Month: July 2007

  • NZ Automatic Washer History

    Prior to 1984 NZ had import restrictions which meant that washing machines were built in factories around the country. These were often overseas brands assembled locally for domestic demand. There seem to have been three main brands produced: Norge – locally assembled production of the US brand range. A range of models including twin tubs…

  • Maxtor 2F020 HDD

    This is another interesting HDD (20 GB), early 2000s. It’s branded a “Fireball” and thus, possibly, is a relabelled Quantum design. What is interesting about this one is that it has only one head. This is very rare in HDDs because normally you can use both sides of the platter to increase your capacity. The…

  • PC History: Quantum Bigfoot HDD

    The Bigfoot was a rare example of a modern IDE drive produced in the 5 1/4″ form factor. These were a budget drive often found in low end PCs of the time. The capacity started at 1.2 GB and went all the way up to 19.2 GB. This example is 4.3 GB and was installed…

  • Other Technical Topics

    As things have been a bit slow lately and as I can’t be bothered setting up yet another blog, from time to time this blog will divert onto technical but non-computer topics of interest. You may also see technical articles on design aspects of certain types of computer hardware. Both of these areas are different…

  • Using Loopback GPOs

    This is one subject I never did quite get the hang of when I studied GPOs in MOC 2274/2279. The MS documentation for loopback policy is a little confusing. The normal way that GPOs are applied is that the computer configuration part of the GPO is applied to computer accounts, and the user configuration part…

  • MOE creates SMS user groups

    The Ministry of Education recently set up a number of egroups for the different SMSs (Student Management Systems) that they accredited for use in NZ. In addition there is another egroup for the data sharing approval framework. MOE has also announced there are not going to be any more accreditation rounds for SMSs. Instead there…

  • DNSAPI 11163 errors

    In event logs for some of your desktops you might see this message: The system failed to register host (A) resource records (RRs) for network adapterwith settings: [Followed by network adapter information] The reason the system could not register these RRs was because the DNS server failed the update request… What you can expect to…

  • Vista not offered on TELA laptops yet

    Rumour has it that XP OEM licenses will be phased out in January. Some TELA laptop vendors are certified for Vista, but these models aren’t yet being offered to schools for lease. We have some laptops coming up for renewal in September, and I don’t think Vista will be available before then. It may be…

  • Resolving IP address conflicts

    One of the most annoying things you can ever see on a PC is the duplicate IP address warning dialog. If you dismiss this, it pops up again a couple of seconds later and will just keep on doing that until you give up in disgust. There isn’t much documentation to be found on the…

  • 2nd NZ SchoolTech Conference Coming Up

    SchoolTech 07 is coming up in July in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. As with the inaugural conference last year this promises to be a showcase of IT technologies that are of interest to the school sector. Although the range of keynote speakers and topics is new, attendees will see little difference in the vendors’ stalls…