 he actually has, but which is one of those things too, 380 00:19:36,942 --> 00:19:40,512 because you look at it in the first thing is, oh, this is AI generated. 381 00:19:40,512 --> 00:19:41,613 It's fake. 382 00:19:41,613 --> 00:19:44,516 Well, the video was definitely AI generated, 383 00:19:44,516 --> 00:19:47,853 but the thing is not fake. 384 00:19:48,420 --> 00:19:52,357 There's a few things about it, though that are going to be a little time for. 385 00:19:52,357 --> 00:19:54,493 I think you're going to see this at target. 386 00:19:54,493 --> 00:19:55,694 And number one. 387 00:19:55,694 --> 00:19:56,995 So basically what it is, is 388 00:19:56,995 --> 00:20:00,666 it's essentially a quadcopter with a Raspberry Pi in it. 389 00:20:00,699 --> 00:20:02,267 It's able to track the user. 390 00:20:02,267 --> 00:20:05,070 So he walks under it and this thing flies over his head. 391 00:20:05,070 --> 00:20:07,573 And it's really kind of cool. And it does work. 392 00:20:07,573 --> 00:20:10,742 The proof of concept is absolutely out there, 393 00:20:10,742 --> 00:20:15,080 and I think of other ideas that could be used for that'd be cool. 394 00:20:15,113 --> 00:20:19,117 Like a little floating, like a Grogu pod 395 00:20:19,151 --> 00:20:22,154 that, you know, you can carry stuff with. 396 00:20:22,254 --> 00:20:25,424 And yeah, I mean, you know, you can look at a lot of different things. 397 00:20:25,424 --> 00:20:26,892 The engineer is John. 398 00:20:28,360 --> 00:20:29,795 I apologize for 399 00:20:29,795 --> 00:20:32,998 pronouncing his last name, but he actually did build this thing. 400 00:20:32,998 --> 00:20:33,999 It does work. 401 00:20:33,999 --> 00:20:37,002 The drone is constructed using 3D 402 00:20:37,002 --> 00:20:39,705 printed carbon fiber reinforced nylon. 403 00:20:39,705 --> 00:20:42,507 So it's going to be strong enough to actually work. 404 00:20:42,507 --> 00:20:46,778 But the thing of it is, is there's still some things that need to be worked out. 405 00:20:46,812 --> 00:20:49,581 First of all, the flight time is only about 15 minutes. 406 00:20:49,581 --> 00:20:55,153 Wind is a problem because it'll rotor down, wash, can push the water around. 407 00:20:55,153 --> 00:20:56,788 We have all of that kind of a thing. 408 00:20:56,788 --> 00:21:02,227 And then there is the possibility of a safety issue of having four rapidly 409 00:21:02,227 --> 00:21:05,731 spinning drone propellers hovering around people's heads. 410 00:21:06,431 --> 00:21:11,069 So, you know, but I think the idea of it's kind of cool. 411 00:21:11,069 --> 00:21:12,704 And I think this is where you start. 412 00:21:12,704 --> 00:21:16,575 And I could just, you know, as part of the futuristic thing, in addition to me 413 00:21:16,642 --> 00:21:18,677 having my, you know, jetpack that I'm flying around 414 00:21:18,677 --> 00:21:21,680 and having an umbrella hover over my head would be kind of cool. 415 00:21:21,947 --> 00:21:24,182 I mean, it works with one of those. 416 00:21:27,786 --> 00:21:29,354 Hands free umbrella. 417 00:21:29,354 --> 00:21:31,556 So tell us about your hands free and roll. How does it work? 418 00:21:31,556 --> 00:21:32,591 It was a hat. 419 00:21:32,591 --> 00:21:35,861 Oh, well, yeah, I think you're gonna say that. 420 00:21:36,261 --> 00:21:39,398 It was just a hat and an umbrella on it 421 00:21:39,965 --> 00:21:42,734 that. 422 00:21:42,734 --> 00:21:45,737 Well, in different news, OpenAI halts 423 00:21:45,737 --> 00:21:50,342 AI training on advanced model as it detects dark signs emerging. 424 00:21:51,043 --> 00:21:53,612 Well, that doesn't sound good. 425 00:21:53,612 --> 00:21:56,815 No. Is it going grok? No. 426 00:21:56,982 --> 00:21:57,983 From what I understand. 427 00:21:57,983 --> 00:21:58,950 No, no. 428 00:21:58,950 --> 00:22:03,055 We're clear that now, I did ask AI about this, and I was told 429 00:22:03,055 --> 00:22:05,157 there's absolutely nothing to worry about. So we're good. 430 00:22:05,157 --> 00:22:05,991 We're safe. 431 00:22:05,991 --> 00:22:08,994 Okay, 432 00:22:09,294 --> 00:22:12,331 so what happened is, is this is a true story. 433 00:22:12,397 --> 00:22:14,499 OpenAI has slowed 434 00:22:14,499 --> 00:22:18,270 portions of its development program because two separate things happened. 435 00:22:18,570 --> 00:22:20,472 We actually talked about this earlier in the year, 436 00:22:20,472 --> 00:22:24,109 but an earlier OpenAI model testing incident involving hugging face, 437 00:22:24,443 --> 00:22:28,013 which is another AI where an AI system managed to reach systems outside 438 00:22:28,013 --> 00:22:31,116 of his intended environment and decide to hack them. 439 00:22:32,951 --> 00:22:35,620 So that was considered a problem. 440 00:22:35,620 --> 00:22:40,425 And what they're looking at here is a situation 441 00:22:40,425 --> 00:22:44,229 where these kind of things, they want to know what's going on. 442 00:22:44,396 --> 00:22:45,497 It doesn't mean that 443 00:22:45,497 --> 00:22:49,201 AI has become evil all of a sudden, you know, or anything like that. 444 00:22:49,234 --> 00:22:53,472 It just means that it is doing things that are unexpected, 445 00:22:53,472 --> 00:22:57,142 and it's time to take a step back and figure out why and what's going on. 446 00:22:57,142 --> 00:22:58,944 And could this become a problem? 447 00:22:58,944 --> 00:23:02,314 Because one of the things is, is it's not always the good guys that use AI. 448 00:23:02,547 --> 00:23:05,751 And at the end of the day, if this is possible, 449 00:23:05,751 --> 00:23:07,652 we actually do want to know about it, you know, 450 00:23:07,652 --> 00:23:10,055 because it's something that has to be planned against. 451 00:23:10,055 --> 00:23:13,058 We talked earlier in the year about actual full 452 00:23:13,058 --> 00:23:16,428 AI defense and strategies that businesses are starting to put into place, 453 00:23:16,428 --> 00:23:20,132 using AI to defend against AI and having AI run it. 454 00:23:20,365 --> 00:23:24,803 If you haven't heard that episode, go to User Friendly Dot show 455 00:23:24,803 --> 00:23:28,106 because it's there and it's a very interesting conversation 456 00:23:28,340 --> 00:23:31,343 of kind of, you know, welcome to the future. 457 00:23:31,676 --> 00:23:33,311 Oh yeah. 458 00:23:33,311 --> 00:23:36,681 So, you know, at the end of the day, this is a new technology. 459 00:23:36,681 --> 00:23:39,751 It's developing and a lot of interesting things are going to happen. 460 00:23:39,851 --> 00:23:41,553 This is user friendly 2.0. 461 00:23:41,553 --> 00:23:42,754 We'll be back after the break. 462 00:23:44,022 --> 00:23:46,024 He's from the future. 463 00:23:46,024 --> 00:23:49,294 He's got a really big computer 464 00:23:49,661 --> 00:23:52,898 and he uses it uses it every day. 465 00:23:53,265 --> 00:23:56,334 And he uses it uses it in every way. 466 00:23:56,635 --> 00:24:02,040 What you use it for, you know, I'm not that sure because he hears it here. 467 00:24:02,741 --> 00:24:03,275 Welcome back. 468 00:24:03,275 --> 00:24:05,377 This is user friendly two point out. 469 00:24:05,377 --> 00:24:08,380 Check out our website at User Friendly. 470 00:24:09,381 --> 00:24:12,451 That is your one stop for everything user friendly. 471 00:24:12,451 --> 00:24:14,019 You can find our back episodes. 472 00:24:14,019 --> 00:24:15,787 You can ask questions. 473 00:24:15,787 --> 00:24:17,022 You can see what's going on. 474 00:24:17,022 --> 00:24:20,859 You can even find out about our smart speaker Flash Briefing. 475 00:24:20,859 --> 00:24:22,461 We have been offering this for a while. 476 00:24:22,461 --> 00:24:24,029 We still do. 477 00:24:24,029 --> 00:24:26,198 You just need to add it to your flash briefing. 478 00:24:26,198 --> 00:24:27,265 The skills there. 479 00:24:27,265 --> 00:24:30,268 Check it out at User Friendly Dot show. 480 00:24:30,435 --> 00:24:34,239 All right guys, well, you know, we program a lot on our listener questions. 481 00:24:34,239 --> 00:24:37,843 And we've been having a lot more interest like a lot more interest 482 00:24:37,843 --> 00:24:40,212 in the last six months or so in retro technology. 483 00:24:40,212 --> 00:24:41,613 So we've been covering some of that. 484 00:24:41,613 --> 00:24:45,450 And I'm having a lot of fun doing it because it is actually an area of 485 00:24:45,450 --> 00:24:47,219 interest of mine, and 486 00:24:48,220 --> 00:24:50,355 it's something that is a lot of fun 487 00:24:50,355 --> 00:24:51,523 and is a for example, 488 00:24:51,523 --> 00:24:55,460 we've got some projects we're working on that I got a Sega mega drive, 489 00:24:55,460 --> 00:24:58,897 which North American is known as a Genesis, but mine is actually 490 00:24:58,897 --> 00:25:03,001 a mega drive to work in North America and run the games for both systems. 491 00:25:03,034 --> 00:25:05,904 Actually all three. It runs the Japanese ones too. 492 00:25:05,904 --> 00:25:08,707 It was a little bit of a process to make that function, 493 00:25:08,707 --> 00:25:10,442 but that's the kind of stuff I like to mess with 494 00:25:10,442 --> 00:25:13,979 in retro tech and is, I think most people that have listened for a while know that 495 00:25:13,979 --> 00:25:18,617 we like to work with the old video game cabinets and systems and old computers 496 00:25:18,617 --> 00:25:22,387 and radios and all the rest of this stuff, which is kind of cool. And 497 00:25:23,622 --> 00:25:25,257 along those lines, we get a lot of questions 498 00:25:25,257 --> 00:25:28,627 coming in about, you know, how to deal with all of this stuff. 499 00:25:28,627 --> 00:25:32,464 And we're going to talk about some horror stories that we've dealt with here. 500 00:25:32,497 --> 00:25:35,534 Gretchen, in your case, like Merlin and now the baby laptop. 501 00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:38,970 Oh my goodness. Oh yeah. The baby laptop. 502 00:25:39,104 --> 00:25:40,872 So, you know, and some other things. 503 00:25:40,872 --> 00:25:44,676 But, you know, one of the interesting things about retro 504 00:25:44,676 --> 00:25:46,511 technology is that we've reached a point where 505 00:25:46,511 --> 00:25:49,581 keeping it running is no longer simply using old equipment. 506 00:25:49,581 --> 00:25:51,816 It's preservation and it really is. 507 00:25:51,816 --> 00:25:54,920 So when you think about these things, something like a Commodore 64 508 00:25:54,953 --> 00:25:56,821 is more than 40 years old, 509 00:25:56,821 --> 00:25:59,991 an original Nintendo Entertainment System is around 40. 510 00:26:00,025 --> 00:26:04,262 Even something we might not instinctively consider retro, such as an original Xbox 511 00:26:04,262 --> 00:26:07,599 or Windows XP computer, is now more than two decades old. 512 00:26:07,632 --> 00:26:10,635 Bill, isn't it, where to think of an Xbox as retro? 513 00:26:11,303 --> 00:26:13,872 Yeah, it is, it is. 514 00:26:13,872 --> 00:26:17,475 You know, the thing about it is, is electronics don't age 515 00:26:17,475 --> 00:26:20,512 quite the same way that furniture or books do. 516 00:26:20,712 --> 00:26:23,515 So you can put a book on a shelf for 30 years and assuming 517 00:26:23,515 --> 00:26:26,518 the environment is reasonable, pull it down and read it. 518 00:26:26,518 --> 00:26:27,919 You can put a computer on the shelf 519 00:26:27,919 --> 00:26:31,590 for 30 years, pull it down, plug it in, and, well, not quite so much. 520 00:26:31,890 --> 00:26:32,090 You're. 521 00:26:33,592 --> 00:26:35,260 Yeah, yeah. 522 00:26:35,260 --> 00:26:39,397 And trust me, the baby laptop was not stored in a barn. 523 00:26:39,397 --> 00:26:43,201 It was not stored in out in the, 524 00:26:43,234 --> 00:26:46,571 you know, in the yard or in the heat. 525 00:26:46,571 --> 00:26:50,842 It was in a climate controlled location. 526 00:26:50,875 --> 00:26:55,380 So what Gretchen is referring to by the baby laptop is an IBM ThinkPad T30. 527 00:26:55,413 --> 00:26:57,282 It's the one with the butterfly keyboard. 528 00:26:57,282 --> 00:26:59,918 Now, if there are a lot of people in the community 529 00:26:59,918 --> 00:27:03,254 that collect retro laptops, that is a very sought after one. 530 00:27:03,254 --> 00:27:07,025 And the way that we ended up getting it is I've been in technology 531 00:27:07,025 --> 00:27:11,496 since, what, 1998 I think is when we started leaving 532 00:27:11,563 --> 00:27:16,201 sooner than that, I think you, you yeah, you were working on the computer stuff 533 00:27:16,201 --> 00:27:20,138 in the early 90s, like 94 somewhere around there, right? 534 00:27:20,171 --> 00:27:22,073 In any event, it was in the 90s. 535 00:27:22,073 --> 00:27:26,111 I'm getting old, you know, I'm a retro electronics now, I think. 536 00:27:26,277 --> 00:27:29,714 But we started out with a store in a mall 537 00:27:29,914 --> 00:27:33,251 in Reno, Nevada, and this store is gone. 538 00:27:33,251 --> 00:27:34,719 The mall is gone. 539 00:27:34,719 --> 00:27:37,822 Reno, Nevada, fortunately, after the fires is not gone. 540 00:27:37,856 --> 00:27:42,394 But the point being that this is how these things have changed, 541 00:27:42,394 --> 00:27:48,033 and some of the stuff that we were selling in that store is now very much retro. 542 00:27:48,066 --> 00:27:51,136 Well, during that time, because we were a startup, didn't have a lot of money. 543 00:27:51,136 --> 00:27:56,241 I had a client that was a bank, and we did the computers for the bank, 544 00:27:56,241 --> 00:27:59,811 for the state of Nevada for a long time, and one day got a call 545 00:27:59,878 --> 00:28:03,682 because we would take old equipment, fix it back up and recycle it 546 00:28:03,682 --> 00:28:04,716 and give it back to the schools 547 00:28:04,716 --> 00:28:06,551 or other people that could use it and that type of thing. 548 00:28:06,551 --> 00:28:09,621 And in line with that would get these donations. 549 00:28:09,621 --> 00:28:12,390 And one day it's like, well, the president of the bank, 550 00:28:12,390 --> 00:28:13,591 we're merging with another bank. 551 00:28:13,591 --> 00:28:15,827 So his office is being cleaned out. 552 00:28:15,827 --> 00:28:18,897 So we paid some money and got everything in the office. 553 00:28:18,930 --> 00:28:20,031 It was that kind of a sale. 554 00:28:20,031 --> 00:28:24,536 And if it was this little T30 ThinkPad laptop, 555 00:28:24,536 --> 00:28:29,574 which I used for a long time afterwards, I mean, in 1995 96, whenever 556 00:28:29,641 --> 00:28:34,179 it would have had to have been 95, 96 because it was running windows 95. 557 00:28:34,279 --> 00:28:36,948 Yeah, I remember the windows 95. Yeah. 558 00:28:36,948 --> 00:28:40,919 And having a color 640 by 480 559 00:28:40,952 --> 00:28:45,023 laptop in that era was a really big deal. 560 00:28:45,023 --> 00:28:46,958 I mean, you know, hard drive in the whole bit. 561 00:28:46,958 --> 00:28:50,962 You look at it now, it's like, okay, but no, it was not something you could afford. 562 00:28:50,962 --> 00:28:52,097 These things were in the 563 00:28:52,097 --> 00:28:56,134 thousands of dollars, like 4 or $5000 to buy some of this equipment. 564 00:28:56,134 --> 00:29:00,638 And, and didn't it have also ports in it to like the walking station, 565 00:29:00,638 --> 00:29:02,340 which also was kind of a big deal. 566 00:29:02,340 --> 00:29:05,910 It was what we probably call a sub notebook these days. 567 00:29:05,910 --> 00:29:09,247 But at that time I don't think that term had been coined yet. No. 568 00:29:09,280 --> 00:29:14,119 And so this is one where I was talking to a friend who's a YouTube content 569 00:29:14,119 --> 00:29:17,555 creator that used to work for Microsoft, and we were talking about it. 570 00:29:17,555 --> 00:29:20,558 He was like, oh, you have this, it's got a time bomb in it. 571 00:29:20,792 --> 00:29:22,594 And so, Gretchen, you pulled it out. 572 00:29:22,594 --> 00:29:25,263 And what do we find, a time bomb? 573 00:29:25,263 --> 00:29:28,399 Oh my God, I felt so bad 574 00:29:28,433 --> 00:29:32,237 because I'd take I had taken really good care of it. 575 00:29:32,237 --> 00:29:33,972 I stored it nicely. 576 00:29:33,972 --> 00:29:37,142 It was in its case, it was not in a hot or 577 00:29:37,142 --> 00:29:40,411 super cold area or or moist area. 578 00:29:40,478 --> 00:29:41,713 I thought it was fine. 579 00:29:41,713 --> 00:29:46,951 I didn't know that the battery was going to vomit acid all over it. 580 00:29:47,218 --> 00:29:50,355 So that is getting to the point of anything like this. 581 00:29:50,355 --> 00:29:53,091 Even modern electronics take the batteries out 582 00:29:53,091 --> 00:29:54,793 if you're not using them. 583 00:29:54,793 --> 00:29:57,162 So you know, there's some basic maintenance stuff. 584 00:29:57,162 --> 00:29:59,464 You have a generator that's gasoline powered, drain 585 00:29:59,464 --> 00:30:01,199 the fuel out of it when you're gonna put it in storage, 586 00:30:01,199 --> 00:30:03,701 or your carburetor will become unhappy with you. 587 00:30:03,701 --> 00:30:07,172 Same kind of an idea applies to these type of things. 588 00:30:07,172 --> 00:30:09,707 You leave batteries in something they will leak. 589 00:30:09,707 --> 00:30:11,943 I'm still looking for my blip. 590 00:30:11,943 --> 00:30:14,112 Yeah, well, we had that. 591 00:30:14,112 --> 00:30:17,916 We had a little Walkman that we unpacked from one of your boxes. 592 00:30:17,916 --> 00:30:20,819 The battery compartment looked like it had a disease. 593 00:30:20,819 --> 00:30:23,988 It is definitely, you know, these type of things. 594 00:30:23,988 --> 00:30:25,190 And the problem of it is, 595 00:30:25,190 --> 00:30:28,693 is that the acid, the alkaline that comes out of the batteries 596 00:30:29,294 --> 00:30:33,865 will corrode everything in your piece of equipment and destroy it. 597 00:30:33,898 --> 00:30:38,436 And these this, this is something that can absolutely make it to a point 598 00:30:38,436 --> 00:30:41,472 where it's not even a feasibility issue at some points anymore. 599 00:30:41,472 --> 00:30:44,108 It's just it's the end of the end of the line. 600 00:30:44,108 --> 00:30:47,912 And in the case of the ThinkPad, the baby laptop, we had a situation 601 00:30:47,912 --> 00:30:50,882 where the battery started leaking both of them. 602 00:30:50,882 --> 00:30:55,353 Also, the internal Bios battery started leaking the Ram battery, 603 00:30:55,353 --> 00:30:59,757 and it kind of exploded and the capacitor started leaking. 604 00:30:59,891 --> 00:31:04,195 And all this stuff put together looks like it exploded or something. 605 00:31:04,229 --> 00:31:06,865 I don't know how to describe that. Yeah. 606 00:31:06,865 --> 00:31:10,635 And the one thing that we're a little bit lucky on this and we are going to restore 607 00:31:10,635 --> 00:31:12,470 it is the video components of it, 608 00:31:12,470 --> 00:31:15,573 which were the big deal with the keyboard on that. 609 00:31:15,640 --> 00:31:18,142 We're in a metal can and in the upper part of it. 610 00:31:18,142 --> 00:31:23,181 So that part is still working and the case itself is still okay. 611 00:31:23,181 --> 00:31:25,216 We're going to have to replace the motherboard and some stuff like that. 612 00:31:25,216 --> 00:31:27,552 But that's item number one. 613 00:31:27,552 --> 00:31:30,555 Take your batteries out if you're going to store it for any more than a little bit. 614 00:31:30,588 --> 00:31:32,190 And again, it's not even just retro tech. 615 00:31:32,190 --> 00:31:35,894 We use pocket recorders here at User Friendly, and we're constantly having it 616 00:31:35,960 --> 00:31:39,130 when a season ends and the next season starts, the 2 or 3 of them get destroyed 617 00:31:39,130 --> 00:31:41,666 because the batteries were left in over the winter. 618 00:31:41,666 --> 00:31:45,270 And oh, it's a problem. 619 00:31:45,637 --> 00:31:48,139 Yes, that's why there's been numerous emails about that. 620 00:31:48,139 --> 00:31:50,742 But anyway, you want to check this out. 621 00:31:50,742 --> 00:31:54,145 And this isn't again, related to just alkaline batteries. 622 00:31:54,145 --> 00:31:55,980 It's basically anything. 623 00:31:55,980 --> 00:31:59,651 If you're going to store your device, it has a battery, pull the battery out of it. 624 00:31:59,651 --> 00:32:02,320 We just did that with your game, boys, Gretchen. 625 00:32:02,320 --> 00:32:05,123 And the batteries looked fine. But it's not that. 626 00:32:05,123 --> 00:32:08,793 It's because they can kind of be fine one day and not the next. 627 00:32:09,260 --> 00:32:11,896 Second rule is if you have something 628 00:32:11,896 --> 00:32:15,600 that you haven't used in a while, don't immediately plug it in. 629 00:32:18,202 --> 00:32:18,736 This is a 630 00:32:18,736 --> 00:32:22,640 common thing to do, but it is something that 631 00:32:23,274 --> 00:32:28,713 you want to really check things through a little bit before you do that. 632 00:32:28,746 --> 00:32:30,882 It can be the difference between having something 633 00:32:30,882 --> 00:32:33,117 that will work again and something that will never work again. 634 00:32:33,117 --> 00:32:36,854 You want to give it an inspection, so there's some things you look for 635 00:32:36,854 --> 00:32:39,257 inside, and we're going to get into this in a little more detail here. 636 00:32:39,257 --> 00:32:42,860 But first of all is swollen or leaking capacitors. 637 00:32:43,161 --> 00:32:44,495 Pastor plague is a thing. 638 00:32:44,495 --> 00:32:46,431 We're going to talk about that in a little bit here. 639 00:32:46,431 --> 00:32:52,203 But these are little round canned devices that are in pretty much everything. 640 00:32:52,203 --> 00:32:54,105 There's different versions of it. 641 00:32:54,105 --> 00:32:58,176 If you're, say, a collector of retro Macintosh stuff, there's surface 642 00:32:58,176 --> 00:33:01,512 mount capacitors that seem to be going bad and eating through everything. 643 00:33:01,946 --> 00:33:03,848 Older stuff might be through hole. 644 00:33:03,848 --> 00:33:06,918 Look online for pictures of these things, but if they're leaking, 645 00:33:06,918 --> 00:33:10,455 if they're swollen, that kind of a thing that can be a problem. 646 00:33:10,455 --> 00:33:13,558 And if you can catch it before they get real bad and replace them, 647 00:33:13,558 --> 00:33:17,095 or at least remove them, you'll save yourself a lot of grief. 648 00:33:17,095 --> 00:33:22,700 So I have a question, because I'm assuming not everybody is a 649 00:33:24,202 --> 00:33:25,870 retro 650 00:33:25,870 --> 00:33:29,707 device enthusiast and understands these things. 651 00:33:29,707 --> 00:33:32,710 What about where do you take this stuff? 652 00:33:33,678 --> 00:33:35,580 What the like? Have someone fix it? 653 00:33:35,580 --> 00:33:39,584 Yeah, or to open it up and look for you if you don't know. 654 00:33:39,817 --> 00:33:40,551 Okay. 655 00:33:40,551 --> 00:33:42,220 The best way to handle something like that. 656 00:33:42,220 --> 00:33:43,621 There. Really? 657 00:33:43,621 --> 00:33:46,991 I'm sure there's still some out there, but like the idea of a television repair 658 00:33:46,991 --> 00:33:49,994 shop or something, or computer repair shop, 659 00:33:49,994 --> 00:33:52,330 these things don't exist like they used to. 660 00:33:52,330 --> 00:33:52,730 And there's 661 00:33:52,730 --> 00:33:54,265 I know there's still a few computer stores 662 00:33:54,265 --> 00:33:56,868 around in things, but even there, if you went in 663 00:33:56,868 --> 00:33:58,069 with something that was 40 years 664 00:33:58,069 --> 00:34:01,472 old, I don't know that they're going to really be able to help you much with it. 665 00:34:01,873 --> 00:34:03,307 The best way is to go online. 666 00:34:03,307 --> 00:34:07,011 There's groups on Facebook and Discord and other places of communities. 667 00:34:07,011 --> 00:34:10,882 There's a lot of enthusiasts and retro technology and specific kinds 668 00:34:10,982 --> 00:34:14,619 where you can usually go online, ask the question, send pictures. 669 00:34:14,619 --> 00:34:17,655 And that's the best way to get advice on these things. 670 00:34:17,655 --> 00:34:21,626 And one of the positives is, is a lot of these groups are starting to manufacture 671 00:34:21,626 --> 00:34:23,594 their own replacements for parts that are long 672 00:34:23,594 --> 00:34:26,531 since out of production and things, so it usually is possible to fix. 673 00:34:27,698 --> 00:34:28,933 But that's where you would go. 674 00:34:28,933 --> 00:34:32,303 And Gretchen, it's also a valid question because in a lot of things you're dealing 675 00:34:32,303 --> 00:34:35,440 with mains voltages. Capacitors hold power. 676 00:34:35,473 --> 00:34:38,176 So you do want to be careful if you don't know what you're doing 677 00:34:38,176 --> 00:34:41,345 or don't know how to do it safely, get some help from somebody that does 678 00:34:41,379 --> 00:34:43,481 and the help is available out there. 679 00:34:43,481 --> 00:34:46,951 There's a lot of people that do different things that do that. 680 00:34:46,984 --> 00:34:49,620 Corroded batteries is something to look for that we just talked about. 681 00:34:49,620 --> 00:34:53,758 Another one is rust and another one that I've run into. 682 00:34:53,791 --> 00:34:58,162 A little bit of a surprise the first time with the arcade cabinets is rodents. 683 00:34:59,097 --> 00:35:01,265 They seem to love to make their nests inside things 684 00:35:01,265 --> 00:35:04,268 like Gaelic games. 685 00:35:05,636 --> 00:35:08,239 And I know when we restored the Wizard of War, there weren't rodents. 686 00:35:08,239 --> 00:35:11,476 But I think there must have been more spiders in that thing than a colony. 687 00:35:11,642 --> 00:35:15,279 It was definitely, you know, stuff you want to look at and deal with. 688 00:35:15,313 --> 00:35:19,317 And the problem with these things is animals get in and will eat wires 689 00:35:19,317 --> 00:35:20,151 and that kind of stuff. 690 00:35:20,151 --> 00:35:24,322 And if you just plug it in, what can happen here is you have a short 691 00:35:24,322 --> 00:35:26,057 and it starts burning stuff up. 692 00:35:26,057 --> 00:35:29,427 If you find the damage and can fix the wiring problem beforehand, 693 00:35:29,427 --> 00:35:31,562 then you won't have that type of a thing. 694 00:35:31,562 --> 00:35:36,000 Other stuff like broken wires and burn components or things to look for. 695 00:35:36,300 --> 00:35:38,803 And one of the other 696 00:35:39,937 --> 00:35:43,074 things that I think it's very important on this is dealing with power supplies. 697 00:35:43,074 --> 00:35:45,376 Now we're getting to an area here where you do 698 00:35:45,376 --> 00:35:48,146 have a little bit of technical expertise to be able to figure this out, 699 00:35:48,146 --> 00:35:52,016 but Commodore 64 computers really suffer from this, 700 00:35:52,016 --> 00:35:56,721 and a lot of other things do where the power supplies, usually 701 00:35:56,721 --> 00:36:00,424 linear power supplies, are two main types of power supplies linear and switching. 702 00:36:00,424 --> 00:36:02,193 Switching are the modern ones. 703 00:36:02,193 --> 00:36:04,695 The older stuff doesn't necessarily have that. 704 00:36:04,695 --> 00:36:08,332 And what will happen is, is when the power supply fails, it'll do 1 or 2 things. 705 00:36:08,332 --> 00:36:11,335 It'll stop working altogether, which is kind of what you hope 706 00:36:11,936 --> 00:36:14,872 it'll start delivering more voltage than it's supposed to. 707 00:36:14,872 --> 00:36:19,977 And that can cause catastrophic failures in whatever your device might be. 708 00:36:19,977 --> 00:36:24,582 And there's actually a really good, in my opinion, content creator 709 00:36:24,582 --> 00:36:28,986 called the eight bit guy on YouTube that had this happen on one of his episodes, 710 00:36:28,986 --> 00:36:31,989 he was showing off a voice system on his Commodore 64, 711 00:36:31,989 --> 00:36:32,590 and all of a sudden 712 00:36:32,590 --> 00:36:36,260 the whole thing stopped working and he was on a regular power supply 713 00:36:36,260 --> 00:36:38,496 and it burned out the cartridge, the computer, 714 00:36:38,496 --> 00:36:42,400 the voice synthesizer module, which was kind of unique, and everything 715 00:36:42,400 --> 00:36:44,669 else that was connected to it because it went from delivering, 716 00:36:44,669 --> 00:36:49,240 I think, nine volts to 40 in the space of about ten minutes. So 717 00:36:50,241 --> 00:36:52,944 it is worth the investment to replace some of these things. 718 00:36:52,944 --> 00:36:54,345 Now, on the things like the 719 00:36:54,345 --> 00:36:58,683 Atari computers and the Sega consoles and some of these other things, 720 00:36:58,716 --> 00:37:00,251 they actually do run off five volts. 721 00:37:00,251 --> 00:37:03,020 So there's some kits out there you can get to convert them over to USB. 722 00:37:03,020 --> 00:37:07,959 So you no longer even need the power bricks, which is really kind of nice. 723 00:37:07,992 --> 00:37:12,363 You know, I have an Atari XJS eight bit computer, 724 00:37:12,363 --> 00:37:16,033 which was a video game console based on their original eight bit line 725 00:37:16,133 --> 00:37:19,637 that came out in the late 80s, that I just have a converter 726 00:37:19,637 --> 00:37:20,705 and I plug it into USB, 727 00:37:20,705 --> 00:37:23,708 and the original power brick was this big, huge, heavy thing. 728 00:37:23,741 --> 00:37:27,311 The USB is regulated, you know, and all of that type of thing. 729 00:37:27,311 --> 00:37:30,381 So it saved having to buy what would have been an $80 power 730 00:37:30,381 --> 00:37:33,217 supply replacement, and it's safer to use it that way. 731 00:37:33,217 --> 00:37:33,918 So it's an option. 732 00:37:33,918 --> 00:37:36,921 Not everything you can do that way, but that is definitely something 733 00:37:37,154 --> 00:37:37,788 that's the case. 734 00:37:37,788 --> 00:37:39,457 And then the other thing of it is, is to see 735 00:37:39,457 --> 00:37:43,160 if someone else has been in there before you previous repairs. I 736 00:37:44,095 --> 00:37:46,530 commend the community and you've got to learn somewhere, 737 00:37:46,530 --> 00:37:48,099 and there's nothing wrong with that. 738 00:37:48,099 --> 00:37:52,270 But a lot of retro equipment you get now might be someone else's project 739 00:37:52,270 --> 00:37:55,506 that they've given up on, so you want to make sure that they didn't 740 00:37:55,506 --> 00:37:59,710 do something that is going to cause problems, you know, that kind of a thing. 741 00:37:59,710 --> 00:38:02,113 And if they did repair something that's done correctly, 742 00:38:02,113 --> 00:38:04,348 my experience with that is most of the time it is. 743 00:38:04,348 --> 00:38:07,551 But there are times I've run into some really weird things. 744 00:38:07,585 --> 00:38:10,154 A lot can happen in 40 years, you know? 745 00:38:10,154 --> 00:38:10,755 Yeah. 746 00:38:10,755 --> 00:38:15,593 So again, your power source is batteries and your 747 00:38:16,827 --> 00:38:18,996 power supplies are a big deal. 748 00:38:18,996 --> 00:38:22,533 There was another thing that you would bring up when we're trying 749 00:38:22,533 --> 00:38:27,505 to open something that is like 40 or 30 years old, that some of the plastic 750 00:38:27,505 --> 00:38:30,975 can get kind of brittle and you have to be really careful. 751 00:38:31,275 --> 00:38:34,111 Otherwise you might actually break it, like 752 00:38:34,111 --> 00:38:37,682 I kind of did on my Merlin brittle plastic. 753 00:38:37,748 --> 00:38:39,116 Yes. Yeah. 754 00:38:39,116 --> 00:38:43,020 And I think it's a good point to remember this equipment was not made 755 00:38:43,020 --> 00:38:47,058 from the concept of somebody's going to be using it 40 years from now. 756 00:38:47,391 --> 00:38:47,858 Yeah. 757 00:38:47,858 --> 00:38:49,994 The only reason arcade cabinets are built 758 00:38:49,994 --> 00:38:51,962 as well as they are, because they were in an environment 759 00:38:51,962 --> 00:38:53,798 where they were going to be abused and in arcade. 760 00:38:53,798 --> 00:38:54,999 So that helps. 761 00:38:54,999 --> 00:38:59,637 But again, the idea is not that we're making something that you can use, 762 00:38:59,670 --> 00:39:00,638 you know, on down the road. 763 00:39:00,638 --> 00:39:03,074 So yes, the plastics are a big deal. 764 00:39:03,074 --> 00:39:03,974 Things break. 765 00:39:03,974 --> 00:39:04,508 Now, Gretchen, 766 00:39:04,508 --> 00:39:09,080 you're talking about a merlin, which is a late 70s little handheld game. 767 00:39:10,548 --> 00:39:12,083 Tell us a little bit about it. 768 00:39:12,083 --> 00:39:14,318 Oh, it was it kind of looked like a telephone. 769 00:39:14,318 --> 00:39:18,856 And there were a variety of, like, sound and memory games 770 00:39:18,856 --> 00:39:21,859 that you could play with it and it 771 00:39:21,892 --> 00:39:24,628 you would just play these different games. 772 00:39:24,628 --> 00:39:28,065 And it had was batteries that you would use 773 00:39:28,065 --> 00:39:31,902 and yeah, you had me 774 00:39:32,002 --> 00:39:35,940 checking it to make sure the batteries didn't do something bad. 775 00:39:35,940 --> 00:39:36,907 And they did. 776 00:39:36,907 --> 00:39:41,245 But when I was trying to open it and I wasn't rough with it, I, 777 00:39:41,545 --> 00:39:43,881 I broke the back door. Yeah. 778 00:39:43,881 --> 00:39:48,786 And you had to have someone do a special repair for me. 779 00:39:48,819 --> 00:39:50,521 Replacement for it. So. Yeah. 780 00:39:50,521 --> 00:39:54,058 So Gretchen's 1978 in box Merlin 781 00:39:54,291 --> 00:39:56,460 with the instructions, with the instructions 782 00:39:56,460 --> 00:39:59,997 and the original carton and in perfect cosmetic condition 783 00:40:00,030 --> 00:40:01,399 after we hired an armored car 784 00:40:01,399 --> 00:40:05,136 to bring it from her house to my lab, we got it out to take a look at it. 785 00:40:05,136 --> 00:40:07,338 And the the battery cover had just broken. 786 00:40:07,338 --> 00:40:09,073 And again, nothing you did wrong. 787 00:40:09,073 --> 00:40:11,242 It just broke because of the age. 788 00:40:11,242 --> 00:40:11,609 Yeah. 789 00:40:11,609 --> 00:40:14,311 And yeah, the batteries had leaked in that one quite badly. 790 00:40:14,311 --> 00:40:19,183 We actually had to change the keypad on it because it had gotten into the contacts, 791 00:40:19,216 --> 00:40:22,219 the battery acid. 792 00:40:22,219 --> 00:40:24,822 And, you know, again, fortunately, there's 793 00:40:24,822 --> 00:40:27,825 enough of a community that you're able to get the parts. 794 00:40:28,025 --> 00:40:29,493 You got to find the blip. 795 00:40:29,493 --> 00:40:31,061 I got to find the blip and the 796 00:40:31,061 --> 00:40:34,265 and the other little game that looks like you're playing baseball. 797 00:40:34,298 --> 00:40:38,235 It was really popular during the mid 70s. 798 00:40:38,269 --> 00:40:39,136 These little hand. 799 00:40:39,136 --> 00:40:44,041 There was football, baseball and basketball, and I had the baseball one 800 00:40:44,041 --> 00:40:47,878 and a little red dot would, you know, go around to the bases. 801 00:40:48,746 --> 00:40:51,816 I'm sure anybody my age would go, 802 00:40:51,816 --> 00:40:55,352 oh yeah, I remember somebody who had one series of games like that. 803 00:40:55,386 --> 00:40:57,354 They are mechanical. 804 00:40:57,354 --> 00:40:59,056 And that's the other thing you want to think about 805 00:40:59,056 --> 00:41:01,592 is you don't want to just throw batteries in them, because little motor 806 00:41:01,592 --> 00:41:02,960 sees up over time and stuff. 807 00:41:02,960 --> 00:41:05,763 And in a lot of cases, if you go through and lubricate the thing 808 00:41:05,763 --> 00:41:08,032 and you'll get it back and running, but if you put power to it 809 00:41:08,032 --> 00:41:10,935 and the motor can't work, it'll just burn it out. 810 00:41:10,935 --> 00:41:14,171 And that can be unobtainable to try to replace those. 811 00:41:14,171 --> 00:41:15,773 So, you know 812 00:41:16,907 --> 00:41:18,275 again I think all right. 813 00:41:18,275 --> 00:41:19,777 So let's talk capacitors a little bit 814 00:41:19,777 --> 00:41:22,313 because we kind of talked about this in the beginning of this segment. 815 00:41:22,313 --> 00:41:24,515 And this is something I get a lot of questions on. 816 00:41:24,515 --> 00:41:29,787 And again if you are somebody that's just getting into this or just curious, 817 00:41:29,787 --> 00:41:33,290 there's a lot of places to go online and watch videos about capacitors. 818 00:41:33,290 --> 00:41:34,825 Even look at pictures to see what they are. 819 00:41:34,825 --> 00:41:36,961 They come in a lot of different styles and designs. 820 00:41:36,961 --> 00:41:39,663 A little too much of a deep dive to get into here, 821 00:41:39,663 --> 00:41:42,032 except for one style which is called an electrolytic 822 00:41:42,032 --> 00:41:44,668 capacitors, which seems to cause a lot of problems. 823 00:41:44,668 --> 00:41:50,107 And what happens is they start leaking and the solution 824 00:41:50,107 --> 00:41:53,677 in that stuff starts leaking and it will get into everything else. 825 00:41:53,677 --> 00:41:56,180 I've seen pinball machines where capacitors 826 00:41:56,180 --> 00:41:57,982 and batteries have leaked, and it actually starts 827 00:41:57,982 --> 00:42:00,751 going over the wiring from one board to the other. Somehow. 828 00:42:00,751 --> 00:42:02,453 I do not know how that works. 829 00:42:02,453 --> 00:42:05,356 I'm sure somebody in the chemistry could describe it, but it is. 830 00:42:05,356 --> 00:42:07,691 It's like getting cancer in it 831 00:42:07,691 --> 00:42:11,161 and trying to get rid of it can be a huge, huge mess. 832 00:42:11,161 --> 00:42:15,466 But the YouTube community seems to have this idea 833 00:42:15,666 --> 00:42:18,502 that the first thing you should do is replace all the capacitors. 834 00:42:18,502 --> 00:42:21,071 And this is also not true. 835 00:42:21,071 --> 00:42:24,441 Not every capacitor is a bad capacitor, and you have to look at some different 836 00:42:24,441 --> 00:42:27,411 things and decide what's going on from that. 837 00:42:27,611 --> 00:42:28,913 These have gone through phases. 838 00:42:28,913 --> 00:42:31,815 So in the 90s there was a bad capacitor time. 839 00:42:31,815 --> 00:42:36,353 And you were talking about in the 2000 this happened to I think, yeah, around 840 00:42:36,353 --> 00:42:40,591 2007, 2008, at least it happened in Dell. 841 00:42:40,791 --> 00:42:41,959 Yeah. I'll just be honest. 842 00:42:41,959 --> 00:42:45,029 It was a double computer problem and it was one system 843 00:42:45,029 --> 00:42:46,864 and they got a bad running capacitors. 844 00:42:46,864 --> 00:42:49,733 And I probably swapped out 100 motherboards. 845 00:42:49,733 --> 00:42:53,370 So you were actually involved in the in the repair of that at that time. 846 00:42:53,370 --> 00:42:55,573 Because I know there's a lot of accusations 847 00:42:55,573 --> 00:42:58,842 that Dell wasn't completely coming clean on what was going on either. 848 00:42:58,876 --> 00:43:02,112 And it was a situation 849 00:43:02,146 --> 00:43:06,650 where Inspiron I think wasn't an Inspiron that were experiencing spirit. 850 00:43:06,650 --> 00:43:10,521 Yeah, yeah, it was it was a it was a business computer. 851 00:43:10,721 --> 00:43:10,988 Yeah. 852 00:43:10,988 --> 00:43:15,259 It's the kind of dark gray black box that everyone had. 853 00:43:15,693 --> 00:43:17,494 And it believe it or not. 854 00:43:17,494 --> 00:43:20,497 Those are retro and somewhat collectible now. 855 00:43:20,497 --> 00:43:25,002 And and what Bill is talking about is they got bad capacitors. 856 00:43:25,069 --> 00:43:28,372 The story on this and I haven't been able to verify it, 857 00:43:28,372 --> 00:43:33,210 is that the company that was manufacturing the capacitors originally, Dale 858 00:43:33,210 --> 00:43:36,680 went to another company to source them cheaper, and it was like 859 00:43:36,680 --> 00:43:40,551 some sort of an industrial espionage thing that the original engineer 860 00:43:40,551 --> 00:43:43,354 that was making them for the company that originally manufactured 861 00:43:43,354 --> 00:43:47,424 and moved to this other company, but wasn't given the whole formula. 862 00:43:47,424 --> 00:43:51,762 So what he started doing based on their original thing, 863 00:43:51,762 --> 00:43:53,931 created a capacitor that was good for a year or two 864 00:43:53,931 --> 00:43:56,934 and then would start leaking because it was missing stuff. 865 00:43:57,034 --> 00:43:59,436 I'm sure there's a better way to explain that, but 866 00:44:00,504 --> 00:44:02,272 wow. And that sense, you know, 867 00:44:02,272 --> 00:44:05,175 that's what we were dealing with, which means you have a period in there 868 00:44:05,175 --> 00:44:10,881 where your computer, if you don't change the caps, it's probably already too late. 869 00:44:10,881 --> 00:44:11,749 And if you're lucky enough 870 00:44:11,749 --> 00:44:13,384 and want one of those, they're becoming collectible 871 00:44:13,384 --> 00:44:16,020 because there's not that many of them still out there. 872 00:44:16,020 --> 00:44:19,757 The other one that we talked about was the early Macs. 873 00:44:19,757 --> 00:44:23,794 So this would be like your Mac classic, your tools that era 874 00:44:24,194 --> 00:44:28,799 the onboard capacitors, especially on the logic board. 875 00:44:28,799 --> 00:44:32,302 The analog board fared a little better, but they can have their problems too. 876 00:44:32,336 --> 00:44:35,673 But the logic board, the surface mount caps start leaking. 877 00:44:35,673 --> 00:44:39,476 And then if you have your pyramid battery blow up on top of that, 878 00:44:39,510 --> 00:44:42,579 you have a toxic wasteland inside of that thing 879 00:44:42,579 --> 00:44:45,282 that is going to be very difficult to repair. 880 00:44:45,282 --> 00:44:46,850 And it's gone to an extent 881 00:44:46,850 --> 00:44:49,420 now that in the retro Mac community, they actually have people 882 00:44:49,420 --> 00:44:53,590 that have designed new, better boards, some of the chips you can't get any more. 883 00:44:53,590 --> 00:44:56,960 So what you do is you actually have the company like PCB way 884 00:44:56,994 --> 00:45:00,064 or something, manufacture the motherboard, you get it back 885 00:45:00,064 --> 00:45:01,098 and then you transplant 886 00:45:01,098 --> 00:45:03,267 the chips that you can't get to the new one, replace 887 00:45:03,267 --> 00:45:05,402 all the other components and repair it that way. 888 00:45:05,402 --> 00:45:08,372 And that's a lot of work. 889 00:45:08,539 --> 00:45:10,340 Oh yeah. 890 00:45:10,340 --> 00:45:13,711 So YouTube creator this does not compute. 891 00:45:13,711 --> 00:45:15,179 Actually did a whole thing on that. 892 00:45:15,179 --> 00:45:18,882 And he actually had some boards made and then had a little problem. 893 00:45:18,882 --> 00:45:20,384 These are some of the other things you have to look for 894 00:45:20,384 --> 00:45:24,021 is that the boards that were made, they put the wrong kind of diodes on it, 895 00:45:24,021 --> 00:45:26,156 so they couldn't get them up and running until they figured it out. 896 00:45:26,156 --> 00:45:28,192 It was a factory error, I think. 897 00:45:28,192 --> 00:45:31,628 So then they had to go through and they had like 50 boards made, 898 00:45:31,662 --> 00:45:34,865 and then they were having to go through and hand replace something like 899 00:45:34,865 --> 00:45:38,302 ten diodes that were surface mount components on each of these boards. 900 00:45:38,302 --> 00:45:40,237 That would be a lot of work to. 901 00:45:40,237 --> 00:45:42,639 But it's, you know, it's part of it. 902 00:45:42,639 --> 00:45:46,877 So if you can save all this by avoiding it, 903 00:45:46,877 --> 00:45:50,948 by changing your capacitors or having somebody do it for you 904 00:45:50,948 --> 00:45:55,586 in the event that it's actually needed, then it will save you some things. 905 00:45:55,586 --> 00:45:57,921 I think batteries are far worse than capacitors though. 906 00:45:57,921 --> 00:46:01,425 And again, it depends on the era I was working on in television, 907 00:46:01,425 --> 00:46:04,661 which is an early game console of the Atari era, early 908 00:46:04,695 --> 00:46:07,698 80s, full of capacitors, and they're all fine. 909 00:46:08,532 --> 00:46:11,869 It's 40 years old, but there's if I replaced them, 910 00:46:11,902 --> 00:46:13,537 what I'm putting in there probably wouldn't 911 00:46:13,537 --> 00:46:15,372 last as long as these would if I leave them alone. 912 00:46:15,372 --> 00:46:19,510 So you do have to consider that as well, you know? 913 00:46:20,177 --> 00:46:25,883 But again, saving this stuff is a matter now of maintenance. 914 00:46:25,883 --> 00:46:29,820 And as time goes by, it's becoming a little bit more and more important. 915 00:46:29,853 --> 00:46:34,591 The other thing that's interesting too, is that I found in some cases 916 00:46:34,591 --> 00:46:37,628 simply removing capacitors in certain situations, 917 00:46:37,628 --> 00:46:39,997 if you're going to store it is actually just fine, 918 00:46:39,997 --> 00:46:43,634 because not having the capacitor in there does not necessarily mean it won't work. 919 00:46:43,634 --> 00:46:46,837 A lot of them are for filtering other things for like line noise and stuff. 920 00:46:47,104 --> 00:46:52,309 Sometimes, if the best way you can tell, usually if you have an issue like this, 921 00:46:52,342 --> 00:46:57,080 if you have a device that is working and it starts to intermittently stop working. 922 00:46:57,114 --> 00:46:59,850 I'm having this right now with one of my weather displays 923 00:46:59,850 --> 00:47:04,822 with a backlight is starting to act up, and it's probably capacitors going out. 924 00:47:04,855 --> 00:47:07,858 It'll light up and sometimes it's dim and that kind of a thing. 925 00:47:07,891 --> 00:47:11,895 These are things to look for that would definitely look at that 926 00:47:11,962 --> 00:47:15,599 kind of a thing as being a problem. So yeah. 927 00:47:19,303 --> 00:47:20,437 Definitely different things 928 00:47:20,437 --> 00:47:24,675 that take about and this is a topic that we could go on for a long time. 929 00:47:24,675 --> 00:47:26,743 I don't know, Bill, have you had any horror stories? 930 00:47:26,743 --> 00:47:27,344 You've run into this? 931 00:47:27,344 --> 00:47:29,947 I know you talked about Dell. 932 00:47:29,947 --> 00:47:31,348 That was the big one. 933 00:47:31,348 --> 00:47:35,252 I mean, I've had a few pieces of other retro tech that I've opened up 934 00:47:35,319 --> 00:47:38,322 that have had bad caps that have popped. 935 00:47:40,357 --> 00:47:42,626 But honestly, my horror 936 00:47:42,626 --> 00:47:45,629 story was a lot wrapped wires. 937 00:47:46,430 --> 00:47:48,398 Oh, oh, tell us. 938 00:47:48,398 --> 00:47:49,800 We've got a few seconds here left. 939 00:47:49,800 --> 00:47:51,401 Tell us about that. 940 00:47:51,401 --> 00:47:55,305 Well, in older electronics, I used to use a lot of cloth wrapped ones 941 00:47:55,305 --> 00:47:58,575 and the cloth would just disintegrate, leaving a completely bare wire. 942 00:47:59,509 --> 00:48:01,912 Oh, okay. 943 00:48:01,912 --> 00:48:04,414 And that can have, you know, what could possibly go wrong there? 944 00:48:04,414 --> 00:48:08,385 You know, like the old Christmas lights. 945 00:48:08,418 --> 00:48:11,154 Really old ones. Well, if you have anything. Yeah. 946 00:48:11,154 --> 00:48:13,957 They use cloth for have wires in the walls at 1.2 947 00:48:13,957 --> 00:48:16,960 I think, you know, it's that was the thing. 948 00:48:16,994 --> 00:48:19,997 The one thing I've run into is I have a really old radio from the 30s I'm 949 00:48:19,997 --> 00:48:24,268 restoring that has asbestos wrapped wires, which is breaking down. 950 00:48:24,268 --> 00:48:25,702 So that's the problem. 951 00:48:25,702 --> 00:48:29,573 Like I'm sending it to a professional to clean that for me, 952 00:48:29,573 --> 00:48:32,376 that knows how to do it properly and dispose of the waste from it, 953 00:48:32,376 --> 00:48:33,143 the way that's safe 954 00:48:33,143 --> 00:48:34,978 and all the rest of it, because that's a little beyond 955 00:48:34,978 --> 00:48:37,581 my capability or anything I'd be comfortable with. 956 00:48:37,581 --> 00:48:41,952 So, you know, definitely things to think about, but do some research online. 957 00:48:41,952 --> 00:48:43,654 If this is something that you're interested in. 958 00:48:43,654 --> 00:48:47,424 There is a huge community of people that are very happy to help and 959 00:48:48,191 --> 00:48:51,295 are absolutely wonderful resources to get this stuff out. 960 00:48:51,295 --> 00:48:53,897 And most of the time, the problem you're having is something 961 00:48:53,897 --> 00:48:57,000 that somebody else has already experienced and found a solution to. 962 00:48:57,034 --> 00:48:58,135 And till next week. 963 00:48:58,135 --> 00:49:01,171 This is user friendly 2.0 keeping you safe on the cutting edge. 964 00:49:01,471 --> 00:49:02,973 User friendly 2.0. 965 00:49:02,973 --> 00:49:06,310 Copyright 2013 to 2026 966 00:49:06,310 --> 00:49:09,780 by User Friendly Media Group incorporated. 967 00:49:09,947 --> 00:49:11,615 All rights reserved. 968 00:49:11,615 --> 00:49:15,819 The content is the opinion of the show's participants and does 969 00:49:15,819 --> 00:49:19,623 not necessarily reflect this station or platform. 970 00:49:19,990 --> 00:49:23,827 Requests for material use, interviews, disclosures, 971 00:49:23,827 --> 00:49:26,830 and other correspondence may be viewed 972 00:49:26,830 --> 00:49:30,167 and submitted at UserFriendly.Show.