Smoothape – Mutterings and Oddities

usb memory key

I have an 8GB memory card that I keep on my keyring. If I ever lost it I don’t have to worry, why not?

1. I have the files backed up

2. The files on the memory card are encrypted.

how is this done?

Create a folder on your desktop, add the files you which to store on the USB card. Open ‘Disk Utility’ (Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility)

From the Menu, choose: FILE > New > Disk Image from Folder

Navigate to the folder you created earlier, you will notice that .dmg is appended to the filename automatically.

For image format, you can keep the default ‘compressed’

Finally, the password portion. Under Encryption you can choose None, 128 or 256 Bit. Your choice.

Hit SAVE and you will now be prompted to choose a password. Choose combinations of Letters, Numbers, Symbols.

Click OK and wait. The x.dmg file will appear in the same folder as your original file. Copy this to your USB stick and you are totally secure.

When you want to open the file, just double click to open the DMG, you will be prompted for your password (unless you open on the same computer you created the file, in which case the password may have been stored in your Keychain)

1. Shut down the computer.
2. Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
3. Turn on the computer.
4. Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
5. Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
6. Release the keys.

Your computer’s PRAM and the NVRAM are reset to the default values. The clock settings may be reset to a default date on some models.

vram

OS X: What’s Stored in PRAM?

• Status of AppleTalk
• Serial Port Configuration and Port definition
• Alarm clock setting
• Application font
• Serial printer location
• Autokey rate
• Autokey delay
• Speaker volume
• Attention (beep) sound
• Double-click time
• Caret blink time (insertion point rate)
• Mouse scaling (mouse speed)
• Startup disk
• Menu blink count
• Monitor depth
• 32-bit addressing
• Virtual memory
• RAM disk
• Disk cache

This is not a way to get Mac OSx server for free, just how I got it, but by accident.

Tiger to Leopard

So I bought two brand new Macbook Pros this time two years ago, both came pre installed with Tiger and I had the option to upgrade to Leopard as it was just released. I filled in the paperwork and for $9.99 x 2 I got 2 shiny new Leopard upgrade disks from Apple.

The upgrade for both macs went as easy as you can imagine and after a brief update session from Apple I then had the latest and greatest version of Leopard running.

All was well until some time last month. My Macbook started to run unusually slow, so first things first I run the cron jobs – MacJanitor – Free and essential for Macbook users – Mac
Janitor…

hmmm….still no change, time to crank up Disk Utility (Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility.app). So I start up by verifying the disk permission, then repairing them, sure there are a few issues from the upgrade from Tiger to Leopard, but nothing worth worrying about. So next step is the Verify Disk. Yikes! Disk error found….no panic, I have Time Machine running on a 1TB drive, worst case scenario is a new hard drive and install from a Time Machine image.

So you fix a Disk error it is best to boot using the OSx disk. If you don’t know how to do this, then read this article from Apple. (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1782 ). Normally that would work, but I made a mistake. I popped in the original Tiger disk. The error was found, but could not be fixed, DUH!. So I can’t find the Leopard upgrade disk. I went to Apple.com, order a call back for 15 minutes and yep, 15 minutes later I am talking to Josh the Mac Genius. This is another reason for being a Mac customer. So I get Josh up to speed and yes, we need to find the Leopard upgrade disk. I can’t, so he orders me a new one, free of charge. Call ends. Five minutes later my co-worker arrives with her Mac and can you believe it she has the Leopard upgrade disk. I pop it into my Mac, book to the disk, choose Disk Utilities, Repair the disk, disk fixed, reboot to my internal hard drive, check with Disk Utility and yep, we are good to go. My Mac is running full steam again.

A few days later I get a package from Apple. I assume it is my new Leopard upgrade disk. Nope, by accident it is a Mac OSx Leopard Server Disk (x2). – Time to build a Hackintosh Mac OSx Server! Whoo Hoo!