James M. Burke » Computers

Restoring grub bootloader

James — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 04:10:45 +0000

Here’s a quick how-to for restoring your grub bootloader when you load a new OS (like Windows) and it overwrites your grub bootloader. Hopefully you can follow this guide and have luck. Unfortunately, that did not work for me. I was running Kubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3 and only had the CD for 10.10 and the steps didn’t work. What I did to get it to work was:

Boot off of older 10.10 LiveCD
Open Terminal and type the following to get your partition map list

# sudo fdisk -l

Find your Linux partition (in my case it was /dev/sdb5)
Mount that partition

# sudo mkdir /mnt/linux # sudo mount /dev/sdb5 /mnt/linux

Bind mount your /dev folder

# sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/linux/dev

Change root to your Linux partition

# sudo chroot /mnt/linux

Run grub-install on your boot drive

# sudo grub-install /dev/hdb

Reboot and success

Ventrilo and Mac OS X 10.5.7

James — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 01:02:03 +0000

Ever since I updated to Mac OS X 10.5.7 on my main machine, people started complaining that I occasionally sounded like a robot when using Ventrilo. I use a USB headset and thought that they may have modified the USB stack and that Ventrilo would fix the problem. There is a fairly popular thread which has had almost no traction from the developers.

The user wadesworld on the thread found that build 9L22 of 10.5.8 fixes an issue with “USB audio distortion.” I really hope this fixes it.

It seems that Apple has a terrible time with USB. If you recall, back with Tiger I (and many others) had problems with USB and copying files to external hard drives. I went round and round with Apple developers and I don’t think the problem was ever really resolved – it just kinda went cosmic and I moved to Firewire for my Time Machine backup drive.

For now, I look forward to 10.5.8…

Apple AirPort Extreme with GigE

James — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 02:24:38 +0000

It’s funny — the other day at work, I was talking to another Apple fan and we were discussing how dumb it is that the AirPort Extreme supported 802.11a, b, g, and even n but lacked gigabit ethernet. I was really wanting to get one, because I’ve been looking for a decent wireless router that would support both 802.11a as well as 802.11g (and the 802.11n is a big bonus!) But I didn’t want to get one that only had 10/100Mbps on the wired ethernet – it just seems kinda sub-standard nowadays, even if I don’t need the full gigabit speed (Especially since at work, we’ve been talking a lot about 10Gbps ethernet…) My reasoning is that I stream content from my Media Center PC to the Xbox 360 over the wireless and have heard that 802.11a is better for that since it has less interference.

I’ve been somewhat satisfied with my current Netgear RangeMax WPN824, but had software issues with the newer v2.0.15 firmware — once I reverted to the older 2.0.11 firmware, it hasn’t been so bad. I’ve just had bad luck with wireless routers – I’ve owned a few Linksys and this Netgear - all have had issues locking up…to the point where all devices connected (wired or wireless) no longer have internet connectivity. Once you pull the power on the router and restart it, everything comes back again.

With today’s iMac announcement, it appears that they silently upgraded the AirPort Extreme to include gigabit ethernet. I have mine on order…

[tags]apple, airport, wireless, router, gigabit, ethernet, imac, netgear, wpn824, rangemax[/tags]

Great Apple Service!

James — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 06:09:57 +0000

When I bought my MacBook Pro over a year ago, I also got AppleCare – it came highly recommended. Well, after a year of just dealing with the high-pitched buzzing sound, I decided to send it off for repair. I scheduled an appointment with the local Genius Bar, walked in, and they took care of the rest. I also had a problem where the battery wasn’t lasting more than 45 minutes, so they said they’d take care of that too. They received the machine on Tuesday, had the new Main Logic Board (MLB) ordered, received and replaced by Thursday and it made it here today.

I must say – I’m impressed with the level of service! This is my second Apple laptop, but that was the first time I actually had to take it in for service – and it was a very easy and quick process!

[tags]apple, applecare, service, mlb, genius bar, buzzing[/tags]

MacBook Pro 15-inch Battery Recall

James — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 00:06:13 +0000

Found this on Neowin:

Apple has initiated a worldwide battery exchange program for certain rechargeable batteries that were sold for use with 15-inch MacBook Pro computer systems from February 2006 through May 2006.

We recently discovered that some 15-inch MacBook Pro batteries supplied to Apple do not meet our high standards for battery performance. To give our users the best experience possible, we will replace these batteries for customers free of charge.

…

The affected batteries have model number A1175 and a 12-digit serial number that ends with U7SA, U7SB or U7SC.

Mine was one of those affected. I was thinking the battery life was a little weak — glad they realized it too!

Get your replacement: 15-inch MacBook Pro Battery Exchange Program

[tags]apple, macbook pro, battery, recall, battery life, rechargeable, batteries[/tags]

Mac OS X 10.4.7 Update

James — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 22:45:17 +0000

Today, Apple released another update to Mac OS X Tiger 10.4 — 10.4.7:

Apple’s Software Update describes the update:

- preventing AFP deadlocks and dropped connections
- saving Adobe and Quark documents to AFP mounted volumes
- Bluetooth file transfers, pairing and connecting to a Bluetooth mouse, and syncing to mobile phones
- audio playback in QuickTime, iTunes, Final Cut Pro, and Soundtrack applications
- ensuring icons are spaced correctly when viewed on desktop
- determining the space required to burn folders
- iChat audio and video connectivity, creating chat rooms when using AIM
- importing files into Keynote 3
- PDF workflows when using iCal and iPhoto
- reliable use of Automator actions within workflows
- importing and removing fonts in Font Book
- syncing addresses, bookmarks, calendar events and files to .Mac
- compatibility with third party applications and devices
- previous standalone security updates

For detailed information on this Update, please visit this website: http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n303771.

[tags]mac os x, apple, update, software, intel, powerpc, osx[/tags]

New Apple Store In Raleigh

James — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 00:25:40 +0000

Yes I’m a nerd. Yesterday was the grand opening of the new Apple Store – Crabtree Valley Mall. This is the second Apple Store in the triangle, and it’s right down the street from me. Previously, I was visiting the Apple Store at the Streets of Southpoint in Durham. So, why am I a nerd? Well, A) because I’m posting about this on my blog and B) because I stood in line for 55 minutes at the grand opening yesterday at 10:00am to get a free Apple T-Shirt. They were giving the T-Shirt away to the first 1000 people to visit the store…I figured surely I’d be one of the only ones in line since it’s 10AM on a Saturday. Boy was I wrong (but I did get the T-Shirt -Ed)! I didn’t get any pictures, but a quick search on Flickr yielded a lot of pictures from ashton27332:

View: ashton27332 – Apple Store Crabtree Valley Mall Grand Opening
View: Apple Store – Crabtree Valley Mall

[tags]apple, store, apple store, crabtree, raleigh, north carolina, mall, grand opening[/tags]

MacBook Pro and USB 2.0

James — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 03:35:28 +0000

After having the issues with my previous laptop (and working for a storage company), I decided to get a USB 2.0 external hard drive to (regularly) backup all of my data. I chose a Maxtor USB 2.0 drive and it seemed to work fine for a few days, but I quickly ran into some issues. The MacBook Pro wouldn’t even mount the drive. I thought it was just the drive, so I went to the local CompUSA and bought a USB 2.0 enclosure and a Samsung 300GB drive. I had the exact same problem. When I did a ‘cat /var/log/system.log’, I could see various messages similar to this one:

May 16 23:16:14 XXX kernel[0]: USBF: 12462. 59 AppleUSBEHCI[0x36e2000]::DoIOTransfer – error 0xe000404f queueing request

I have filed a bug with Apple (#4550783) and they are currently investigating the ‘ioreg -l -w0′ output. If I switch and use a Firewire compatible enclosure, everything works great. Has anyone else had problems with this? I’ve heard this has been an ongoing issue, not anything specific to the MacBook Pro.

[tags]apple, macbook, macbook pro, usb 2.0, usb, firewire, appleusbehci[/tags]

Apple updates Intel firmware again

James — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 18:34:37 +0000

Yesterday, Apple silently released yet another firmware update for the Intel versions of iMac, Mac Mini and MacBook Pro. On April 5, 2006, Apple released a Firmware Update 1.0.0 for these computers and then the very next day announced Boot Camp. I'm unable to find what was changed in this new Firmware Update 1.0.1, but my Boot ROM version changed from MBP11.0055.B02 to MBP11.0055.B03.

Download: iMac Firmware Update 1.0.1, Mac Mini Firmware Update 1.0.1, MacBook Pro Firmware Update 1.0.1

[tags]apple, firmware, update, imac, mac mini, mac, macbook, boot, rom[/tags]

Windows on a (Intel) Mac

James — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 14:07:19 +0000

WOW! Apple has released a new (beta) product called Boot Camp. And, no – this is 4 days too late to be an April Fool's joke. A while back, there was a $13,000 bounty for the first person (or group) to get Windows XP to install on an Intel Mac. Well, that was accomplished, and the bootloader was posted on OnMac.net. Well, after the release of Apple Mac OS X 10.4.6, it appears as if Apple had something under it's sleeve too…Boot Camp:

More and more people are buying and loving Macs. To make this choice simply irresistible, Apple will include technology in the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard, that lets you install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Mac. Called Boot Camp (for now), you can download a public beta today.

Boot Camp will even burn a CD with all of the Mac-specific drivers for Windows. This includes graphics, networking, audio, airport, bluetooth, eject key, and brightness control. This requires Mac OS X 10.4.6 and the latest firmware update. Visit http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/ to get the updates.

Download: Apple – Boot Camp

[tags]apple, boot camp, onmac, xp, osx, dual boot, intel, windows, mac, macbook, imac[/tags]