Like any self-respecting computer geek, I like everything. I typically run-up Windows on my Macs by installing it via Boot Camp, and then booting it as a VM. This lets me run everything in parallel, but also go full native mode when needed. Recently, I found I couldn’t boot my Windows natively any more, though it would …

New Version A newer version is here. I now call this ml1610-blaster. I have a trusty Samsung ML-1610 printer that I think I bought for like $90 back around 2003. It’s been an outstanding little cheapie that so far has seen me through two undergrad programs and is now seeing my wife through her third such program. …

One of my delightful neuroses is collecting abandoned non-functioning macs and fixing them. Last week I managed to pick up a completely dead 2010 one for $174, all parts included, just totally dead. Today I got the carcus of another for $51 (no screen, no memory, no motherboard, no glass). The carcus’ power supply …

My Macintosh-hording neurosis project has equipped me with various (mostly) 2008-vintage MacBooks. I’m a particular sucker for the 17" ones. Two of them I paid $20 for, the other two were $34 and $50. Each one of them was sold for scrap as they were tested & reported as totally non-functional. I tend to take warnings …

A local eRecycler is enabling me to develop kind of a thrilling computer-hording neurosis. I’ve managed to score 4 17" MacBook Pros and 2 15" units ranging from 2006-2008 vintages and it’s cost me very little. Some of these have serious problems, no matter, I’m having fun. The 2008 Macs top-out at macOS 10.11, which is …

The time came to upgrade my trusty MacPro3,1 to macOS Sierra. As many know, El Cap is the latest build of OS X macOS that supports this platform. How to a MacPro3,1 on Sierra is well-documented, nevertheless this blog is half just a diary that I use to re-trace my steps later. After making a backup image of my system, …

It was time to upgrade my secondary video card on my trusty MacPro3,1. I first goofed considerably with a Radeon 5250. I even went so far as to bust out my old firmware editing tools to change the vendor id in a feeble attempt to get OS X to use it without needing to modify kexts. Then I heard that more recent nvidia …

I often find myself banging my head against a wall watching tar compress with a single execution thread. PBZIP2 is the solution to that problem. Here’s my few recipes for using this: Compress: tar cf archive.tar.bz2 –use-compress-prog=pbzip2 archive/ Uncompress:�pbzip2 -dvc archive.tar.bz2 | tar x Enjoy!

In my quest to keep my 2008 era Mac Pro (MacPro3,1) reasonably well suited to my needs, I recently decided to attempt to add USB 3.0 support. I recently bought myself one of these babies, Inateck KT4004. I like that it has 4 ports and no external power required. The Amazon page claimed this card is for the Mac Pro. I …

Here’s the tale of getting USB 3.0 working in a tolerable regard on my 17" MacBook Pro. In short, it cost me about $10 and I had to install a custom, but generic kext to enable USB 3.0. Thankfully, all the heavy lifting was done for me by people with far more free time (lucky freaks). Here’s a visual of my final …