blogs are lame.

Mac OSX Leopard on a Gateway tablet?

admin — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 22:03:00 -0500

MacOS X Leopard on a Gateway tablet (M-285), and it actually works surprisingly well.

Why? I already own a Macbook Pro, and have always found it to be much more useful to me than this Gateway Tablet running Vista. So the better question is, Why not?

This isn't a howto- as it's really pretty easy if you spend some time reading the forums/faqs on the osx86 sites like insanelymac.com, as the hard work of getting MacOS to run on PC hardware has already been done for you.

Then, it's just a matter of taking a few hours to download the latest hacked install DVD from one of the better known torrent sites (try the one you download all your movies from).

The hardware:
A Gateway M-285 Tablet: Intel Core Duo 1.66, 4GB Ram, 80GB Serial ATA Hard Disc, and what Apple would consider to be a "Combo-Drive" (DVD-ROM + CD/RW).

The laptop uses Intel GMA 950 integrated video which is well supported under MacOS.

The only hardware that needed to swap was the Intel B/G Wireless Mini PCI-E card that shipped with the machine. I purchased a Broadcom based card (like that is used in a real Macbook) on Ebay for $9.00 shipped to my door. (Dell model 1490, to be specific.)

Pros:
-It's a Gateway running MacOS X. As well as Windows, and even Linux occasionally - thanks to Parallels.
- Everything that matters works pretty well. "Airport", Gigabit ethernet, audio, and it sleeps/wakes up fine as well.

Cons:
- It's still a Gateway - big, bulky and not much to look at. Lots of goofy LED's and buttons.
- Tablet functionality doesn't work. Had no expectations that it would, and not really upset that it doesn't.
- Steve Jobs may hunt you down and kill you. That's a risk you have to be willing to take, I suppose.

Horrible pics courtesy of my Palm Treo. A true trio of horrible things: a terrible phone, terrible camera and terrible PDA all in one.

This is not a blog.

admin — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 06:24:00 -0400

No pictures of my cats, or details of my (non-existant) hiking trip across the country, nor documenting the unboxing of consumer electronic items. The fact is, I don't know what the hell this is.

But it's not a blog.

Because apparently blogs are supposed to get updated more than 3 times a year.

iPod Shuffle USB Key Charger/Adapter

admin — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 18:26:00 -0500

Use the remnants of a broken USB memory key to build a USB adapter/charger for a second generation iPod Shuffle.

iPod Shuffle USB key adapter/Charger

Disabling int13h Bios on Silicon Image 311x SATA Controller

admin — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 12:31:00 -0500

Why? My SCSI Array controller would not boot when Silicon Image 3112 SATA controller bios was loaded. The card has no option to disable the int13h bios via jumpers or via flash setup. If drives are attached, the bios gets loaded.

Since my goal was not to boot off the SATA controller (just using for massive/cheap storage) - there is no need for the bios to load. By disabling the bios, my array controller should once again be able to boot.

How? A bit of googling lead me to this post, where some guy wanted to use the Silicon Image drivers on his Adaptec branded 1210SA SATA controller, which also uses the Sil-3112 chipset - but uses a different PCI Device ID, and thus doesn't allow the Silicon Image drivers to work.

This person flashed his Adaptec branded card with a standard Silicon Image bios to get the drivers to work. But what interested me most, was his desire to disable the bios to skip the delay time during bootup.

It appears that the Device ID and Vendor ID are stored in the tiny eeprom chip, as well as in flash. It will get this information from the flash chip if the eeprom isn't present.

So, the plan was to: 1) Remove the eeprom, and 2)flash a modified bios with a different Device ID (but something similar that I can get drivers for, like the Adaptec 1210SA) onto the flash chip. This should prevent the card from loading the bios at boot since no matching bios will be found by Device ID.

So, I removed the eeprom chip and then used a hex editor to modify the latest base Silicon Image bios .bin file for the 3112 chipset to mimic an Adaptec 1210SA Device ID (you can find the PCI Device ID and Vendor ID in the last 16 bytes of the .bin file).

Basically, all I did was change the '3112' Device ID to '0240'. Then used UPDFlash to flash the bios (UPDFlash newbios.bin -BOARD3112 -u) and rebooted. The card did not show up during post, Win2k3 Server booted from the SCSI Array as I wanted, and Windows asked for the Adaptec drivers for my new psuedo-1210SA controller. Loaded the Adaptec drivers, and all is working fine.

Mac Mini 3.5inch eSATA Hard Disk hack

admin — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 23:12:00 -0500

Tired of the Low speed, Small capacity 2.5inch hard disk in your Mac Mini? Check out this non-destructive method of connecting a full speed 3.5inch Sata drive to your Mac Mini.

Basically, I hacked up a NewerTech MiniStack enclosure to hold a 250gb SATA drive, which is connected directly to the internal SATA connector in the Mac Mini.

Pre-requisites: Need to be able to handle a soldering iron without burning down your house, wield a hobby knife without cutting off your fingers, mad hot glue-gun skills are a plus, and the desire to increase the speed and capacity of your Mac Mini - all while keeping your warranty relatively intact- If that kind of thing is important to you.

Mac Mini eSata modification