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[kevin_standlee]

Because we got the minimum required repairs (tree clearing, shelter propped up) over the past couple of days, we did not have to work on the property today after all. Instead, Lisa wanted to go over to the town of Rickreall for the Salem Hamfair & Computer/Electronics Swapmeet. There Lisa poked around buying old radios and parts. Someone was selling a Panasonic Toughbook CF-27, which is part of the most-hardened line of the Toughbook, although a bit old. (Toughbooks have three variations; a not-very-tough "business" model, a "semi-tough" model, and a "mil-spec" model that looks like you could drive over it and it would still work.) The price was right, but it's missing a power supply. The owner swears that it worked, but the battery in it was dead, so it's not possible to check it out. She decided to take a chance on it anyway. Hunting around online later, it turns out that a new power supply costs almost as much as she paid for the computer itself. Here's hoping it works!

The laptop does not have a CD-ROM drive, which she would want. We'll wait until we're sure that the machine will actually boot before investing anything more in parts. The previous owner said, "Oh, you can just copy your CD-ROMs onto a USB memory key and run things from there." Except that as far as we can tell, most games that require the CD-ROM to run will insist on the CD-ROM, not some other device. I'm not enough of a hacker to work around that.

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[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

As a follow-up: the vendor was out of stock on the new power supplies and offered me a refurbished one at roughly half the cost. I hope Lisa doesn't have a fit about this; she can get very picky about such things.