Tag: macOS

Fix INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE with Boot Camp Windows Systems

Doc

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:

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Make an old Mac OS X install DVD from macOS Catalina

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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.

Step 1. Get the Installer Image from Apple (I’ve personally been archiving these for a while).

Step 2. Open the Terminal, enter the command:

hdiutil burn LionInstaller.iso

That’s it. Done. Here’s example output:

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

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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

How to get ML-1610 working under macOS 10.13 High Sierra

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Using Apple Script to launch System Preferences in to highly specific location

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I’m working on my next update for my goofy little macOS application Trash Talker. This app heavily leverages macOS’s built-in Speech Synthesis engine.

I wanted to add some user-support to help them edit the available voices. I could have just written-out instructions, but reading is for the literate. It took me a while to find a method that I guess will be a good starting point, which is to invoke an Apple Script to direct System Preferences to the right location.

After some hours (I’ve never looked at Apple Script before), I cobbled-together a working solution:

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Unix Magic Trick: Rename stuff in bulk

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Here’s a magic-trick I rock from time to time. I only graze the basic abilities of the “rename” program, but even in my basic use of it, I find it super helpful.

In this case, I had a situation where my eBooks had been resorted from a massive flat directory in to one containing sub-dirs named with the prefix “Categories – “. I might have sorted them in another manner if I didn’t know about the rename command. When I was done sorting and thus left with my category-based directories, I then wanted to rename each dir to dump the prefix.

A simple call to rename is all it takes:
rename "s/[what to find]/[what to replace it with]/" *

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