Ready, Set, STOP

[00:00:06] Speaker A: Are you in a constant fight with your technology? And does it seem like the technology is winning? Well, you've come to the right place. It's time for Battle Born Tech with your host, Christy. [00:00:28] Speaker B: Even though you're wondering if Claude can file an HR computer complaint, stop chatting and listen to Battleborn Tech Now. And every Tuesday at 8pm Pacific Broadcasting in Carson City, Nevada on 95.1 FM, streaming everywhere on knbc.org and available anytime on your favorite podcast app. Just search for Battle Born Tech. Rejected by your publisher. Microsoft retired it and your files are orphans. Call Battleborn Tech, 775-241-3571. We'll get your text back on the same page. 775241, 3571. Opinions on Battleborn Tech are those of the hosts and callers this week. We welcome Steve, Teresa and Josh. The opinions expressed on this show does not necessarily reflect those of KNVC or Computer Corps. Some of us learned to program in C back when a pointer doing magic was bad news. [00:01:31] Speaker A: Yep, AX into ac. Back into ax. Yeah, sure. [00:01:36] Speaker B: Or Hex. D, E, A, D, B, E, F. Dead Beef was something you didn't want to see in a pointer. [00:01:46] Speaker A: No, you didn't. All right. So speaking of Microsoft retiring things, how about that October 12th deadline? [00:01:57] Speaker B: That's right. We've been telling you for a long time that October 12th yesterday was the last day for security Updates for Windows 10. But now it has been moved on to another year. There's nothing you need to do to do that. To make sure that you're still on it, tick a couple of things. Make sure you're on the final version of Windows 10 22H2 and you're getting updates. If you're not sure, type Winverse W I N V E R and hit Enter. The little window will come up and tell you what you got. Now this is security fixes only. No new features, no help. It's a bridge, not a destination. [00:02:38] Speaker A: We got our first phone call of the day. This is Steve. Steve is looking for Linux. That sounds like a country song title in all the wrong places. All right, let's see what we do [00:02:50] Speaker C: for Steve Matter Born Tech. Go ahead, caller. [00:02:53] Speaker D: Yeah, I was calling today because I got a question. I got an older machine that said 32 bit and I wanted to run Linux on it because you can't run. It did have Windows XP on it years ago, but I took it off and, and put Linux on. And over the years it's like 10 years old, 15 years old. So it stopped working. So I Wanted to get a. A Linux operating system that would work on it. So I looked for this online and told it I had a atom n270 okay processor and what would be the best thing to run on it. And it came back with two things. One was Bionic Pup 32 which was [00:03:40] Speaker C: good old Puppy Linux. Yeah, yeah. [00:03:43] Speaker D: And it would only run in. In ram. So you load it in from a USB and you take the USB out and you can run it as soon as you shut the machine off. Then it goes away. [00:03:54] Speaker C: Yeah, that's some. Some distros are famous. Tails is the more robust mainstream one. But sure, yeah. Okay, well sounds like you're going along. So what else happened? [00:04:06] Speaker D: So what I decided to do was look for another one and so I went online and said I have an Atom N270 processor and what would be the best thing to run and it told me it's the maximum for that is 2 gigabytes of RAM. So I could. I had one. So I got a 2 gigabyte stick and put it in and then I downloaded what they recommended. It's called ATN I R A N T I X is 32 bit operating system that would be the best for the processor that I had. So I got that and loaded it to the machine and it automatically went in and reported the hard drive, made a swap file, did everything it needed to do and then. [00:04:53] Speaker C: Great. Yeah. Puppy Linux Linux Frugal Linux doesn't do that for you. Wants you to run G Parted the, the basic Linux partitioning thing. Run G Parted to prepare the drive if it's not already a linu. So yeah, that was a good choice because if you went with Puppy you'd have to format the drive with G parts in, which isn't awful, but is something you gotta. Gotta kind of know what you're doing and make sure of course that you partition the right one. But ANTI X did it all for you. [00:05:31] Speaker D: Yeah, I did everything. The only thing that I'm having trouble with now is connecting to my WI FI at home. [00:05:39] Speaker C: And I talked. [00:05:40] Speaker D: I talked to Larry that works at Computer Core and he told me, you know, it connects a computer core because we have an older WI FI setup and I have a new router. He said. So probably what you need to do is get external WI FI from this store. And so I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that and see [00:06:01] Speaker C: if you can get a newer driver. Do you think it's that's possible for Anti X? [00:06:07] Speaker D: I don't know about the driver. But I, I know I can get an external that'll plug into the USB and, and bypass that. [00:06:15] Speaker C: Okay, that's still the. Yeah, that's still the. I don't know if that would work or not. I don't know if that would upgrade. I would think it had less chance of working than out of the box because you got, you got a lot of drivers to run through that. You mean like a USB external? [00:06:33] Speaker D: Yeah, exactly. [00:06:34] Speaker C: Well, good luck on that. I don't know. Yeah, maybe. Huh. Well, if it works. It will. One of the things about they might make it small in the 32 bit is they don't have the latest drivers. That. That is very possible. Back in the bad old days of Linux, touchpads and WI fi were the first to go. You can't try to get those to work. And sometimes the screen, the peripherals, but good. Sounds like you're on the way. You can always. Now does that, does that box have a wire Internet for that? [00:07:12] Speaker D: Yeah, it has a plug in for. If you wanted to run it straight from. What is it called? [00:07:20] Speaker C: Yeah, the, the Ethernet cable. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well that should, that should be working. And, and you can, you know, it's not as portable but yeah, you can definitely use that as well. Yeah, you could even, you could even get a. I think you could get. If you wanted a portable one. You're spending some money now. You can do a little pocket WI FI router. Those things are there. And then the WI fi router would be new and it'd be able to talk to everybody and then have it. And then it has a wire connection in the little WI Fi portable WI Fi and then you plug in your puppy Linux and or well, I'm sorry, your Anti X into the WI Fi and you're good to go because you're not doing WI Fi, you're doing Ethernet. So you could do, you know, it's another box to carry, another box to buy. But that, that is what some people do. It sort of acts as a bridge then. [00:08:14] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:08:17] Speaker C: Okay. [00:08:18] Speaker D: It's kind of like an experiment for me because I had this 32 bit machine that I hate to just throw away. Because it still works. [00:08:26] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Well, we salute the refurbishers and the hobbyists and tickers that keep the old technology going. So hey, thanks a lot for telling us. If you're going to go with an old one, you may want to look at Anti X because it does a lot of the work for you where something like the smaller puppy, which, which one did you look at the puppy. [00:08:48] Speaker D: It was called Bionic Pup 30. [00:08:49] Speaker C: Yeah, Bionic Puppy. You have to know something about G Parted too. It's not too much, but it's a. It's another step to look. [00:08:56] Speaker D: Yeah, because the first time I, I tried to load that, it told me that my hard drive wasn't formatted. Right. And. [00:09:02] Speaker C: Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, if you, if you happen to get. Was it a new one or a refurbished one? [00:09:09] Speaker D: The new one. No, I was refurbished one. [00:09:14] Speaker C: Okay. Well, only if you got really lucky. They had it formatted for Linux before you got it. They did it, which I think it was Windows format. Yeah. Or they completely wiped it. Either way, you'd have to jump in the G part it and get your. Get your purchases. But it's good to hear the nix will do that for you. And you know what? You could even do Anti X, let it do it and then. And then fire up another the Puppy Distro. And now the storage drive is formatted correctly. So now you could just go ahead and do Puppy. Puppy copies files over it doesn't format the frugal install. And so it. But if another one, you know, formatted it, it'd be fine. No worries. You could just go ahead with the Puppy links because the storage is already formatted by anti X. [00:10:07] Speaker D: It wouldn't blow away the ANTI X, would it? [00:10:10] Speaker C: Yes, it will. Yes it would. And that's what we want. That's what we would want. All right, well, there's, there's something to think about, you know. Congratulations and thanks for calling about your journey to the 32 bit refurbishing with Linux given new life to old equipment. [00:10:32] Speaker D: Okay, thanks. [00:10:33] Speaker C: All right, bye bye bye now. [00:10:37] Speaker B: Steve ended up not needing this because the installer he went with finally was prepared for drive formatting. It'll make the drive for you, but. That's nice. But if you're looking at Puppy Linux and you ever see an install button going nowhere, here's what's going on. Puppy's installer is a mover, not a builder. It carries the files in, but expects the house already to be standing. In other words, a drive to be partitioned. It has no place to land. So it fails. So what it is. It's right on the Linux distribution. On the Puppy stick, it's called gpartit. Right click on the desktop, look under System for rules. Find your drive by size, not by name. Make sure you partition that right. One click GPT. Right click gray empty space. Choose new and set it for ext4. That's the digit 4 ext4. Nothing happens to hit the green check mark. You do that, then you'll have a place for the installer to run. [00:11:37] Speaker A: Well, we got other news and techniques. [00:11:40] Speaker B: Hey, before we go there, can I finish up on that Windows esu? [00:11:44] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:45] Speaker B: I didn't tell you how to check to see if you're in ESU Extended Service Updates. So what you need to do is check with Start button, Open Settings Update, and Security Check on Windows Update. There should be either you're enrolled in Extended Security Updates text or a link that says Enroll Now. If you're not enrolled, you probably want to be enrolled. So go ahead and click Enroll now and click it through the prompts. You have to sign in with the Microsoft account or back it up your settings and that will get you in for free. And that is yet another year on that. So if you're sticking with 10, you want to make sure you are enrolled. [00:12:26] Speaker A: And it's not like an extended service warranty. This is actually beneficial and gives you security updates. [00:12:34] Speaker B: I was wondering which way you were going with that. Yeah, you get your security fixes. [00:12:38] Speaker A: So we've got another phone call here. This is Teresa. Teresa has a sound bar. However, the sound bar is not serving up anything that's useful. So let's see what we do for Teresa. [00:12:55] Speaker C: Go ahead, caller. Battleborn Tech. [00:12:58] Speaker E: Hi, battleborn Tech, this is Teresa and I have a question for you. I received a sound bar from my cool. My son and I went to plug it in. It has a USB port. Plugging it in and the light comes on, but no sound. [00:13:17] Speaker C: Okay, so you, you plug it in a usb. Are we talking about plugging it into a TV or what are we plugging in? [00:13:26] Speaker E: No, I'm plugging it into my computer. Oh, into my computer in one of the USB ports. And it is. The light comes on, but nothing. No sound. [00:13:39] Speaker F: Okay. [00:13:39] Speaker E: I only have one plug. There's only one plug. [00:13:42] Speaker C: Oh, there's only one plug. It's a usb. [00:13:44] Speaker F: So that's good. [00:13:45] Speaker C: It's made for computers then. Okay. Is it possible that. So you said the light comes on? Well, there is sometimes a power switch. Sometimes it's a little. You got to push a button. That's volume or double thing. That's possible. Where you, where you plug it in? Front or back of the computer or. Probably doesn't matter. [00:14:10] Speaker E: Well, I tried on the front of my computer, on the back side of my actual monitor part. [00:14:15] Speaker C: Oh, oh, on the monitor. Well, that. Here's a thought. Those USBs on the monitor, they they're just decorative. Unless you plug them into. They might have power. I don't know. That may be what? So the USB on the monitor are probably giving you power, but from the monitor, however, to talk to the computer where the sound is. The sound is sitting at the computer. You got to plug the monitor into the computer. Is this like a box, A tower computer? It's not an all in one? [00:14:49] Speaker E: No, it's not an all in one. I have a processor down there. [00:14:53] Speaker C: Well, if you have a. You have a box down there. They sometimes are called CPU if you get fancy. But it's box. Yeah, tower. You need. You need. They sometimes call it a USB cable, USB printer cable, but it's got USB A, the rectangle on one side, and USB B, which is kind of a squarish kind of thing. So you need one of those, and you need to plug that. You need to plug in the USB A, the rectangle into the computer and then run the wire to the back of the monitor. Back of the monitor will have a little squarish usb. It's like an extension cord. So if you plug. If you plug it into the monitor without plugging the monitor USB into the computer, it's like you're plugging in electrical outlets into the surge trip power strip. But you don't plug the power strip into the wall. [00:15:48] Speaker E: I gotcha. [00:15:50] Speaker C: Is that what's going on? You plug it in? [00:15:52] Speaker E: Yeah, that sounds like. Yep, that's what it sounds like. [00:15:55] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, that is, that is. That is. That is like very, very. Not very apparent. I mean, you plug, you see usb, you think it's going. No, you have to. You have to plug it in the computer as well. [00:16:07] Speaker E: Okay. [00:16:07] Speaker C: All right, well, get yourself another USB cable. Sometimes they call it USB printer cable. And plug it in, plug it in, and you should have some good sounds. [00:16:18] Speaker E: Okay, I will do that. Thank you so much. All right, thank you. Bye. Bye. [00:16:25] Speaker B: Unfortunately, there's a lot of way for sound not to come out of your computer. And most of us will be banging away at the settings and looking at the sources, whether it's going out through the HDMI cord or not yet. First thing is make sure it's all hooked up and turned on. And so a lot of those. You look at those ports on the monitor and you think, oh, great, there they are. And you don't think that how does the stuff. The information gets to the monitor, so you got to hook it all the way up to get there. It's a little bit tricky because sometimes they're powered as we talked about, and you think everything's fine, but you don't have the data, the information to get there. So check for that, as well as checking all the settings and the sources and all the other good stuff to where sound can go awry. [00:17:14] Speaker A: All righty. Well, before we wrap up, we just want to let people know that thanks to the problems going on between Ukraine and Russia, bombs and missiles and such, yes, Ukraine did send missiles into the Yandex data centers, which is kind of the Russian Google. And people are reporting that there's less bot traffic, less disinformation traffic. Those bot farms and disinformation centers are still out there. They're still operating. Just the wire was cut, but there are many more wires, so just be prepared that the bots will all come back in force. So I celebrated with everyone else when I was able to go on social media, and it was all nice people for a change. But, yeah, it'll come roaring back with a vengeance just in time for the midterms. [00:18:18] Speaker B: It was all people for a change. It was people for a change instead of bots everywhere. You know, the Internet was designed for war, for nuclear war to survive it, and so heals itself by design, unfortunately. And I wonder how long the Internet would go on talking to each other if all the people suddenly disappeared. [00:18:38] Speaker A: Well, this is a pretty good resiliency test, I would say. We've got another phone call here. This is Josh, and Josh has a problem. Every time he changes something in a program, all the settings revert to themselves. What does he do? [00:18:58] Speaker C: Battleborn Tech. Go ahead, caller. [00:19:00] Speaker F: Hey, how you doing? This is Josh calling from Carson City. Hey, Josh, I got a computer question problem, and I didn't know why it's doing it. So I run several different programs on Windows 11 because that's how I am. I'm trying to stay up to date with all my windows because I learned my lesson not updating from Windows 10 when it was supposed to be done. But I've got a. It's just a Dell desktop computer and HP printer. And it. One of my programs, it wants to flip the paper over and print on both sides, which I'm all in favor of saving paper, but I'm printing on checks. And so I have to remember every time I go to print checks, I go in to the printer setup and I have to tell it no to not flip checks. [00:20:11] Speaker C: So normally it doesn't flip it or does. Normally it does flip it. [00:20:17] Speaker F: Right. Well, I went into each of my programs and said, don't flip. I mean, I had to literally go in to each one and do that. But when I have a check writing program and it flips, it goes back to flip every time. And so if I don't remember to turn that off, it tries to print checks on both sides of that check stock. [00:20:42] Speaker C: Okay, so you're, you're, you're doing that. [00:20:50] Speaker F: All the other programs have remembered to not flip it. [00:20:54] Speaker C: That was one program. That was my next. That was my next one. [00:20:58] Speaker F: Yeah. [00:20:59] Speaker C: So is, is it a web page? Is it a web based program? Do you run it from browser, like a Chrome browser or anything? [00:21:06] Speaker F: No, it's old school and maybe that's what it is because IT is a 2005 software program. It has been updated. I know, I know, but it has been updated. [00:21:18] Speaker C: I'm gonna. You're gonna have to out the program. I think it's in the program settings. You're fixing what the pro. I think you're fixing what the program is doing. And so we kind of need to know the program. I know we have a. [00:21:31] Speaker F: Okay, so it's not the Windows, it's the program that. [00:21:35] Speaker C: Well, everybody else is playing together happily, you know. Yeah, yeah, you're right. [00:21:40] Speaker F: The PDFs and all those are all doing. And. And they're staying on. Don't flip if I don't want. [00:21:46] Speaker C: Okay, so what's, what's the name of the program, what program we use? [00:21:49] Speaker F: It's called Versa. [00:21:50] Speaker C: Check V E R A and it flips. Sorry, was. [00:21:56] Speaker F: Was I. That's not an endorsement by the way either. [00:21:59] Speaker C: Okay, so. Huh. I would think the default would be not flipping, but there you go. Huh. Like vice versa Check. That kind of. [00:22:10] Speaker F: Yeah, yeah. I don't want to say the name again because I don't. I'm not endorsing them in any way. No way. [00:22:15] Speaker C: Endorsing effect. It might be a. Might be a dis. Endorsement. I don't know. [00:22:20] Speaker F: Yes. At this point it's getting close to that. [00:22:23] Speaker C: Okay. [00:22:23] Speaker F: Because I keep eating up check stock when I forget to turn it off. [00:22:27] Speaker C: Those things are expensive and they're numbered and it's a pain to. When you open up, I'm with you. Okay, well, [00:22:36] Speaker F: so I need to reach out to that program then, right? [00:22:39] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:22:40] Speaker C: So in Versicheck, let us hope that under file, either print setup or print or printer setup, there's properties somewhere in there under the file. So what you've been doing, you've been fixing it in Windows. That's kind of a post fix, but the break is inside Versicheck. So you want to go to Versa file. [00:23:00] Speaker F: I see that. I see a Windows. Okay. Okay. [00:23:04] Speaker C: You find. You see file print setup. [00:23:07] Speaker D: Yep. [00:23:07] Speaker F: And no. Yes. Flip over. Yes, flip up. So it's. No. So this should. Then step that and keep that. [00:23:19] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:23:20] Speaker F: It. [00:23:20] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. There's. There's an OU bank rule that says if a competent user, which I believe you are, cannot fix a problem, the per. The user is looking in the wrong place. So this is an application of the good old Eubank rule. So you were. You were fixing it post after I broke it and. But Versa check kept breaking it over and over again. Not. Okay, so if you do that, and there's also one about it, be careful. There's another one about flipping it 180. And so you probably want to leave that alone because that's probably. That's working for you, right? Oh, that would. [00:23:55] Speaker F: Yes, yes. [00:23:56] Speaker D: That would be awful, too. Yeah. [00:23:57] Speaker C: Okay. [00:23:57] Speaker F: So. [00:23:58] Speaker C: So what? You know, don't flip that one. Flip the one that says. What does it say on yours? [00:24:04] Speaker D: Yep. [00:24:05] Speaker F: Don't flip. No, flip is what it says. Okay. [00:24:09] Speaker C: Is there another one about rotate or rotate 180? [00:24:12] Speaker F: Yes, I left that one alone. [00:24:13] Speaker C: All right. I think we'd be good for now. I think you've got it fixed. [00:24:17] Speaker F: You. [00:24:17] Speaker E: You. [00:24:17] Speaker F: All right. [00:24:18] Speaker C: You've won the battle. [00:24:21] Speaker F: Thank you so much. [00:24:22] Speaker C: All right, I'm sorry you have to print checks now. That. Yeah, yeah. [00:24:29] Speaker F: Well, there is. There's probably a couple people left in northern Nevada that prints check. So I meant. [00:24:36] Speaker C: I meant that this call is going to cost you money because now you. [00:24:39] Speaker F: Yes. All right, thank you very much. [00:24:45] Speaker C: Battleboard time. [00:24:47] Speaker B: Well, that's just a reminder that everybody's messing with the printer settings, not just the printer. So check your program as well as the printer to see what's going on with what's going to it. [00:24:58] Speaker A: Yeah. And speaking of flipping checks and updates, last thing we need to mention for today is if you happen to be French and you happen to run a commercial refrigerator in a grocery store, you are very sad today. Yes, Hackers. From some unknown foreign actor. Russia went into France and a couple of Russia went into a couple of countries and they set all the refrigerators and freezers they could into defrost mode, which brought the temperature up to about 120Fahrenheit and ruined all of that food. [00:25:39] Speaker B: Now that's above freezing, even in Celsius. Right, Right. [00:25:44] Speaker A: Just a little bit. [00:25:45] Speaker B: Absolutely. I got a sneeze here. Shiny Hunters. Sorry. Yeah. Maybe you want to rethink on prem controls for some of your critical infrastructure. This is hooking everything up to the Internet, even though you can. Maybe you don't want to. Maybe you just want to keep some of those switches right there in house. [00:26:08] Speaker A: Well Christy, I think we've come to the end of the show and you need to impart some words of wisdom to these fine folks on our way out. [00:26:18] Speaker B: This has been Battle Born Tech. Thanks to our callers Steve, Teresa and Josh who called us at 775-241-3571. We're in studio Saturdays from 9 to 11am and Sunday 7 to 9pm Pacific. Call 775-241-3571 then or anytime and we'll get you set up to be on the show. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder that's Break Like VB Script next year. Our engineer and co host is Joe Bly, who quilts this show from a patchwork of calls, comments and cautions. Our thanks to Anthony, our ex post facto checker who listens faithfully every Tuesday night and texts me corrections to the show and to my overconfidence. Notice this show was written with help from Claude, an AI assistant from Anthropic, which patiently reads the 11th versions of the jokes so our families don't have to support locally produced ad free shows by [email protected] by clicking the big red donate button at the top right corner and give battleborn Tech a shout out in the comments. Tell them Tech Talk is your favorite music. Our email is questionsattleborntech. That's questions with an S and T e C H at the end. No comm for us. Our latest links [email protected] stats. Get the links you missed there. That's bbtl.ink S T A T S. Everything we should have said the first time is at Betterborn Tech along with show notes, links that were slurred, corrections of memory lapses, explanations of old jokes, definitions of obscure tech quotes we have remember apologies for artificial and human hallucinations. 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