2017

Tech Tips

Checking Out the IBM 5150 I Got for Christmas!

Bec got me an IBM 5150 PC for Christmas! In this video, I swap out the MDA video adapter for a VGA adapter and test it out.

Here’s some details discussed/discovered in the video:

Video Card

Since I don’t have an MDA monitor, I install an 8-bit Western Digital PVGA1A-JK based video card. (Thanks to user KD5VMF for his/her knowledge of the video card dip switches posted here on the Vintage Computer Forum: http://www.vcfed.org/forum/archive/in…) Also of note and not shown in the video is that I had to set SW1 switches 5 and 6 to “On” in order for the VGA card to work.

CPU

I also discover the computer has an NEC D8088D CPU installed instead of the stock Intel CPU. This is odd because the two are functionally identical. The original CPU may have went bad but I guess we’ll never know.

IBM DOS and the 5.25″ Floppy Drives

I boot the machine with IBM DOS 3.21 and IBM DOS 3.3. The IBM-branded “A:” drive works. The “B:” drive does not. An attempted repair video will be forthcoming.

Microsoft Windows, Windows 10

How to Upgrade from Windows 10 Home to Windows 10 Pro Using a Cheap OEM Key

I just bought a Lenovo Yoga 720-13ikb laptop to replace a broken laptop that wasn’t worth fixing. It’s a great machine, but it came with Windows 10 Home edition. That’s fine for most people, but as a Windows nerd, I need Hyper-V support, the Group Policy editor, the packaged app controls, etc. What to do?

Instead of paying Microsoft’s war price of $99 for the upgrade, I headed on over to Kinguin.net and bought a Windows 10 Pro OEM Key (with buyer protection) for $35. (Note: I was leery of Kinguin.net for years because the prices were too good to be true, but I have since bought four OEM keys from them in the last year and they all worked just fine. Kinguin just exploits the fact that Microsoft sells OEM keys in other countries dirt cheap and it is legal to activate said keys anywhere in the world.)

With this new machine, I did have a problem using this cheap OEM key, but it turns out it wasn’t the key but rather how Microsoft handles upgrades from an OEM version of Windows 10 Home (in this case from Lenovo) to a generic OEM Windows 10 Pro key. When I went to Settings > Activation > Change Product Key, the key simply wouldn’t work and I got error code 0xC004F050 which was no help at all.

After a lot of Googling, I figured out what to do to get my cheap Windows 10 Pro OEM key to work:

  1. Go to Settings > Activation > Change Product Key
  2. Enter the following generic Windows 10 Pro key: VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T
    Note:
    that there is nothing nefarious or illegal about this product key and it IS NOT any sort of piracy to use it. This key is what is known as a Release to Manufacturing (RTM) key and is used to install Windows 10 Pro for a trial period. Very importantly (and I’m not responsible if you don’t heed this caveat), this key DOES NOT and WILL NOT activate Windows 10 Pro, it will merely allow you to a) install Windows 10 Pro from scratch for testing purposes or b) allow you to force Windows 10 Home to upgrade to Pro (and then supply your own key when the upgrade is complete).
  3. After entering the key and clicking Accept, Windows will spring into action and do the upgrade process. (Basically, it just enables a bunch of features that are disabled in the install.) My new machine took less than 5 minutes to upgrade, but every machine is different.
  4. After Windows restarts, Windows 10 Pro is installed but not activated. To activate it, once again go to Settings > Activation > Change Product Key. This time, enter your valid Windows 10 Pro OEM code (from Kinguin or elsewhere), and click Activate Windows.
  5. Enjoy all the enhanced nerdy goodness at a very discounted price.

Bonus Tip: For anyone who wants to build a computer from scratch, these cheap OEM keys can also be used for totally fresh installs of Windows 10 (i.e. they’re not just for upgrades).

Tech Tips

What is Ransomware?

There’s a scary threat sweeping the computing world known as ransomware. Ransomware is a type of harmful software that makes your data unreadable unless you pay the creator money to make it readable again. And, unlike the threats of yesteryear (i.e. viruses, Trojans, rootkits, etc.), it is extremely unlikely that any antivirus software can help you recover your data because it is encrypted in such a way that even a supercomputer can’t easily descramble it. Even worse, most users don’t do anything wrong to get infected. Clever hackers have figured out how to infect machines by infecting perfectly reputable websites with malware that installs the ransomware just from visiting.

When users are infected with ransomware, they are normally greeted with a sort of virtual ransom note  that explains how much it will cost to get their data back, how long they have to pay up, and where to send the money. If you don’t pay, the bad guys delete the key and your data is lost forever because the key is nearly impossible to guess. If you’re wondering why law enforcement can’t just trace the accounts where the ransom money gets deposited, it’s because payment must be made in Bitcoin, which is an odd currency born on the Internet that gets traded and exchanged for actual monies on some of the darkest corners of the Internet. This ensures there is no paper trail to follow. Most ransomware makers will decrypt your files if you pay as instructed, but there’s absolutely no guarantee your infector will follow through.

The only thing you can do to protect yourself is back up your important files often onto something that can’t be changed by ransomware if it finds its way onto your computer. Flash drives are great because you can make the backup and disconnect it from the machine. Even better is the old-school method of burning your important files to a CD or DVD because the ransomware can’t change the data because optical discs are read-only once burned. Hopefully, the antivirus makers will figure out how to neutralize ransomware, but for now, backup often or literally pay for it later.

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