OSX on

Make an old Mac OS X install DVD from macOS Catalina

Wed, 27 Nov 2019 22:35:51 +0000

This brief post is just my notes specifically on how to make a Mac OSX Lion install DVD from within macOS Catalina. This isn’t really meant to help anyone other than my future self. But I hope it helps the odd other person too.

Step 0. Optionally order a copy from Apple, do a search online and you can find Lion and Snow Leopard disks still available for order directly from Apple, as of late 2019.

Introducing ml1610-blaster - how you get a Samsung ML-1610 to work on macOS 10.13

Fri, 03 Nov 2017 14:32:43 +0000

The highly retro monochrome laser printer, Samsung ML-1610, continues to work just fine on macOS 10.13 High Sierra. However, getting driver support took me a long time to figure out a while ago. I got something worked out for macOS 10.12 (Sierra) and posted about it here.

To my great surprise, my old post on getting this going has become the most popular, heavily visited post on dawning.ca. So… I’ve revised things and spun this in to what I’m calling “ml1610-blaster”. There’s a github repo hosting it, here: ml1610-blaster.git

Trash Talker for macOS

Thu, 23 Feb 2017 18:37:20 +0000

I’ve released my first application for the macOS App Store. It’s a rebrand of a remake I did years back. I added some small new features based on requests I’ve had from users of the earlier version.

A little over 8 years ago I posted Shit Talker Phoenix for Mac OS X here on dawning.ca for download. I eventually also made a Windows build. STP was an attempt to give myself a bit of a functional Hello World project and to resurrect the classic Shit Talker by Jaundice which had become so old it was no longer functional in most cases. After posting my remake here on my blog, I found it actually has something of a user base.

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.

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.

Getting Synergy (or whatever) to run automatically in Snow Leopard

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 01:26:06 +0000

Here you see the

If you’re geeky like me, then you may be a lover of Synergy..

Well, many of us have long since used some of the old funky tricks for getting Synergy to start up automatically (like the ol LoginWindow trick). But that seems to not be so helpful (for me anyway), as of upgrading to Apple’s Mac OSX Snow Leopard (10.5).

Snow Leopard Upgrade on a Triple Booting Macbook

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:41:13 +0000

Howdy World, so last friday was release day for Snow Leopard, woot! I went out and grabbed a copy and rushed home to upgrade my macbook… Here’s the tale of a bit of resistance I met and how I resolved it.

Yellow Triangle of Rejection

So the problem I quickly encountered was that my “Macintosh HD” partition had an ugly little yellow symbol over it rejecting me from updating my OS X install. I forget (unfortunately), the particular error message. Nevertheless the short version was that regardless of how I launched the installer or a number of other things I tried, it wouldn’t let me run the upgrade.

STP Replugged - Who would you call?

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:19:52 +0000

I think it’s time again that I re-plug my free little “Shit Talker Phoenix” program I’ve written for OSX.

As you can see from the screenshot, it’s a window saturated with a mess of buttons. Each of these buttons are linked in to a speech synthesis engine, so when you press a button, the computer speaks whatever’s on the button.

I based this entirely off of the old Shit Talker by Jaundice, a well known, ancient but hilarious little program for making “prank” phone calls. I used this program back in the days of Windows 98 and if you try to run it now you’ll be met with general instability and ugliness (though you could run it inside a virtual machine). I was motivated to re-write it for OSX simply because that’s what I was using at the time and I wanted something I could run natively to do the same thing.

Synergy Breeze

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:01:20 +0000

Here’s a little video I whipped up on account that some people STILL haven’t heard of Synergy.. Check this video out if you too are a bit unclear about what the dealio with Synergy is.

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.

Best Case Scenario VNC

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 23:37:30 +0000

Here’s a little video I did up of what’s got to be as good as it’s gonna get over VNC. The Video speaks for itself. Have fun.

Refurbished Mac Pro First Boot

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:09:48 +0000

Here’s a little video I did of the “first” boot of the Refurbished Mac Pro I picked up.

OSX Automator Tutorial

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 18:36:42 +0000

I’m just learning about Apple’s little scripting-for-nonprogrammers generally referred to as Automator. Below is a youtube video I’ve found that seems like a good basic illustration.