Ariel Millennium Thornton @arielmt@computerfairi.es

Put a giant black panel or posterboard in your lap while sitting in front of it, or rig one to hang from your neck or shoulders while standing in front of it, to minimize reflections.

Perk: If you can cover your face as well (& still see through it), it's a half decent privacy screen as well.

Almost.
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And repaired! (I made it mine in 1998; don't judge.)

I love the "horny people are X" toots @beth bot is doing.

It wouldn't have taken so long or been so worth it today if it wasn't my first laptop or one that runs Windows *without* Internet Explorer. (Yes, IE was actually optional back when I first got it.)

I'm excited to finish a PC repair that I started 16 1/2 years ago. I thought it would never happen.

Have you ever been up all night tearing your house apart, looking for just one little thing that you know for certain you've hung on to for literally half your life? I can now say I have, unsuccessfully at that, & my body's going to pay for it tomorrow. (Oh crap, it *is* tomorrow!)

Also, I learned the hard way that even though the 5150, XT, AT, & pre-PS/2 IBM clones all have physically compatible keyboard sockets (5-pin DIN, just like MIDI sockets), the 5150 & XT use an incompatible protocol, so AT-style keyboards won't work unless they have an XT-mode switch.

If you thought IDE hard drives were becoming scarce, just try what I spent the last few hours doing and shop for an ESDI hard drive.

I'm trying to restore a trash-picked (& VG condition) IBM 5160 (the PC XT) that turns out to have been complete except for HDD & keyboard. The rescue included an amber MDA monitor & ESDI controller with cables, though I didn't recognize the controller until today.

Going with an IDE controller & CF or SD adapter is an option, I suppose.

I came across & re-read a computer magazine from January 1998. An average laptop cost $3,000-$5,000, an average decent desktop cost $2,000-$3,500, and a barebones desktop without even a hard drive might've been had for $1,000 if you shopped around a lot. I remember eventually buying a Compaq Presario 1690 later that year (or early '99) for $4,000. It's amazing how much prices have changed in the 20 years since, even without adjusting for inflation.
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I'm saving LB for the next time a customer asks me why the Internet crashed.