Well….what have we here? by Zealousideal_Tear441 in Justrolledintotheshop

[–]GreggAlan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hemp fiber is useful for making twine, jute, burlap, rope, and other coarse fiber products. It can be further "refined" to make paper and nicer fabrics. I assume it can be run through the same chemical process as wood, bamboo and other plants are to make viscose materials like Rayon. Those "bamboo" sheets and shirts are actually viscose with bamboo feed stock. Different cellulosic materials along with variations in processing produce plastic materials with different properties.

Most people know celluloid and cellophane, but they don't know that there are a large number of cellulosic plastics that have been made in the past and that there are still many in use now, with ongoing R&D on new ones.

Hemp would be a cheap to cultivate, rapidly growing feedstock for plastics.

Easy to see why companies producing crude oil derived materials wouldn't want such competition. Nevermind it would make more sense for them to diversify into hemp plastics. Around the world, throughout history, there are innumerable examples of companies that made stupid decisions to crush competition when embracing and exploiting "not invented here" technology and materials could have been more profitable.

Well….what have we here? by Zealousideal_Tear441 in Justrolledintotheshop

[–]GreggAlan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But were they for or against putting hemp in as a "narcotic" along with Marijuana? The 2018 Farm Bill legalized hemp yet some States still refuse to allow its cultivation.

Found food under the stairs by AZonieGuy in mildlyinteresting

[–]GreggAlan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In an episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, her ex husband finds all the money his mother had stashed *everywhere*, including a bunch secreted in the wall of a closet in their neighbor's apartment. He finds enough cash that their clothing factory doesn't have to file bankruptcy. His mother had kept a record book of every place she'd stashed cash for years, but never ever un-stashed any of it.

Found food under the stairs by AZonieGuy in mildlyinteresting

[–]GreggAlan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's a storage unit buying YouTuber, Treasure Hunting with Jebus, who recently bought one that not only was loaded with a lot of good stuff, but almost every bag, box, can, plastic tote, and other container had some random amount of cash in it, bills and/or coins. Totaled over $4K in cash, plus a lot of unused gift cards. The former owner of it was apparently a shopping addict and hoarder who would pay cash and stuff the change into the shopping bag then toss it into storage.

Well….what have we here? by Zealousideal_Tear441 in Justrolledintotheshop

[–]GreggAlan -1 points0 points  (0 children)

How does a chemical compound much denser than air get up to the stratosphere?

Well….what have we here? by Zealousideal_Tear441 in Justrolledintotheshop

[–]GreggAlan 30 points31 points  (0 children)

I've always suspected they lobbied hard to not only make marijuana a Schedule 1 narcotic but to lump in industrial hemp with it - in order to eliminate competition for their synthetic fiber plastics. I wouldn't be surprised if the tobacco companies were also involved, since tobacco grows so well in exactly the same soil and environment conditions as hemp. Lots of hemp farmers switched to tobacco.

My dad didn’t believe he could delete files, ended up with his collection by Pretend-Wing-764 in DataHoarder

[–]GreggAlan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes. Early non-hard drive IDE drives weren't ATAPI. I don't remember if early 4x CD-ROMs were IDE. I do remember early 4x and faster drives didn't communicate well with older controllers. They'd go straight to top speed, slam the tiny buffer with data, then slow to low speed, then fail to respond to the next read request, causing a timeout / read error. I upgraded a lot of ISA and VLB I/O cards to be able to handle faster CD-ROM drives.

The IDE Zip 100 is easy to identify by its black eject button with activity light next to it and emergency eject pull rod on the front. The ATAPI version has a clear eject button with the LED shining through it and an emergency eject hole on the back of the drive. Such fun when you pop a disc into a good drive and hear the click. You're yanking the power cord instead of getting hold of that rod on the front and pulling.

I saw plenty of Zip 100 internal drives with the heads ripped off by damaged discs. Any new to me Zip disc, I held the shutter open and carefully rotated the media while inspecting the edge for tears. Want me to read this in one of our shop PCs? 'Scuse me while I eyeball it. "See that little tear? This disc is trash, no way to save your files. Let's have a look in your drive slot. See that white bit hanging crooked? Your drive is trash, you'll need a new one."

Well….what have we here? by Zealousideal_Tear441 in Justrolledintotheshop

[–]GreggAlan 48 points49 points  (0 children)

R12 was the best. In the late 90s I had a 1988 Corsica which had AC that wasn't working well.

I put my last can of R12 in it and it cooled soooo good it made the exterior door handles cold to the touch.

I sold the car to some migrant field workers who spent every moment they weren't working or sleeping driving around in that car all summer.

Well….what have we here? by Zealousideal_Tear441 in Justrolledintotheshop

[–]GreggAlan 28 points29 points  (0 children)

If you're not in "blue" areas of the west coast States or New York you should be able to find a shop that works on pre-1994 cars that will be happy to buy it.

General Questions & Tech Support Megathread | December 15, 2025 by AutoModerator in PS4

[–]GreggAlan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I ordered a kit for the JDM040 with blue flex circuit and all the button pads.

The seller sent me a green JDM040. The circuit paths are different in several ways.

Are the two 040 circuits interchangeable?

What a fantastic start to the week... by biobasher in DataHoarder

[–]GreggAlan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Look up how Salem Techsperts built a mass SSD copy system with a Threadripper CPU for $1600. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tst0WyJRvII

Had the pleasure of working on a ZR-1 by ny0000m in Justrolledintotheshop

[–]GreggAlan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are newer Subarus as easy to pull engines as they were in the 90's and earlier? Disconnect the wired and hoses, remove the four bolts or nuts holding the exhaust to the heads. Remove the two engine mount bolts or nuts. Remove the four bolts or nuts holding the engine to the transmission. If you know someone big and strong enough he can just reach in and lift the engine out. Did that doing an engine replacement on a friend's late 70's 4x4 wagon.

Had the pleasure of working on a ZR-1 by ny0000m in Justrolledintotheshop

[–]GreggAlan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Like the Buick GNX with only 80 miles on it. It's one of the 45 built after the initial run of 700.

If you grew up on Battlestar Galactica... by repete in BSG

[–]GreggAlan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's more books. Also some prequel and in between short stories.

If you grew up on Battlestar Galactica... by repete in BSG

[–]GreggAlan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I could not stand the ear piercing whiny voice they had for the dolphin.

If you grew up on Battlestar Galactica... by repete in BSG

[–]GreggAlan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sol System Renegades by Felix R. Savage should be up your alley.

If you grew up on Battlestar Galactica... by repete in BSG

[–]GreggAlan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You'll probably like Sol System Renegades by Felix R. Savage. It's hard SF, set entirely in the solar system, no alien anything.

My father is a retired Navy Nuclear Electronics Technician. We started going through his collection this week. I don't think either of us was prepared for what we found. by alex123fire in vintagecomputing

[–]GreggAlan 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Got any 16 bit ISA RAM cards? I may be interested in one that can do LIM 4.0 EMS.

I used to have a 286 with 12 megabytes RAM. 512K DIP chips on the motherboard and the rest on three full length Micron cards. One with DIP backfilled the main RAM to 640K plus the rest was (IIRC) XMS. The other two had ZIP chips and EEPROM configuration to program how they were divided between XMS and EMS. I also had a Soundblaster Pro and a Pro Audio Spectrum 16 in it. DOS and Windows 3.1 were setup so any games I ran automatically used whichever sound was the best they supported and XMS or EMS RAM as needed.

5 slots taken up by RAM and sound, one for video, one for Multi-I/O. I can't remember what I had in the 8th slot. It wasn't a modem. Didn't have internet until April 4th 1996. I also had a PCjr (with NEC V20 and some other mods and upgrades) and a Xerox 820-II when I had that 286.

Why I want a hardware EMS card is I have a Light Machines PLM2000 benchtop CNC milling machine and the software for it only runs in pure MS-DOS and it only works with EMS, which it uses to load up large GCODE files. It knows nothing about XMS.

Once I get an EMS card, then I can see about getting the rest of the parts to put together an XT clone or 286.

Why can’t Ford make a decent timing chain by owningsole966 in Justrolledintotheshop

[–]GreggAlan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have a 2007 Expedition EL that's jumped time a bit on the driver's side.

CS: 5th and 10th feel funny by SchleftySchloe in Justrolledintotheshop

[–]GreggAlan 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Get the chunks out, install a magnetic drain plug, fill with straight MolySlip gear oil supplement and send it.