fsr help

 all because the gemhost disallows requests from http proxies

### hardware ive had books on bottom-up approaches to computer hardware, they get as thick as my fist and are no replacement for hands-on experience (and practice). which doesnt make them useless, it makes them tedious. theyre also interesting. get one to poke at if you feel like it, just dont be overwhelmed by the fact that the text in there goes WAY beyond all the rambling youve seen here. i mean it may seem like ive talked a lot, but print it out and stick it next to a hardware manual for a basic certification in repair. the tech keeps changing but i like a top-down approach. when stuff is new it seems very complex, and it is, but when you look back (or salvage hardware) some people will be very detail-oriented (thats great) and unless youre doing a full restoration, most salvage is going to be seating cards and cables, replacing a thing that isnt working, wiping the outside down and the rest is software. and by "full restoration" i mean you can do a labour of love, you can take it all apart and put it back together, but the more things you work on the less its like that. let me tell you what i used to do. i used to try to find ways to get people to use a new operating system- i tried advocacy, i tried helping with installs, i tried getting people to do dual-boot, i tried offering to fix someones old machine they didnt want anymore but still refused to throw out. none of that worked. people who "arent computer people" (youre a computer person by the way, because youre interested and passionate about it. forget about whether youre "qualified" yet, thats a matter of experience. its the passion that makes you what you are) refuse to throw things out sometimes because they see it as throwing out the value of the thing they dont use anymore (this isnt limited to computers) but its not worth the value of fixing it, and they see free repair as worthless. thats a broad brush i know, im only talking about the people who do that but its a lot. and i totally understand that people (who dont even know where the DATA IS) figure their data is secure if they stick it in a closet, but that it might get stolen (theyre not wrong) if they throw it away or sell the thing. so they have to trust someone (not a random nerd looking for free parts) enough to let them have their credit card data and WEB HISTORY, which they figure might be on the machine. again, im talking about people who have held onto this for a few years and have no intention of ever spending money doing anything with it. finally i started telling people that i fix machines and give them away (this is true) and that if theyre concerned about data im happy to take the drive out in front of them and hand it to them. most are content with that, and rarely do i have to take the drive out. there are various tools for due dilligence that go beyond just writing 0s to the drive. but just as often i would pick up computers for like 20 a piece that were being thrown out in bulk. then i would install a free os, and the only trick is getting someone to take the thing. whats funny is if people see a computer they have no personal history with, they assume its working (which is a good thing, if youve assured its working fine) as opposed to their "broken" computer that they will never trust again, even if you install a brand new operating system. like theres a seal somewhere that says "works unless seal broken" and the first time something goes really, really wrong theres nothing you can do but throw it out. dont try to explain it, they dont care. theyve washed their hands of it and bought a new one. this isnt everybody but a lot of people are like this. the way i got everyday people (who dont care about free operating systems, although the main reason to do this was to promote free operating systems) to use something other than windows was to wait until someone i knew had a "broken" computer and then say "hey, ive got this one that STILL WORKS" if you want it. and they dont, because they already have one computer they have to find a place and plug-in for, and now they have to find another one. but you could loan them one and they dont want that either, because then they will use it and have to give it back and thats no good. so you just cut through all that and tell them youll loan it to them (so they dont have to keep it) and if they want it they can have it (so they dont have to give it back) and THATS how i started getting people to use free operating systems. they were too cheap (i am too) to get someone to keep fixing their non-free machine, and too particular until you gave them a choice that didnt somehow inconvenience them or trip some objection. so lets talk about computers in a way thats as top-down as possible, so it will maximise how relevant it is whether you go forward or backward in time. or whether youre talking about desktops or laptops or phones or tablets or single-board-computers (sbcs). its going to seem silly, but getting back to the idea of layers we start with the outside of the computer- the part everyone interacts with and knows. the top layer of the hardware is the outside of it. if you want to quibble and say the top layer is the peripherals you connect to it, im not sure you want to do that (maybe later youll guess why) but you can, so its fine. if you have a smartphone, my condolances, unplug it from everything (charger, wired headphones if it still accepts those) and take a look at it. until the point where apples phone technology refuses to have any physical ports and only has wireless charging (at which point we can just call it the wireless charging "port") but, look at the ports on your phone. at one point i got a used macbook for free and the only port it had was the usb-c "charger", and i forgot that my usb-c-to-usb-2 adapter would probably be able to access that and only thought of it as a charging port. so for about a year i didnt try booting any other os on it. but after i established enough features were reliable without mac os, eventually i removed the mac os partition entirely. it wasnt a decision i made lightly, mac os uses efi. part of efi is on the partition and i was worried i would brick the thing. but i managed. at most your phone probably has two ports, the charger and the headphone jack if the latter isnt omitted. so you just watch stuff or look up stuff (because youre interested in computers, right?) about each of those ports, until you feel you know what there is to know about them. dont worry about what you do and dont understand, just pick up what you can and leave the rest, like its a thrift store that says "if you can carry it out, its free". theres great advice for what to do with these chapters. think of lain with the pachuke chip, she didnt know what it did or what to do with it- that didnt stop her. by the way, pachuke comes from "pachuco", referencing a japanese take on mexican-american zoot suit culture dating back to the 1930s. i have no idea why the author of the show decided to name the chip that, it was of course believed to be manufactured by the knights. when she got the chip she became a detective, the first step towards her (more or less) becoming a technician or hacker. but she was being a detective before she even learned what the chip did, and she continued being one as she put her tech together. once youve checked out the ports of your computer, there are two paths you can go- one is to leave the thing unopened, which is what i do with phones (except for removing the battery cover, when possible) and most tablets, but some ancient ones even have screws you can undo- and the other is to open the thing. with desktops, these are generally made to be opened. laptops, less so. and laptops range from mediocre to crime against humanity in how poorly they respond to being opened. if you open a laptop, the two things youre most likely to screw up (as in break and have to replace or work around not having) are the very thin, flat cables between the circuit board and the keyboard and the circuit board and the trackpad. even the best laptops can have the worst keyboards and if yours is already short on working keys you might not care about this. i often use laptops as desktops and often dont care if even the screen is broken. im not going to be using it. though an external monitor with the built in laptop screen as a dual monitor setup is not bad either. but honestly if you want to play around with hardware (or even practice installing operating systems) my advice to pretty much anyone is start grabbing some aging hardware as cheap as possible. there are two major advantages to older hardware: one is availability (it tends to be cheaper and more people are getting rid of it) and the other is that its a known, established entity: software support tends to be better. there are limits to both of these: hardware gets so old that availability starts to decline, for example if i want to play around with another 486 dx i might find a dusty one on the cheap or i might find its going for a surprisingly large amount due to the fact that no one makes them anymore, and hasnt in a very long time. i speak from experience, and you just dont know what something will cost when people stop throwing them out in large numbers. also software- and this is criminal, so often stops supporting very old hardware, for example if you want a modern browser you used to be able to install it on a 32-bit os (and a 32-bit machine) until fairly recently. i know the reasons, it just sucks. i only have one 32-bit machine but ive used it to help with os development and the form factor really doesnt exist in 64-bit, so that sucks too. but on average, older stuff is cheaper until its a collectors item (or enough people pretend it is). as such, at some point i end up upgrading only because its getting harder to find the stuff im used to as cheap as it used to be. salvage is based primarily on whats available. retrocomputing is cool, but personally im not terribly interested in a particular era of hardware. im interested in having computers to use and fighting e-waste. i am actually fond of older machines though. if you have spare machines, you can keep the ones you need running and mess with the spares, and you will be fearless. just mind the power supply (whether the laptop or desktop one) because its the part with all the dangerous voltages in it. you dont need or want to take those apart. the same goes for old tube monitors, if you get one. though it wasnt the voltage of those that bothered me the most, it was the fact that they have a vacuum and can implode if you fracture the glass while youre bleeding the excess charge. you probably have to be particularly clumsy or unlucky, but i just stick with lcd screens (or dont open the tube ones at all). theres a lot of bad things you can say about tube monitors, but the picture on a good one is really nice to look at. im a bit of a coward when it comes to that stuff, and someone may tell you im making a big deal about it for nothing. or they might tell you its fair warning, i dont know. with an sbc theyre sort of open by default, but some come built into a keyboard now. at any rate, each computer will effectively offer different levels of difficulty in terms of access to the stuff inside, and sometimes i dont think its worth the trouble. your skill level (as it develops) may lead you to feel differently. if so, cool. inside the computer typically are the power supply (external on most laptops) and circuit boards, ram modules, expansion cards like the tiny one your wifi (maybe also your wireless modem and/or bluetooth) is mounted on, drives, video cable (sometimes sturdier than the keyboard cable at least) and cpu, speakers, cpu and maybe video card fan (or neither on a mac or phone or tablet) and so on. a trick you can easily forget (but try not to) when youre peering inside the machine is that when youre wondering which of those metal boxes is the drive you think it is, to look on the outside for a clue. this only works for drives that are accessed from the front or side of the computer, and not usually for hard drives. this typically works also for cards that go to things like your ethernet cable, if you use one. once upon a time, every device had an expansion card and that wasnt really better. they kept reducing each card (like video or ethernet) to a chip and then putting the chip on the motherboard instead. an sbc takes this idea to its extreme, and they dont usually have expansion boards (unless they use the "i/o header" or two rows of posts on the board) and everything is a chip on the board. as such, ports like the ethernet port would correspond to a physical board, whereas now theyre typically either mounted to the board itself, or theres a header (like a miniature version of the i/o header on an sbc) and a little cable that goes to a connector for the port. these arent as common as they used to be, which is good because they were annoying. also any time you see header pins, unless its for a parallel ata or floppy drive from a particular era, header pins mean you might attach a cable upside-down and maybe fry something. MOST connectors wont let you connect things upside down unless its safe, but headers are an obnoxious exception. serial ata or "sata" drives have a connector that doesnt fit upside down at least, and some older headers are "keyed" (one pin is blocked and missing) so you cant put them on upside down. for the ones that you can put upside down, theres a particular pin and often a stripe on the cable that corresponds to that pin. but it only helps if you line them up. if you dont have a spare or if you havent messed with hardware before, there are lots of youtube videos showing for example, how to take apart different laptops. some are put together in a way that truly defies reason (or particularly defies taking apart) and the youtube videos can help you locate things like that one screw you didnt know was still holding it together but it was hidden. the point of everything in the computer is to move numbers around, store and retrieve numbers, provide power to things that move numbers around or to cool things that move numbers around. the speakers might be an exception because no matter what the company who makes them says, the speakers are always analogue. the circuitry may not be, even if it has to be converted before it goes to the speaker. pretty much every numeric (digital) circuit in the computer has a ground line, data lines and sometimes additional power lines. voltages are usually 5 or 12, and wattages (w) and amperages (a, ma) vary but are related. you wont generally be thinking about voltages and data lines when working with hardware, but they are there and its useful occasionally. its also useful when youre thinking about how the computer works in general. ground lines, data lines and power lines and sometimes ground also apply to things like usb cables and most other peripheral cables. we are getting at the reasons that you cant just connect any computer part to any other part, at least not directly. sometimes, like with some ps2-to-usb adapters, its just a matter of making sure the right wire is connected to the right wire. ive wired a ps2 keyboard connector directly onto an at keyboard and it worked fine. other adapters are active in that you need electronics to manage the difference in voltages or signals, like when i had a vga-to-composite-video adapter. i also had an adapter for usb2 to dvi and hdmi. you wont see that screen when the computer starts up, but once the os is running and xrandr is configured to use the output, its one way to get another screen. broadly speaking, components are connected together through a mutual pairing of voltage, current, data lines and signal/protocol compatibility. the data lines on the main computer board are called the "bus". this is also true of usb components: usb stands for "universal serial bus". the difference between serial and parallel is that a serial data line puts every signal in the same queue, whereas parallel data lines have more than one signal transferring at the same time. you would think that parallel signals are more efficient, faster and high tech. in the early 90s printers were the most common use of the parallel data port. but usb is a much more advanced (and newer) technology than parallel ports, the latter of which are rare on computers newer than a pentium iii. i bought an ancient laser printer for practically nothing (the toner was more) and the newest machine i had that connected to it was a pentium iii laptop. so i put it on the network (with an up to date operating system) and when i wanted to print i would just copy the file to the machine using scp and run the lpr command over ssh to get it to the printer. some printers have their own ethernet connection and thats the best thing, but this was nowhere near that level of printer. usb is faster than an old parallel port, so it doesnt matter that it uses one data queue instead of several. it also lets you connect more than one device to a hub. which brings us to the other consideration when connecting two things together, bandwidth. generally speaking, if you have two devices producing data signals that vary widely in capability, you will need some kind of buffer- temporary "storage" (typically ram of some kind, either on the computer or the device itself) to hold onto to the data until the receiving / transceiving device can deal with it. printing is just one classic example of this. some printers have their own buffer, but the computer must somehow hold onto any print data that the printer hasnt signaled a readiness for. a system without a printer buffer can get tied up before it can print more jobs. technically speaking you can connect any device to any device now, at least in theory. or you have an outline of how that works and you can go from there. protocols often make that a bit trickier than it sounds- a lot of devices have protocols that are elaborate and detailed and not trivial to implement. fortunately youll find there are only so many things you actually want to pair, and barring wireless connections (which will generally simply ignore each other) compatibility is, as mentioned already, generally signified by the shape of the connector. so if it fits, it will generally connect (with some harmless and some occasionally destructive exceptions which you can learn about by simply looking up a particular type of port or bus or connector) and if it doesnt fit, look to see what adapters are available. that stuff about data lines and voltages is more relevant if youre designing a component yourself or being silly and wiring a ps2 connector to an at keyboard. i didnt get instructions for it, i just looked up the "pin out sheet" of each connector and matched them up and hoped for the best. a wrong pairing and old keyboard ports can fry easily. usb ports can fry too, but sometimes modern ports have safety mechanisms (electronic ones) that prevent at least some problems. some ps2-to-at adapters have a cable between the components, but at keyboard connectors are very large and heavy while ps2 connector shells have about half the diameter and dainty little pins. so i thought better than an adapter, why not just upgrade the keyboard? it was one of the ones with red leds in the caps lock and some other key, and probably weighed as much as some laptops. note that im not especially good at this stuff and i didnt go to school for it- being patient and careful and looking things up can go a long way. you dont have to be born with the knack for it. im sure that helps, but passion and enjoyment go a long way too. if you want to recognise components that doesnt take a degree in computer science either, just practice and familiarity. you can watch youtube videos or go to wikipedia or, i would say lain definitely used manuals (we may have even seen her with some) but im guessing she got most of her information off the wired, naturally. it depends on your interest or level of interest. a faster cpu will let you do more, but often the real cpu gains are from having more cores that allow the software to run more than one thread. having more ram will let you run more things with less caching to storage, and if you can get faster ram that is supported by your machine it will do more or less what you expect it to. if you arent made of money or you just love older tech thats hard to upgrade, lighterweight applications (those designed to avoid bloat) are wonderful. you can even make your own. also, you dont have to become an expert to work with hardware, you can do a fair bit with the basics. my main gripe with hardware is whether the operating system will support it or not. this is really true of any operating system. if you learn to write drivers (i havent) youre even better off. but a lot of it is just scavenging for parts and sticking them together when the connectors fit. the best thing to clean the outside of the computer with is 70% isopropyl alcohol. 90% is no good, it will etch plastic and screens. look up whether this is a good idea or not, its what i use but you should make that decision carefully. the best thing to clean circuit components with (but i never do this, i leave them alone) is PROBABLY 90% isopropyl alcohol, but definitely check this to make sure, it might be higher. while this will etch various materials a lower percentage (like 70) contains water that will corrode circuits. not good. its likely obvious, but dont do this to circuits that are powered on, even at low voltage. both of these percentages are highly flammable, as the bottle will tell you. do not store or use ipl near sparks or heat. dont leave it uncapped so that fumes can leak. if i wipe something with isopropyl, whatever i use to wipe it with gets submerged and left in water. dont use another type of alcohol than isopropyl for electronics. it will leave residues you do not want. the next chapter will be a "list" of various bits of hardware and components for you to try to find, either for sale or just pictures online, or in (or on) devices you may own. it isnt recommended that you start opening up machines you rely on until youre more confident what youre doing. i stand by my advice to get your hands on some inexpensive used components to mess around with for experience. if you bother enough people (nicely) its sometimes amazing what people get rid of. ive heard poking around schools at certain times of year (for stuff getting thrown away) can be useful, although its worth noting that so much stuff gets recycled now that a lot of people have contracts with other people to take their stuff away. occasionally you can meet a person or attend a drop-off where if you play your cards right, you can take things away. i once went to a drop-off where they wouldnt let me to take anything with a hard drive, but because i brought a screwdriver and was able to take the drive out on the spot, they let me walk away with a computer or two. this stuff was going to be recycled anyway, but not everyone is keen on you doing this. the following list isnt something you have to bother yourself with (obviously) unless you want to. skip as much of it as you want: => hardware-scavenger-hunt.html hardware-scavenger-hunt => https://fsrhelp.envs.net/ (back to the main page) => https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/fsrhelp.envs.net/ (it wouldve been cooler to do it this way instead) license: 0-clause bsd ``` # 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026 # # Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any # purpose with or without fee is hereby granted. # # THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES # WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF # MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR # ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES # WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN # ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF # OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE. ```