The Blog

Mac Web Browsers from the 90s and HTTP/0.9

Nix McRetro // 30th May 2023 // IBM PC, YouTube

Here I was thinking I had an 11-minute voiceover but I misread the timeline. I’ll never use a script, I’m too lazy. Enjoy my half-completed thoughts above. You’ll work it out. The protocol I was wrestling with was HTTP/0.9, not “HTML/0.9”. HTML is the document format; HTTP is the protocol... Continue reading

GeoCities Downtime - WD Blue SA510 1TB WDS100T3B0B Failure

Nix McRetro // 9th April 2023 // Raspberry Pi

GeoCities Downtime - WD Blue SA510 1TB WDS100T3B0B Failure

Back in late December, and I’m talking right on 31 December 2022, GeoCities crashed hard. Its SSD had become unusable for normal writes while running firmware 52008100. Firmware, I’m looking at you! It was a very relevant suspect, though this one failed drive doesn’t prove it was the only possible... Continue reading

Miss Melody ES688 - ESS AudioDrive 688 Capacitor Replacement

Nix McRetro // 2nd April 2023 // Repairs, YouTube

Recently I had the joy of replacing the capacitors on a Miss Melody ES688. The poor thing had NCK-branded caps, which are way past their best-before date. I’ve installed some Panasonics and Rubycons and it’s ready to roll. Just need a machine to test it in. Those old capacitors were... Continue reading

Capacitors Manufacturer Tier List Ranking

Nix McRetro // 1st April 2023 // Repairs

Capacitors Manufacturer Tier List Ranking

I’d previously linked to Tom’s Hardware’s capacitor manufacturer tier list for my Cisco SPA. I was lucky that my capacitors were even on the list. It’s occurred to me that plenty of brands don’t appear anywhere on it, even in tier 4… Being missing from the list isn’t a ranking... Continue reading

TrueNAS Tinkering

Nix McRetro // 27th March 2023 // IBM PC, Nature

Sometime in October 2022 during RetroChallenge 2022/10 I started to tinker with TrueNAS SCALE. I’ve been on the search for more storage for a while now. Well, not more storage, but a way to store my data reliably. I learnt about magical things like ZFS, RAIDZ2, spinning rust, HPE MicroServer... Continue reading