Apple Hardware on

Fix INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE with Boot Camp Windows Systems

Thu, 19 Dec 2019 01:21:00 +0000

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 still work fine in my VMware Fusion. When booting natively, my Windows install with BSOD on an INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE exception. After a bit of googling, I found that this was likely related to storage drivers. I ultimately managed to fix my Windows environment (without a reinstall), here are the steps:

Dear Diary: Samsung ML-1610 on macOS 10.12 Sierra

Tue, 11 Apr 2017 08:25:20 +0000

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. Overall, it’s unremarkable, but I like it enough to keep it going.

3D Printed Hard Drive mount for 27" iMac

Fri, 03 Mar 2017 23:54:10 +0000

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 happens to work and the $174 unit’s problem was exactly that - a dead PSU.

MacBook Pro Corpse Reanimations

Sun, 22 Jan 2017 21:32:10 +0000

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 for dares.

Most actually worked fine with nearly zero effort. One needed its RAM reseated. But two of them were really dead, that is to say, I could not get them to POST. As a person who builds the odd thing, when I look at a “broken” device, I think to myself: If I were gonna make one of those from scratch, this one’s like 99% done as-is.

Dear Diary: Windows 10 on early Intel Macs

Fri, 20 Jan 2017 15:40:46 +0000

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 good for now. There’s some room to bump them over the edge in to Sierra, though I’m kind of pissed at Apple’s business model at the moment. I feel they’ve kind of abandoned the desktop entirely and the old machines are getting shafted the hardest. Granted they ARE old, Moore’s Law’s been on vacation for a while now. I guess we live in a sad world and anyone who buys a new Mac Pro will arrive in this well-populated sad space in about a year. 4,5,6 Apple. Seriously wtf? I know.. I know, it’s just business and the best margins are mobile. But I seriously digress.

MacPro3,1 upgrade to macOS Sierra

Sun, 16 Oct 2016 03:45:03 +0000

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, I used the guide here to create a modified Sierra installer. I then simply ran an in-place installation and sure-enough everything seems to be working. During the install, I swapped back in the original (coal-burning) video card. Afterwards I swapped back in my current GPUs and all was well. So far Sierra seems to run as good as El Cap, maybe.. Just maybe even better.

MacPro3,1 gains a GeForce GT 720

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 21:33:47 +0000

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 cards are supported by NVIDIA’s “web” OS X drivers. I swapped the 5250 (with its firmware restored) for a GeForce GT 720.

Multi-threaded tar/bzip2

Tue, 20 Jan 2015 15:25:03 +0000

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!

MacPro3,1 gets USB 3.0 support

Tue, 23 Dec 2014 19:03:31 +0000

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 wasn’t sure if there would be weird driver issues and bought it with a little hesitation. I�installed it in about 2mins and upon booting I could immediately see it available:

Dear Diary: USB 3.0 on my MacBook

Tue, 02 Sep 2014 21:45:28 +0000

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 result:

So come along with me on my tale of computery enhancement.

Dear Diary: Installing OSX 10.9 on Late 2007 MacBook

Sun, 13 Apr 2014 11:26:52 +0000

Here’s my notes on how I approached installing�OSX 10.9 on my Late 2007 MacBook (MacBook3,1).

Note I did most of this on a current Mac running 10.9.

Also, this kind of worked. I got the install to run but it wouldn’t boot after install. I’m probably quite close to it working. I’ll update this post with notes if I work on this further.

Steps

\t- Create USB Flash OSX 10.9 installer

Notes on creating a i7 based Hackintosh

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 00:13:45 +0000

Recently I decided to try shuffling around my hardware and try a hackintosh setup on my recently acquired i7 box. I last dabbled in this stuff many years back with a P4 box. Suffice to say, my beloved 2008 era Mac Pro is starting to show some age and while I could upgrade it, Apple’s dragged ass in updating the Mac Pro line. So, here are my notes.

Read on to see what steps should work for you, should you use similar hardware.

Thank you Steve

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 19:08:12 +0000

Thanks for all your profound, inspiring and helpful inventions Steve. You’ve made an admirable mark on the world.

The Air is on fire! Shaw Gigabit Fibre Internet FTW!

Sat, 25 Dec 2010 02:09:54 +0000

Exhibit A:

Exhibit 2: Damn, seriously.

Shaw Gigabit Fibre Internet doesn’t bother Transmitting Data, it TELEPORTS it!

Here I sit in my bed @ my parent’s place on Christmas Eve. I decided to test out their new internet connection & router by enjoying another kind of “Eve”, Eve Online.

The Air is on fire, but in the good way

About the same time as this new internet service was hooked up I randomly decided to upgrade my parents to use Wireless N (with a repeater rig, a la Airport Extreme & Airport Express).

AirPlay Through pfsense Bridge

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 19:27:48 +0000

Howdy all, geek-mode enabled.

So I’ve been fighting somewhat to get my AirPlay enabled device (Apple TV) to function perfectly. I use pfsense to run my router and in so doing I’ve got a Wireless and Wired network that are bridged together. I found with the AppleTV that only devices on the same physical media could stream to it, though all devices could “see” it.

After submitting a feature request to Apple over this, I decided I wanted it solved for me anyway and I felt close to the solution. Since I had no logs to go by, I decided to bust out Wireshark to sniff all the involved network traffic. Suffice to say, I was rather entertained to find that when using AirPlay the payloads are flying around in IPv6, not IPv4. Just look at the caption in this post. All those teal packets is iTunes streaming audio to my AppleTV via AirPlay. It’s UDP over IPv6. Neato.

iPad FTW?

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:10:27 +0000

iPad Promo Images

Yesterday Apple introduced their massively anticipated iPad tablet device. For those who haven’t yet heard about it, it’s basically a hudge iPhone (that doesn’t make phone calls). The iPad is meant to unlock a “new” market segment for small computing devices that is somehow not already met by the iPhone and netbooks.

What does it do, anything new?

The iPad doesn’t bring new functionality to the computing world, but it does consolidate and simplify use particularly of eBooks. There have long since been many very cool eBook readers out there built around providing simple means for people to read electronic books.

iPhone Endowed Life Begins

Wed, 20 May 2009 11:12:39 +0000

I’ve finally pitched my brilliantly ancient Blackberry (deserves an award for surviving this long). I decided the only way for me to go was to get an iPhone. It’s now been nearly a week and I must say this platform is a must have for any computery geeky types out there. It makes me antiquated Pocket PC cower in submissive fear and continues to impress and delight me a every turn.

Using a Clone PC Video card in a Mac Pro

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 11:47:06 +0000

Howdy World, I seek your input. I want to run a clone PC video card in my 2008 Mac Pro machine. In particular, I was thinking I’d get something as close to the $280.00 Apple provided NVIDIA 8800 GT card as possible. My current first choice is the $180 eVGA e-GeForce 8800 GT.

I expect the potential major problem to be that a clone video card may be unaware of the boot process of a mac machine. I’m speaking with particular respect to EFI. That said, I’m also aware that clone PCs are intended to be able to use EFI instead of BIOS - so I’d expect decent newer video cards to support this.

Cross Over vs. Switched Network performance

Mon, 19 May 2008 18:30:59 +0000

Howdy, so I just changed my setup from having a single ethernet cable running from my mac pro to my file server (using a Netgear gigabit NIC - GA311NAR) to connecting over a DLink Gigabit switch (DGS-1005D).

I have had the understanding that network transfer rates through switching fabric will constrain the transfer rates (I would have thought by means of bandwidth or propagation time) and perhaps they do, but in short my little change over here has shown me that the difference is relatively irrelevant.

Unboxing of Refurbished Mac Pro machine

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:03:39 +0000

Here’s a video I made of opening the refurbished mac pro I picked up. Saved me some good coin going the refurb route - though I figured people may be interested in seeing how a refurb pro comes packed.