Duh!

[yogi]

Back in the old days when I had nothing but MBR disks on all my computers, life was simple. After I hit the power key I'd press some key, like F10 or esc or del, and then I'd get a menu of bootable devices. That's all the old BIOS was designed to do. Along comes EFI and a whole slew of options; none of which I knew anything about. I did know that those simple days of hitting a key during power up were long gone. At least I could not find a way to duplicate them.

UEFI basically wants one boot manager to take control of the whole system. That manager is typically located on the first hard drive and the first partition. That is why Windows tells you to install it first before you install anybody else's OS. Windows will thus take control of booting whatever is installed on that machine. It doesn't have to be that way, of course. Any OS can be installed first and will take the role of master boot manager. Doing it the Windows way has always bugged me. Their boot manager is hardy and works amazingly well under the adverse conditions I impose upon it. However, when I want to boot into, say, Ubuntu, I have to restart into the Windows Boot Manager first, then select Ubuntu, and that calls up Grub. It's an extra step that gets in the way when trying to do some serious troubleshooting.

As it stands today, my default boot process is indeed the Windows boot manager. I also have reFINd as an option. Or, I can set BIOS to boot from Ubuntu/Grub first. In some cases I needed all three to solve a problem. LOL But, in general, most people can get by with just one of those methods (and there are others). Today, I decided to read up on how to recover an OS on the laptop. It's not like I never did that. I have recovered several times, but today I read the manual. There is some software and firmware built into the laptop that facilitates recovery. I need to make my own images because I blew away the ones that came preinstalled, but the rest is pretty standard.

When recover is necessary the correct method is to insert the recovery DVD or USB stick, or whatever storage media into the proper device. Then cycle the power while pressing F11. What? Press F11? I never knew about that, and in fact I thought I tried it early on in the game. So, I recycled the power and tapped F11. I could not believe my eyes when I saw a list of bootable devices displayed in that old familiar MBR BIOS format. It's still UEFI, but the menu looks like what I've been missing since the day I bought this machine. Now I no longer need to go through the Windows Boot Manager, or anybody else's boot manager. F11 puts the BIOS firmware in control as it should have been all along. I just never knew about it until I read the instructions.

[Kellemora]

Interesting, but does it boot the OS into UEFI mode or BIOS mode?

I made a recovery DVD for Debi's new computer as my first operation on it.
Either I did not know how to restore it to it's original as purchased state, or something changed and it would not let me after another Win10 update. Something about you only had 30 days to change back.
But since I had the DVD I should have been able to restore it to factory.

No biggie, it is running Linux Mint 19.3 just fine, and fast too.

[yogi]

The menu I get looks a lot like the DOS BIOS menu from pre-EFI days. It's just a crude text box with the available devices for booting. All those devices rely on the ESP because they were installed that way. Plus, the BIOS is currently set for UEFI only and not the compatibility mode. The bottom line to this story is that some of the scenarios I've been trying to get through actually require BIOS settings and not exclusively UEFI settings. Apparently it's a mistake to ignore one or the other.

The 30 day limit you refer to sounds suspiciously like the time you have to make an external recovery disk. Computers sold with Windows pre-installed usually have a recovery partition with that image permanently built in. Back in the old days you would get a CD or a couple DVD's from which you could boot and do a clean install. Those discs are no longer available, but you can copy that recovery partition. It's probably a useless exercise because typically you will change everything about Windows as you use it. The recovery copy will restore the system to factory (OEM) defaults which more than likely is a state you don't want to recover into. You lose all your updates and current work doing that. The better approach to recovery is to periodically make a disc image of the OS, or better yet a copy of the OS partition along with the ESP partition. Sometimes the problem is in the ESP partition and not in the OS. This is something I've run into often with Linux. Many distros don't care what's in the ESP partition. It just writes over whatever is in there. Too bad if it's something you need to preserve.

[Kellemora]

Unless I did something really wrong. I've made ISO's of a system after I had it set up the way I wanted. This means I removed most of the bloatware and free trial software, and installed a few of the smaller basic programs. Couldn't install the major programs or the ISO wouldn't fit on a DVD. Did this both with my Windows XP Pro, and Windows XP Pro MCE, even though I already had dealer install disks I could use.

The disks checked out A-OK at the time I made them.
When I installed a larger hard drive, I tried to reinstall from the ISO.
The install did go fairly fast, but the Windows XP Pro would not run, wouldn't even boot up.
I don't remember exactly what I did now because it was several years ago, before I had Linux tools.
Seems I did run some type of boot repair, and at least then it would start to boot up.
But it was mess. Apparently Windows records locations or something.

OK, skip ahead a few years, and I installed a copy of Windows XP Home in a Virtual Box on one of my early Linux boxes running Ubuntu and Virtual Machine. Cleaned it up real well so it ran faster. It worked great. And to back-up everything, all I had to do was SAVE the Virtual Machine Box I had it in. I even installed Virtual Box on another computer and put the Virtual Machine Box in it and it worked just fine there too. The only problems I had back then was getting the Windows program to print to a printer, but I could write to a USB stick, or to an external HD no problem. So when I wanted to print something I did in Windows, I would save it to the External HD and open it with a Linux program. I think I saved the documents as PDFs so they would open with anything.
The main thing I didn't like about using a Virtual Machine or Virtual Box was it really slowed down the computer.
If it didn't, I would install all OSs in Virtual Boxes like some folks with super big computers do.
I really do think this is the way to go if you have a computer capable of doing so.

[yogi]

Now that I think about it, I'm not sure exactly what gets stored when you make a iso image. Back in the WIndows XP days the boot information was place in that infamous MBR slot on the hard drive. That boot information does not get written to an iso copy of the system if I understand things correctly. I know the equivalent to the MBR, i.e. the ESP partition, does not get written to the iso copy unless you go out of your way to do it. The same could have been true for MBR. Thus you could have recovered XP onto a disk that had a different MBR structure (different UUID's) than the original. That would explain why it would not boot. Linux has a fsk file system check utility. Normally that will not fix anything Windows, but there is also a DOS version of fsk that will. It could be that is what you used to fix the Windows booting problem. There are utilities to repair MBR's when you make a Windows recover disk. But that is not an iso.

Sometimes I truly amaze myself. LOL When I was learning how to put Linux on a stick the option to do so via a virtual box was universally recognized. It was also universally recommended not to do it because it is so slow. That would in fact be true if you don't have the right hardware. Working with CD/DVD's is about the slowest method I can think of unless we go even further back to floppy disks. They are great when all else fails, but they are not known for being speedy. The current thinking is to do away with DVD's and use USB memory sticks instead. Well, even there you must be careful. Older computers don't even recognize USB 3 protocol - which is the case with my Windows 7 installation. When I must recover Windows 7 I have to reconfigure the tower so that it only uses USB 2 formatting. Otherwise the recovery will not work. USB 3 was invented after Windows 7. This is an important consideration when working with virtual machines.

Using a virtual machine to create Linux on a stick has the advantage of isolating the installation from the host. Thus any screw up in the given Linux OS bootloader will not be transferred to the host. To me that is critically important. The stick is created without making a virtual disk. How is this possible? A normal iso of the source OS is made beforehand. That becomes a virtual optical disk as far as VirtualBox is concerned. So, no need to make another disk. You are running the iso live exactly as you would from a DVD. Once the live virtual DVD is up and running the installation to a USB memory stick can be performed. In order to get the maximum speed you must use a USB 3 physical memory stick and enable USB 3 in the virtual box environment. This provides a 6 GHz transfer rate. It doesn't really work THAT fast, but it is about two or three times faster than doing it over USB 2. In the interest of honesty, I'll say that it might take a tad longer to install a Linux OS to USB memory using the unconventional Virtual Box method. But just a tad. Only a few minutes more than the normal 15 minutes.

Now, after Linux is put on a stick properly, it can be plugged into just about any computer that will boot from USB. It is again critical that the target computer be USB 3 compliant if you are interested in performance. If you were here and knew nothing about my laptop other than the keyboard and the monitor, I would say you would not easily be able to discern if you are running off the SSD or off the USB memory. You would indeed know you are running of HDD if I had one installed.

There are peculiarities mostly due to my ignorance of Linux. Some installations take forever to boot while others are lightning fast. I can solve some of those problems when Linux screws up the UUID in the EFI bootloader. Making swap space almost always does that. Thus it's better not to create a swap partition but use a swap file instead. I'm guessing access time to the swap file is actually quicker too, but I never benchmarked that. High end computer hardware will make a difference, but not always a big difference. If all your hardware is matched to do the job, you will see great performance there too. To wit: Silver Yogi.

[Kellemora]

You know, I was thinking about the kids up at the library the other day. It was a while since I had stopped in, and now they have two more new machines since the last time I was there. I have brought books back at least three times, and did not see a single kid with a USB stick plugged into a computer. However, a couple have something stuck into their cell phones. I didn't have time to talk to them. But what it looked like to me, the short time I was there, was that they saved from the computer to their cell phone using that little plug. Now I know cell phones already have WiFi, and memory sticks are longer. These were about the size of keyboard and mouse wireless dongle, tiny. I didn't have time to stop and ask because we were on the way to a doctors appointment for the frau and only stopped in long enough to drop off the books, which also had fines due, hi hi. Of course, that's why she sent me in with them, hi hi.

I'm out of the loop on most things. After all, I still use a computer with monitor with hard wired keyboard and mouse, and a hard wired LAN, although I do have a WiFi Access Point in my office now, that was to get my Echo Dot to work up here, hi hi.

[yogi]

I have an app on my clever phone that will allow direct transfer of certain files from the phone to my computer. Actually there are a few ways to do it, one being ftp via a web page. You need WiFi or some rf network, unless you have a cable. Not all phones allow cable transfers, however. There is no need for a dongle as you would have in a laptop or desktop because all that is built into the phone already. It's just a matter of software to get it working.

Depending on what you do with your mobile computer, you can run out of memory rather quickly. I have 128 GB internal to the phone but a couple downloaded movies can easily wipe that out. External memory cards are widely used for downloading and storing huge amounts of pictures. The cards can then be plugged into your computer if you really need to do such a thing. It is also possible to tether your mobile computer (phone) to a desktop. The library computers in theory would download faster than 4G phone networks and most routers these days are multiple GB transfer speeds. It's not clear to me why a mobile phone would be required unless the library is putting restrictions on what can or cannot be plugged into their computers. It's security risk no matter how it's done.

[Kellemora]

Well, I figured out what it was they had, thanks to my wife, hi hi.
She has a Memory Stick that has a USB at one end, and a Mini-A at the other end.
She also has a 32 gig TINY memory stick that fit's her phone via the Mini-A slot too.

It is so much trouble to transfer photo's from her phone to her computer, her niece had her get the first Memory Stick with two ends on it. Trouble is, she didn't want that sticking out of her phone all the time, might break the port.
So she bought this tiny little 32 gig memory stick that when plugged in is only about 1/4 inch bump on the side of her phone. She also bought a short 4" long cord (because it was cheaper than the adapter) that plugs into a USB port and you can stick the Mini-A into the female end of the cord. She just tells her phone to save pictures to the USB port.
She can also copy pictures on the phone to the USB port as well, but it is as hard as copying them to the computer.

My little flip-phone I have to go into set up and change the charging port from Charge to USB to access the DCIM folder using my computer to do so. Slightly easier than her Schmartz-Fone, hi hi.

Her son has a super fancy Schmartz-Fone, all data he saves in his phone, besides being in his phone is also saved to the cloud. Then he can access the data from his laptop by connecting to the cloud. But then in his line of work, he needs a lot of the fancy things he has, and can afford them too. Also the government pays for some of the things he has access to and can use.

As far as my little flip-fone goes, I still have not did the Update they want me to do.
It's a matter of principle to me. Although I don't do texting or on-line stuff with it, we do have the Schmartz-Fone package.
Now, by my way of thinking, if they have an upgrade for my cell phone, and our cell service has digital.
Why should I use MY WiFi over a costly cable company to download THEIR update to my phone?
Why don't they use their OWN data service to upload the upgrade to my phone themselves?
I did find out I could stop by their store and they would upload it to the cell phone there.
But I should plan on leaving it and coming back in a couple of hours, hi hi.

[yogi]

My Pixel clever phone is made by Google. In their infinite wisdom it was decided that nothing can be plugged into the phone other than their charger cable. No external memory for my Pixel. End of story. To get around this little irritation you can set up the phone to automatically backup everything you create to their Google Drive cloud server. This makes it accessible to any computer on earth that can access Google Drive. This also locks you into Google services and makes you pay extra if you put too much on their cloud. Also, even if you agree to this confinement, downloading from the cloud is a PIA. It's better than nothing, but still.

The charging cable can be used to transfer anything from the DCIM card to whatever is on the other end of the cable. There are numerous other places things are stored which are not accessible via the cable. But, must people put their pictures and video there so that it's not a problem for most, unless you consider buying the cable a problem.

Then there is the AirDroid app. That's what I installed on the phone and on my desktop. This is nothing more than a remote desktop connection and works just as well. I'm not a rooted user doing that, but it's the next best thing. All I do is log into AirDroid from both the phone and the desktop to complete the connection. Then it's just a simple drag and drop from the phone to wherever I want to put things on the computer, even the NAS if I care to. It couldn't be more simple. Well, not for me anyway.

I feel your pain with that update process. My Android phone will update any which way I choose. Since I have one of those "unlimited" data packages I don't care if it updates while I'm roaming or not. It costs me the same either way. But not everybody sees it that way. So, more often than not, I do a manual check and update. I'm tethered to my router and the cable company's Internet switch. They don't care how much data I transfer either, but it is pretty quick doing it that way. So that's what I do. Your carrier most likely can update things from their end, but that would use air time. Yes, it's THEIR airtime, but they see it in terms of $$$. But you already know that.

[Kellemora]

I'm also leery about entering my WiFi password into my flip-fone.
I did think about changing the WiFi password on my Access Point just long enough to do the transfer and update, then set it back again. But then I thought to myself, with my luck it will change how the phone works and some feature may quit working if it thinks it has WiFi access and doesn't.
I did learn one thing about these little WiFi units. You have to be hard wired in order to access their set-up functions, and once you do, it remembers what computer you accessed it from using admin admin to do the set-up. After that, you cannot get in using admin admin from another computer, without doing a complete reset to factory.
So I changed the admin admin to a user name and password, even then it still records which computer and if I try to access from a different computer I can but have to enter an override code I also set-up at the time I set-up the password.

OH, my New Neighbor who moved in to get access to my neighbors Fiber Optics is moving out. My wife was getting the mail and he said to her it was his last load, they are moving to another house right behind a shopping area. It already has Fiber Optics there, and I can get some accounts myself. He didn't explain what he meant by that.
Seems to me the cost of moving is just not worth it, but then he has not accumulated the amount of stuff I have in 20 years, hi hi. Plus I have stuff I moved here back when I moved here I've still never opened yet. Crazy.

[yogi]

Oy Vey! You use Admin Admin to access your LAN? Nahh ... you know better; I hope. Never ever leave the defaults in place. That's an open invitation to every thirteen year old who thinks they are a hacker.

You are running into some problems because after many years of neglect certain manufacturers are becoming security conscious. I don't know of an easy way to sandbox your flipper phone so that the most convenient thing for you to do would be to do as you suggest. Change the network access to something simple ... Admin Admin will do in this case. Once the update is complete, then harden that password again. You need to guess 24 characters to break into my network, but the router isn't quite that secure. LOL I need to change that.

People often relocate for personal reasons. Logic and costs aren't always a consideration. If the neighbor can get what makes him comfortable in back of the shopping center, more power to him. Who knows? The next neighbor might be more of a bit head than this guy.

[Kellemora]

I had to when I first got it to set it up, then I changed it.
You can only make changes to the router from a hard wired LAN, and from the same computer as was used to set it up without doing a hard reset back to factory.

All I can say is he sure sold that house fast. A real estate lady pulled up around a half hour ago and put a Realty sign in the yard that says SOLD. Even though there was no sign up that said for sale. I do know back home if a house was listed for sale, it is a law among Realtors, and perhaps state law? that they must put up a Sold sign. I don't think it is a law down here because I don't recall ever seeing a Sold sign unless a For Sale sign was already up for a long time.

On another note, the other guy across the street and down one house who has the Fiber Optics. There was an HVAC company there on Thursday putting down a concrete slab next to the Heat Pump for the house. Friday they were back installing an air conditioning system, and a tall cylinder about 2 feet in diameter and 5 to 6 feet high. From here it looks like the output of the AC unit goes into the bottom of this tall cylinder, and three smaller ones come out of the top and into the house. Based on the height of the window, I would say they go into the back bedroom just below the ceiling.
I can't see his house from my office, so there could be a lot going on over there I don't see. Perhaps he is putting in even more equipment than he already has?
I'm just curious enough I'm going to try and find out, hi hi. Also find out what that tall cylinder is for.

[yogi]

I'm just curious enough I'm going to try and find out, hi hi. Also find out what that tall cylinder is for.

Liquid Oxygen to cool his server farm?

I confess to ignorance about real estate laws, but the "Sold" sign is a form of advertising. It's like the people who may do some work for you and insist you let them put a sign out front to let the neighbors know who they are. They will often give you a discount for that favor. The thing that bugs me is that the listing agent rarely is the broker who actually finds the client to buy the house. The buyer most often is found by some other broker. When the house is SOLD, that other broker is never mentioned. One of those unwritten laws I suppose.

My house sold in three days and it was nothing special. In fact it was over priced IMHO. The signed contract, however, took a while longer. By that time the FOR SALE sign was installed and all she did was hang a SOLD sign on under that. That was done to keep inquiring people from bothering her.

[Kellemora]

Saw the service company across the street this morning and caught him just as he was leaving.
Apparently the guy lost some of his equipment due to static electric from dry air.
He already had the new A/C unit on order to be installed, and opted to have the "air-side economizer" installed.
The guy said he could have got a much smaller one, but we had this one in stock and gave him a deal on it.
OK, but what does it do?
He first said it is an automatic air dryer.
I though you said he lost equipment from dry air.
He said, oh he did. What this tank does is maintain output humidity at exactly 48%, although it can be adjusted from about 42 to 52% humidity.
Besides drying A/C air, it also takes warm air from the room and adds outside humidity to it which helps maintain air temperature and humidity. Nothing much to it really, a couple of dampers, four sensors, and a stack of dryer plates.
About the only thing it is doing right now is adding humidity as the warm air from the room passes through it. The A/C probably won't kick in until it gets up over 50 outside, or his cabinets get too hot. He keeps them around 90 degrees.
Gotta run buddy, lots of work to do today.

Back when my dad sold his house, since the area was then zoned commercial, he had to have a huge sign that had a green image of the actual land parcel on the sign by county law, and it had to be accurate but to scale to fit the sign of course.
Every commercial property sold in the county had to have that sign, between around 1962 and 1974 or maybe later. But I don't think it had to be as BIG as the one they put in my dads front yard, hi hi.
When it sold, they had a huge red banner across both sides of it that said SOLD in the largest letters they could come up with, hi hi.
But I think you are right about it being an AD for the Realtor, not the actual selling agent, hi hi.

I do know from when I bought the old 3-story Thom's Pontiac building, buying commercial property is a whale of a big difference than buying a house. Ten times more paperwork, rules, permits, and approvals. So many laws they can drive ya nuts. How much parking, how many employees, fire systems and equipment, etc. ad infinitum. Asbestos, lead, former chemical storage, sewer tests, you name it. Glad I only did that once, hi hi.

[yogi]

The only thing that I was forced to do and didn't intend to do when I sold the old house was to test for radon. There was more than allowed in the basement and I had to install a mitigation system that I never used. I lived there 30 years and haven't noticed any effects from radiation poisoning, but the buyer insisted the test be done. I'm pretty sure the test is a law now.

We keep the humidity between 43 and 46% in this house. It's obvious when it is lower and wife has had a nose bleed or two that inspired getting a humidifier. It's set for 55% at the east end of the house but I sit in the west end where the percentage is significantly lower. I've not noticed any static discharges since we bought the machine plus it feels warmer in the winter with the high humidity. My electronics probably likes it too, but so far never had a problem with ESD.

The server room at Motorola was always hot. I'd guess they had humidity control in there too, but I don't recall seeing it. It probably was part of the a/c cooling system.

[Kellemora]

The sad thing is, the cost to test for Radon is more expensive than installing a Radon evacuation system.

I have a hard time keeping my humidity above 20% here in the office in the winter, even with drawing a little air from outside. So I have several cans of water lined up on the windowsills and it does help a lot.
I don't think I ever had a problem with a personal computer due to low humidity, but I know when we installed that Wang VS 300, that room had to have a constant temp and humidity.
Although we had a furnace in the building, they still used their own heating and cooling system for that room.
I never really studied it much since it was all part of the package deal with Wang.
The only thing we had to do was have two walls built to form the room for the computer.
The one and only window into that room was the one in the door to the room in the top half of the door.
However, there was also a high window in that room originally, and it was made lower to use as an emergency exit, but did not have any glass in it. In fact, you wouldn't even know it was there since it had a thin closed cabinet over it. Only the Wang service guy ever got into that cabinet, and I'm pretty sure it only had paperwork in it.

[yogi]

Radon mitigation can be simple, as it was in my case, or it can be complicated and expensive. I don't recall the price for the test but it was well over $100. All the guy did was drop a recorder in the middle of the basement and came to pick it up a few days later. The report was simple. He gave me the average reading and spelled out the specs. That's it. It was up to me to get it fixed or not.

About the only thing humidity can affect is ESD. Winter air has way less water content even if the percentage is high. Bringing it into the house changes the relative humidity drastically. The pans you have in your office are better than nothing, but we have a box with evaporator pads and fans to blow the moist air around. Most winter days will suck up 5 gallons of water or more. I suppose it's best for computer equipment to stay at a constant temperature. The ambient air is a factor, but the real temperature to be concerned about is that on the surface of the processor. That gets way way hotter than then ambient air.

[Kellemora]

I've never had a computer problem from dry air, but as far as my Ham Radio equipment goes, especially back when I was doing 40 and 80 meter CW. It was not uncommon for me to get arcs jumping around from those transmitter tube tops.
We used to keep a coffee mug and one of those submersible cup heaters handy. Usually lodged between a couple of pieces of equipment as a spacer right next to the transmitters RF section. If we saw a couple of arcs, we stopped, filled the mug with water and plugged in the heater. Wait about 5 minutes, then go back to transmitting, and no more sparks.
One would think moisture in the air would make more sparks not less, but apparently it has to do with the static properties of dry air which is not present in moist air at a low moisture level. A high moisture level is a whole different story. Other things happen in transmitters at high humidity levels, like arcing around the bases of the tubes between prongs and chassis.
Thinking back, I don't think I ever had a problem with solid state electronics, except for my transmitter that still had big power tubes in it. Even then, they now had insulation caps over the tops of the tubes, so no arcing even when dry.

Despite all of their backup generators, when Debi was working for the credit card handling people and they had a major power outage that lasted four days in the dead of winter, they had to shut down two of their computer rooms. They had enough power in the other two or three rooms to handle the load, plus they transferred a lot of the transactions to another sister site which eased the load even more.
After they finally got electric back, they still could not power up the two rooms that were shut down for another two days. Said something about all the components would have sweat on them from the room being warmed back up using furnace heat instead of them providing their own heat.
I think heat from the computer rooms is where most of the heat for the rest of the building comes from in the winter anyhow, so it was a mess for over a week before they were back to normal operations.
I think now they have a different type of power system which is large enough to power everything without a break in power.

[yogi]

You would think a major credit card exchange would have a hardened power source to keep business alive under all circumstances. Credit cards are even more critical than food. LOL

You are absolutely correct. High humidity is just as bad as low humidity. Solid state electronics is more susceptible to static discharges which tend to increase in dry air. The water vapor tends to level out the distribution of static charges, but at some point it becomes a conductor for high voltage. Thus there is a range of safe humidity, which I do not know off the top of my head. But, any large server center must be environmentally controlled or risk being shut down spontaneously.

I never had problems with my ham gear, but I didn't generate any more than 125 watts of RF. I could be wrong but I think that transceiver was all solid state. I know at some point I didn't need to keep a stock of tubes anymore.

[Kellemora]

My Kenwood TS-830-S which I still have, packed away in storage, used Tubes for the Final Output, but everything else was solid state. Still had to tune the output stage for each change of frequency or band, something you don't have to do with total solid state. But back then, solid state did not have the power capability it does today.
A couple of my newer rigs were solid state, and I was forever replacing the final output transistors. For my 6-meter rig I was buying power output transistors by the carton. Seems they only lasted about 8 to 10 hours. However, that being said, you are only transmitting for short bursts, so it may take two to three months of daily usage to reach their burn-out point.
Unlike tubes which just get weaker and weaker, transistors are like a light bulb, they work or the don't, hi hi.
However, they didn't go out together, so if you were talking to someone, your power would just drop in half and you could have them wait for you to swap out the transistors. Most had pins like a tube and were not soldered in, so swapping them out was fast and simple. The newest transmitters they are soldered in and seem to last forever.
Most of my HF rigs only put out 60 to 250 watts. All the rest were usually under 40 watts, but normally run at only the 5 to 15 watt settings.
My really old Hallicrafters transmitter is the one that seemed to always be arcing for one reason or another. That and my home-brew 40/80 meter transmitter. It used Crystals and one of the tank coils was wound on a toilet paper tube to form it, then the tube discarded. Sometimes not, hi hi. Some guys said my 40 meter side chirped, others said it was rock solid pure tone. I finally figured out it had to do with the tunable capacitors. I needed to keep them near center, so if one was adjusted to low it would chirp. The idea was to find the perfect balance so both were set in a midpoint position.