Finished NaNoWriMo after several stretches of getting behind in word count, but sorta sprinting to catch up. Then did 5,000 words the last day as a kind of tip of the hat.
Doing 1,667 words at day for 30 days didn't seem too much of a challenge. I started amateur journalistic tendencies in Junior High, so putting words in a row has been automatic for years now.
Still, it's hard to imagine getting together several of my friends who may or may not be working part time or not at all, attempting to get one post per week from them, and slap 'em up on a communal wiki/forum/etc in the semi-public webspace.
I can run these scenarios in my fiction all I like, but try and bundle my connections into an opinion hub or a writing site, hell nobody gets along on frakking facespace, why would they bother slapping even a link a week up on a communal place?
I can't keep from imagining our own private subnet, bbs on the web-ternet, whatever. Several friends have done their own version of the same over the years. I remember them testing dial-up bbs setups over the landlines in the dorms, before Halo and Quake when it was Doom blowing minds.
Finally got wireless printing working in the house. Stupid little details kept me from getting it going before. Read up on it today in spite of a monster headache and finally got the pages to spit out from across the room. These days we take the feeling of triumph wherever it comes from.
Whether it's writing 5-7k words in a day, and few in-between the longer ones, 55k words in a month, or finally getting the danged thing to print the way it's supposed to.
Finished the first Jack Reacher novel, obtained the second. Reading the first posthumous Michael Crichton novel, and after the involved and convoluted plot of the former, a different kind of gritty realism amuses in the Crichton title Pirate Latitudes.
It's been amusing reading commentary about him being a right-wing tool for having written a novel ostensibly 'against' global warming. I read that one, too, and fail to have seen overwhelming evidence it was positioned any particular way on the issue.
Looking forward to Tron Legacy, confused by disney's refusal to reissue the original movie on dvd before the sequel comes out. That's just stupid, the special brand known as corporate dumbth. Nothing would've kept them from giving it a "Tron Legacy collectable slipcover" or something with updated graphics, the frakking n00bs.
Also in December comes the new double-album from "Ryan Adams and the Cardinals" who from what I understand/understood actually preferred to just be called "The Cardinals" and they call the new album "III/IV", which by virtue of the players on it alone should kick all kinds of ass.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
playing hooky from nanowrimo
Like most of life's lessons, the moments I'm dwelling on up in my brainbox today are best examined and learned from with plenty of perspective.
I remember writing my own ham-handed amateur's bridge piece between Weezer's Pinkerton album and Kevin Smith's film Chasing Amy, which hit my life right around the time a couple of close friends came out as gay or bi, and I found myself just a boring old straight person.
Not narrow enough to find dykes unattractive, but unmoved by the prospect of dick even when I didn't have to look far for a male who constantly threw softball come-ons my direction.
So here I am today reading one person's ultra personal dissection of Chasing Amy over here:
http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2010/11/15/jay-silent-bob-live/
and then a history of Pinkerton over here:
http://www.altpress.com/features/entry/this_is_beginning_to_hurt_a_woefully_incomplete_oral_history_of_weezers_pin/
and it all leaves me wanting to dig out the last few copies of that poem I wrote back then and burn them in a pile in the backyard.
Then I'll go write something BETTER...
I remember writing my own ham-handed amateur's bridge piece between Weezer's Pinkerton album and Kevin Smith's film Chasing Amy, which hit my life right around the time a couple of close friends came out as gay or bi, and I found myself just a boring old straight person.
Not narrow enough to find dykes unattractive, but unmoved by the prospect of dick even when I didn't have to look far for a male who constantly threw softball come-ons my direction.
So here I am today reading one person's ultra personal dissection of Chasing Amy over here:
http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2010/11/15/jay-silent-bob-live/
and then a history of Pinkerton over here:
http://www.altpress.com/features/entry/this_is_beginning_to_hurt_a_woefully_incomplete_oral_history_of_weezers_pin/
and it all leaves me wanting to dig out the last few copies of that poem I wrote back then and burn them in a pile in the backyard.
Then I'll go write something BETTER...
Monday, November 1, 2010
I like tea, you're ruining it...
I bit into a bright wonderful orange up in my headspace listening to 89.3 the Current, MPR’s populist station. Itself an I.O.U. for the promise of once-great Rev105 Revolution Radio station in Minneapolis, the Current played me a great song.
Conventional Wisdom, by Built to Spill
I love the soaring, swirling guitar on this track. Everything else I was doing when it came on just stopped happening, and I rode the groove like a rollercoaster. Afterward I sought out the who and what, knowing it sounded vaguely familiar but not who it was. I ended up later that afternoon buying it on itunes. The rest of that story isn’t as important. The song’s title is a catchphrase.
Privately, up in my brainbox, I pride myself on seeing ahead of the curve. Whenever possible, I try to see what’s coming, stay informed, sniff the dirt, get the gist, read voraciously, and earn myself a feel for who’s worth their weight and who should do a lot more thinking before they speak.
I watched the last presidential election with sharp memories of the hopeless haze left after the previous two. Then myself along with the rest of the masses felt a fresh splash of water on our faces when something else happened this time.
Setting aside for a moment the frothing furor of the tea party racists and how egregiously John McCain failed his first Presidential decision when he couldn’t find someone more awe inspiring than him, and chose a flake of a spokesmodel from Alaska as his running mate when Barack Obama chose Joe Biden. I utterly disdain Biden’s association with the deep pockets of the old money running the old media machinery, but I can see what Bill Clinton meant when he said a candidate’s first Presidential Decision is picking a running mate. And Biden is a home run, certainly compared to the failed bunt of Sarah, plain and dumb.
I believe that the conventional wisdom being sold this midterm election cycle is clearly slanted to most people, regardless of where they stand. I’ve been stunned to have my feelings about the AP honed to a point this cycle, when I watched them cover democrats tepidly when they opposed Bush, but are covering every single race this year as if the opposition gets top billing every single time. Everywhere I look, the old guard seem to have lost their way, are predicting massive defeat of democrats in this midterm.
I haven’t believed it and I won’t. Doesn’t really matter what happens tomorrow night. I’m confident that there will be a serious revision of the power and solidarity of the opposition party in this country. Their media outlets will fail to cover it, the rest of the confused, jittery chatterbox of cable news, cowardly corporate networks, and puffy chested self-important fishwrappers.
If the best this widdle tea potty can muster is Sharon Angle, Carl Paladino, and Christine O’Donnell, failed businesspeople with more money than brains like Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, incredulity is the only rational reaction. The most enlightened person on the GOP side of the spectrum is Jon McCain’s daughter Meghan, from this irrational liberal’s point of view. Thank Goddess we’re not feeding her to the machine that churns out these generic, soundbite spewing bobbleheads.
I see a lot of bright young stars on the democrat side of things. Jersey, New Orleans, New York all have fascinating candidates and people already elected and serving. Al Franken makes me proud every time I hear him, honestly he’s a far better prepared politician, astute speaker and writer than he ever was as an SNL-type improv-ish comedian.
The numbers have been clear all along the way, and I doubt that things will change much beyond what fivethirtyeight predicts. Republican governors may see some gains, but senate and house aren’t gonna change nearly as much as people wish to think they will. The change comes from the movement, the President, and the rest of the democratic groundswell that promises to fix what 8 years of Bush did. Bush’s wars, Bush’s deficit made from a democratic surplus.
America can do better, together, than we do under Republican Presidents. This is established fact among everybody at the bottom, struggling to get by, and the Union members who are just beginning to break above the poverty line by becoming skilled workers. We The People know these things. Them With All the Money, they pay to convince anybody otherwise. This is how it’s been. But everything changes. Projected gains this year for the party opposing the President will be far slimmer than the blowhards want you to think.
The difference between the tea pawty and the party of hope and change is centrally that you want your country back, but you want it without us, any way you can get it. We’re taking America forward, and we’re taking you with us, in spite of these embarassing and uninformed digressions you take us on.
Conventional Wisdom, by Built to Spill
I love the soaring, swirling guitar on this track. Everything else I was doing when it came on just stopped happening, and I rode the groove like a rollercoaster. Afterward I sought out the who and what, knowing it sounded vaguely familiar but not who it was. I ended up later that afternoon buying it on itunes. The rest of that story isn’t as important. The song’s title is a catchphrase.
Privately, up in my brainbox, I pride myself on seeing ahead of the curve. Whenever possible, I try to see what’s coming, stay informed, sniff the dirt, get the gist, read voraciously, and earn myself a feel for who’s worth their weight and who should do a lot more thinking before they speak.
I watched the last presidential election with sharp memories of the hopeless haze left after the previous two. Then myself along with the rest of the masses felt a fresh splash of water on our faces when something else happened this time.
Setting aside for a moment the frothing furor of the tea party racists and how egregiously John McCain failed his first Presidential decision when he couldn’t find someone more awe inspiring than him, and chose a flake of a spokesmodel from Alaska as his running mate when Barack Obama chose Joe Biden. I utterly disdain Biden’s association with the deep pockets of the old money running the old media machinery, but I can see what Bill Clinton meant when he said a candidate’s first Presidential Decision is picking a running mate. And Biden is a home run, certainly compared to the failed bunt of Sarah, plain and dumb.
I believe that the conventional wisdom being sold this midterm election cycle is clearly slanted to most people, regardless of where they stand. I’ve been stunned to have my feelings about the AP honed to a point this cycle, when I watched them cover democrats tepidly when they opposed Bush, but are covering every single race this year as if the opposition gets top billing every single time. Everywhere I look, the old guard seem to have lost their way, are predicting massive defeat of democrats in this midterm.
I haven’t believed it and I won’t. Doesn’t really matter what happens tomorrow night. I’m confident that there will be a serious revision of the power and solidarity of the opposition party in this country. Their media outlets will fail to cover it, the rest of the confused, jittery chatterbox of cable news, cowardly corporate networks, and puffy chested self-important fishwrappers.
If the best this widdle tea potty can muster is Sharon Angle, Carl Paladino, and Christine O’Donnell, failed businesspeople with more money than brains like Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, incredulity is the only rational reaction. The most enlightened person on the GOP side of the spectrum is Jon McCain’s daughter Meghan, from this irrational liberal’s point of view. Thank Goddess we’re not feeding her to the machine that churns out these generic, soundbite spewing bobbleheads.
I see a lot of bright young stars on the democrat side of things. Jersey, New Orleans, New York all have fascinating candidates and people already elected and serving. Al Franken makes me proud every time I hear him, honestly he’s a far better prepared politician, astute speaker and writer than he ever was as an SNL-type improv-ish comedian.
The numbers have been clear all along the way, and I doubt that things will change much beyond what fivethirtyeight predicts. Republican governors may see some gains, but senate and house aren’t gonna change nearly as much as people wish to think they will. The change comes from the movement, the President, and the rest of the democratic groundswell that promises to fix what 8 years of Bush did. Bush’s wars, Bush’s deficit made from a democratic surplus.
America can do better, together, than we do under Republican Presidents. This is established fact among everybody at the bottom, struggling to get by, and the Union members who are just beginning to break above the poverty line by becoming skilled workers. We The People know these things. Them With All the Money, they pay to convince anybody otherwise. This is how it’s been. But everything changes. Projected gains this year for the party opposing the President will be far slimmer than the blowhards want you to think.
The difference between the tea pawty and the party of hope and change is centrally that you want your country back, but you want it without us, any way you can get it. We’re taking America forward, and we’re taking you with us, in spite of these embarassing and uninformed digressions you take us on.
Friday, October 15, 2010
tucked into shadows, my blowfish collapses
Some of the more esoterically minded souls I've had the pleasure of debate and discussion with have suggested to me that the human mind is vast. The mind, the soul each dwelling in their own abstract plane where either can be several times the size of the person's actual physical body. (If so, mine just blowfish-ed up, blew its stack and posted, now I'm shrinking back down to normal size.)
I've always treated these ideas as cute extensions of the god complex most humans must flirt with, giving us the promise of something beyond this life - however mundane or godlike - to make up for the questions this existence forces to the center of your consciousness. Fun to play with like chess pieces, these ideas are, but offer little comfort in the harshest moments of your life.
What makes this post more than just another episode of talk soup, brain babble gone rudderless? An additional experience to throw on the heap; finally finding myself unable to stop posting a clear, lucid thought with my fellow forum-goers. Pointing out something nobody else has said. Standing up for something just before running away to hide from the inevitable fallout for having done so. Sigh.
I've done this little act on several different bands/artists fora and mailing lists over the last 15 years.
•A rant how "poop loggy logg" sucks on a Prince mailing list - motivated by the fact that my dorm was ablaze with shitty synth-centric gangster rap all year long.
•Get in a flame war about Courtney Love on a Tori Amos mailing list.
•Defy the Zappa-ites on a Ween message board.
•Admit you're not utterly obsessive about the Replacements on a Soul Asylum board.
This sort of reflection doesn't come as any surprise. Sometimes there's no fallout because you're genuinely understood. But what do we remember? The understanding or the big flameout trollfest?
I suppose if you can have that many years in a row doing anything, you're bound to notice changes - if not in thyself then in the circumstances surrounding you and the rest of the audience.
The online experience has changed a good deal. How many of the born-with-a-cellphone generation can remember before wireless internet? Having to get up and GO to the computer lab? Dorms without ANY internet? In spite of all these immense advances in convenience, it seems that the vibes rolling off the rabble here online are just as chaotic and selfish as they have ever been.
Didn't William effing Shakespeare serve as the first example of multiplexed-at-once writing? Wasn't he trying to play a grandiose story for his regular theater-going patrons up in their box seats, while at the same exact moment playing goofy clowning jester tactics for the unwashed rabble at ground level?
I learned to wish to be invisible, want to tuck myself into the shadows to escape the shitty attitudes of the disinterested and unintelligent - just to survive high school, and it's no real surprise that the experience left lasting effects.
Dan Savage began an anti-bullying campaign for gay, bi, and gender-confused youth, to let them know in no uncertain terms that "It Gets Better." I sincerely thank the man for saving the kids of today that would've been my friends back in the day. I can't help but wonder if there'll ever be any such words of encouragement for the rest of the crowd that gets the same shite and doesn't even have the obvious to "blame" it on. When you're getting picked on because your classmates are the ones with the defects, the bigotry, the fear-of-different behind their gleeful cruelty.
The only holes I can poke in It getting Better are that people are selfish, rude, boorish dicks everyday in all walks of life, from the Bank to the Butcher Shop. High school is a place where it's sort of implicit that we're still incubating, unfinished works of personhood. Mistakes still feel hugely embarassing there, but it's understood that everybody's gonna have at least one while they're there.
How much whingeing from the Ben Glecks of the world are we gonna have to put up with if nobody in any high school ever learns that their fellows are harsh, cruel, selfish dickheads and that a thick skin is all we ever have to defend ourselves? If nobody ever learns to thicken and toughen up before leaving high school, America is about to be overrun with whiners. (As if She weren't already...)
Did I ever make it from thin-skinned target-for-abuse to thicker-skinned non-whiner?? /lol
I've always treated these ideas as cute extensions of the god complex most humans must flirt with, giving us the promise of something beyond this life - however mundane or godlike - to make up for the questions this existence forces to the center of your consciousness. Fun to play with like chess pieces, these ideas are, but offer little comfort in the harshest moments of your life.
What makes this post more than just another episode of talk soup, brain babble gone rudderless? An additional experience to throw on the heap; finally finding myself unable to stop posting a clear, lucid thought with my fellow forum-goers. Pointing out something nobody else has said. Standing up for something just before running away to hide from the inevitable fallout for having done so. Sigh.
I've done this little act on several different bands/artists fora and mailing lists over the last 15 years.
•A rant how "poop loggy logg" sucks on a Prince mailing list - motivated by the fact that my dorm was ablaze with shitty synth-centric gangster rap all year long.
•Get in a flame war about Courtney Love on a Tori Amos mailing list.
•Defy the Zappa-ites on a Ween message board.
•Admit you're not utterly obsessive about the Replacements on a Soul Asylum board.
This sort of reflection doesn't come as any surprise. Sometimes there's no fallout because you're genuinely understood. But what do we remember? The understanding or the big flameout trollfest?
I suppose if you can have that many years in a row doing anything, you're bound to notice changes - if not in thyself then in the circumstances surrounding you and the rest of the audience.
The online experience has changed a good deal. How many of the born-with-a-cellphone generation can remember before wireless internet? Having to get up and GO to the computer lab? Dorms without ANY internet? In spite of all these immense advances in convenience, it seems that the vibes rolling off the rabble here online are just as chaotic and selfish as they have ever been.
Didn't William effing Shakespeare serve as the first example of multiplexed-at-once writing? Wasn't he trying to play a grandiose story for his regular theater-going patrons up in their box seats, while at the same exact moment playing goofy clowning jester tactics for the unwashed rabble at ground level?
I learned to wish to be invisible, want to tuck myself into the shadows to escape the shitty attitudes of the disinterested and unintelligent - just to survive high school, and it's no real surprise that the experience left lasting effects.
Dan Savage began an anti-bullying campaign for gay, bi, and gender-confused youth, to let them know in no uncertain terms that "It Gets Better." I sincerely thank the man for saving the kids of today that would've been my friends back in the day. I can't help but wonder if there'll ever be any such words of encouragement for the rest of the crowd that gets the same shite and doesn't even have the obvious to "blame" it on. When you're getting picked on because your classmates are the ones with the defects, the bigotry, the fear-of-different behind their gleeful cruelty.
The only holes I can poke in It getting Better are that people are selfish, rude, boorish dicks everyday in all walks of life, from the Bank to the Butcher Shop. High school is a place where it's sort of implicit that we're still incubating, unfinished works of personhood. Mistakes still feel hugely embarassing there, but it's understood that everybody's gonna have at least one while they're there.
How much whingeing from the Ben Glecks of the world are we gonna have to put up with if nobody in any high school ever learns that their fellows are harsh, cruel, selfish dickheads and that a thick skin is all we ever have to defend ourselves? If nobody ever learns to thicken and toughen up before leaving high school, America is about to be overrun with whiners. (As if She weren't already...)
Did I ever make it from thin-skinned target-for-abuse to thicker-skinned non-whiner?? /lol
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
gr8 xbox softmod of 2010: chapter 6
Today’s word is hotswap, kids. What is hotswapping? Aside from some sex joke I could poorly attempt to make, it’s changing hard drives in a device when the power is on, either to the drive, or the system. In this case, stonewalled by my mobo’s draconian bios freezing all hdds attached by default, it would seem, I’m onward to using either Auto-installer, or something I’ve seen around but never had to rely on before called Frosty’s Xbox Rescue disc.
Supposedly any other power source will do, but you boot up the xbox with the stock drive, load the disc, then swap the IDE ribbon connector from the stock hd to the new one you wish to lock.
Seems for a good section of the populace xboxHDM quickly became useless, since bios settings would ‘freeze’ the drive and deny HDM any hope of locking it. HDM didn’t suck completely, I don’t know if I need to clone anything. I believe this hd is prepared and ready to fly. The only thing it lacks is the elusive detail of being LOCKED.
I’m about to forego the pc altogether, go the hotswapping method, boot the thing up with the stock drive, detach the dvdrom connector, have the new upgrade hd nearby with the usb housing powering it, then connect the dvdrom’s ide ribbon to the new hd.
Currently making progress here. I ditched the pc and decided to try the hotswap method with Chimp’s Tool. This is an on-xbox post-softmod app. it’s analogous to Ghost for the pc in that it clones the original stock hd to the new one you intend to use after upgrading. The rub here is that it doesn’t get hung up on the hp pc bios that kept referring to this drive as frozen.
!!! I actually did it! I just saw the little white macrohard logo appear at the bottom of the boot screen ON MY bigger HD!!
Hotswapping with the powered usb enclosure worked. Chimp cloned me a hd. Now to go see if it’s all allocated and check the other details. But it might be time to put the screws back in and start moving into this new box.
Ripping Serious Sam II, will go to Buffy next. This rocks!
Maybe the dvdrom still needs a cleaning. It didn’t read buffy, but we’ve ripped serious sam ii, and it’s 3/4 the way thru counterstrike right now. Thinking that if I installed Chimp on the old xbox, I could just clone up from there. Of course copying everything would take some time, but if I dumped everything except the saves, it’d go faster. But considering the Chimp’s ease of use, I could/might be able to clone my first xbox’s current hd to an even bigger one.
The process should go roughly similar to this. Softmod to load the apps, run the apps, then hotswap the target hd with the dvdrom cable and the usb housing, blammo, it’s done. This box’s dvdrom ripped Serious Sam II but choked on counterstrike, buffy, and tork. I think I’ll need to clean it. If that doesn’t work, I can clone the other HD to this one, or find another way to repair or recondition it.
I knew the dvdrom was dirty or something. I copied over a game and some Futurama, but then I decided to at least see how the dvd looked inside. It’s a samsung replacement drive from what I can see. I watched a few yt videos for reference, one that just cleaned the upper surfaces of the lens and the drive. I didn’t get at the underside and the lower mirror, but I did wipe the dust from the gears and rails, alcohol + qtipped the lens, disc hub, and surrounding housing.
I also blew out the rest of the inside of the xbox, under the dvdrom and hdd trays. I’ve now taken the thing apart down to the mobo, both drives out. And after cleaning it up, I reattached the housing and connected both trays, both drives, reattached the lid, and plugged it back in.
Now it’s reading 5.71mb per second, somewhere around 2x as fast as it went before. It read Buffy on the first try and is now ripping it. I’ll keep going. But at last I’m grinding away on my own mod from the bottom up. And bing, Buffy’s done. Counterstrike reads almost as fast.
Philips VAD6011 is the model in there. It wasn’t even all that dirty when I opened it. I wiped a big wad of dust off the innermost rail that the lens assembly slides back n forth on. Dabbed at the lens with rubbing alcohol, around it and such, but most of the dust in the unit I blew off with the spray duster outside.
Now that the dvdrom is playing ball, plugging along at 3.3 MB/sec or better, I’ve ripped the first games I grabbed from the shelf, Buffy, Tork, Beyond Good & Evil and Half Life 2. I want to see how much I can fit in what I have before I go off the deep end and try to buy any massive hard drives for this thing. There’s another patch that needs to be installed or enabled before anything above 160gb can be used. But I’ve partitioned correctly and made F partition 65+gb out of a 74.5 once C and E drives had each taken a bite.
According to what I’ve been reading this morning, the xbox can usually handle cloning through a IDE>SATA converter. This is important b/c nobody makes IDE drives anymore, and they’re either used, refurbed, or really expensive. I think they max out at 750gb and then usually only over $100.
I did a little comparative searching and I could have a 160gb IDE drive that the xbox compatibility list has several users verify it locks properly, from newegg refurbed total price shipped $35. Including an adapter I could probably have a 500-750gb SATA for the same price. These be the shifting sands of supported standards and the prices they sell for.
Supposedly any other power source will do, but you boot up the xbox with the stock drive, load the disc, then swap the IDE ribbon connector from the stock hd to the new one you wish to lock.
Seems for a good section of the populace xboxHDM quickly became useless, since bios settings would ‘freeze’ the drive and deny HDM any hope of locking it. HDM didn’t suck completely, I don’t know if I need to clone anything. I believe this hd is prepared and ready to fly. The only thing it lacks is the elusive detail of being LOCKED.
I’m about to forego the pc altogether, go the hotswapping method, boot the thing up with the stock drive, detach the dvdrom connector, have the new upgrade hd nearby with the usb housing powering it, then connect the dvdrom’s ide ribbon to the new hd.
Currently making progress here. I ditched the pc and decided to try the hotswap method with Chimp’s Tool. This is an on-xbox post-softmod app. it’s analogous to Ghost for the pc in that it clones the original stock hd to the new one you intend to use after upgrading. The rub here is that it doesn’t get hung up on the hp pc bios that kept referring to this drive as frozen.
!!! I actually did it! I just saw the little white macrohard logo appear at the bottom of the boot screen ON MY bigger HD!!
Hotswapping with the powered usb enclosure worked. Chimp cloned me a hd. Now to go see if it’s all allocated and check the other details. But it might be time to put the screws back in and start moving into this new box.
Ripping Serious Sam II, will go to Buffy next. This rocks!
Maybe the dvdrom still needs a cleaning. It didn’t read buffy, but we’ve ripped serious sam ii, and it’s 3/4 the way thru counterstrike right now. Thinking that if I installed Chimp on the old xbox, I could just clone up from there. Of course copying everything would take some time, but if I dumped everything except the saves, it’d go faster. But considering the Chimp’s ease of use, I could/might be able to clone my first xbox’s current hd to an even bigger one.
The process should go roughly similar to this. Softmod to load the apps, run the apps, then hotswap the target hd with the dvdrom cable and the usb housing, blammo, it’s done. This box’s dvdrom ripped Serious Sam II but choked on counterstrike, buffy, and tork. I think I’ll need to clean it. If that doesn’t work, I can clone the other HD to this one, or find another way to repair or recondition it.
I knew the dvdrom was dirty or something. I copied over a game and some Futurama, but then I decided to at least see how the dvd looked inside. It’s a samsung replacement drive from what I can see. I watched a few yt videos for reference, one that just cleaned the upper surfaces of the lens and the drive. I didn’t get at the underside and the lower mirror, but I did wipe the dust from the gears and rails, alcohol + qtipped the lens, disc hub, and surrounding housing.
I also blew out the rest of the inside of the xbox, under the dvdrom and hdd trays. I’ve now taken the thing apart down to the mobo, both drives out. And after cleaning it up, I reattached the housing and connected both trays, both drives, reattached the lid, and plugged it back in.
Now it’s reading 5.71mb per second, somewhere around 2x as fast as it went before. It read Buffy on the first try and is now ripping it. I’ll keep going. But at last I’m grinding away on my own mod from the bottom up. And bing, Buffy’s done. Counterstrike reads almost as fast.
Philips VAD6011 is the model in there. It wasn’t even all that dirty when I opened it. I wiped a big wad of dust off the innermost rail that the lens assembly slides back n forth on. Dabbed at the lens with rubbing alcohol, around it and such, but most of the dust in the unit I blew off with the spray duster outside.
Now that the dvdrom is playing ball, plugging along at 3.3 MB/sec or better, I’ve ripped the first games I grabbed from the shelf, Buffy, Tork, Beyond Good & Evil and Half Life 2. I want to see how much I can fit in what I have before I go off the deep end and try to buy any massive hard drives for this thing. There’s another patch that needs to be installed or enabled before anything above 160gb can be used. But I’ve partitioned correctly and made F partition 65+gb out of a 74.5 once C and E drives had each taken a bite.
According to what I’ve been reading this morning, the xbox can usually handle cloning through a IDE>SATA converter. This is important b/c nobody makes IDE drives anymore, and they’re either used, refurbed, or really expensive. I think they max out at 750gb and then usually only over $100.
I did a little comparative searching and I could have a 160gb IDE drive that the xbox compatibility list has several users verify it locks properly, from newegg refurbed total price shipped $35. Including an adapter I could probably have a 500-750gb SATA for the same price. These be the shifting sands of supported standards and the prices they sell for.
gr8 xbox softmod of 2010: chapter 5
More hours tick by as I learn how to do this during the doing of it. Having already been through all the steps and paid attention would’ve paid off by this point. But the only time I saw it done wasn't a teaching atmosphere, and I've regretted that since.
But that experience resulted in my first xbmc box, the softmodded and hard-drive upgraded xbox that's become a ubiquitous part of our entertainment center here in the casa. That particular install/instance of the video-playing swiss-army-knife that is xbmc/mplayer seems to be the ghost I'm chasing throughout this current project.
That box lets me copy stuff from the hdd to the usb sticks I have. Didn’t seem to choke on mac os formatted stuff, but preferred fat 16/32 format. Of course some sticks just don't work at all, but I didn't think that would vary from unit to unit. Duh...
Tonight I’ve been butting my head on the fact that the new softmodded xbox, even when booted to familiar xbmc territory and using the file browser I’m familiar with - wouldn’t let me copy to any of ‘em. None of my various usb sticks...??
I could dump the backups of the appropriate stuff on the FATX formatted usb stick that the xbox liked, but nothing else can read that. not even the win2k box, sadly to say.
I used my old standby long-ass blue ethernet cable to attach the xbox to the base station from across the room, but no luck. That dam cable should be crocheted into its own noose for all the trouble its caused me. I grabbed the whole stack of the xbox with controller on top, both sitting on top of the workhorse commie monitor. I moved them, replugged them in their new place within the length of the shorter ethernet cable, and blammo, it works right away and lets me ftp.
So I’ve got the backup folder dumping over ftp to the mac here in the background. I have to guess that I have the appropriate backups for the HDM creation, and then should be able to continue this bizarre circus of fail.
According to the xboxHDM howto, putting these ftp leeched files from the original xbox hd in the right folders, running the cmd line script will then generate an iso I can burn on cdr and use to lock the hd in the pc before tossing it in the xbox, which will then act kinda zombified and anticlimactic. It’ll be like it is now, just booting off the bigger hd with the barest essential dashboard on it.
Then I go through the installs from auto installer and get the basic apps and emus on the new bigger hd, and proceed to add all the shit that made my first softmodded xbmc box so much fun. If I can swing it, too, post project here, this may become my new core xbox, and maybe I can keep it on the network.
The win2k beast roars, buzzes and shudders back to life. about to load the usb stick, try to shuffle the necessary HDM stuff to the right folders before running the script to generate that iso. 7 minutes to go time on that score at usb1.1 speeds.
Back on the usb stick now is a finished iso to burn to cdr that should, hopefully, be a working xboxHDM for this hdd. I ftp’d the dam files myself. if the script worked and the files copied ok, first from the xbox over ftp to the mac, then from the mac to the fat32 usb stick, from that to the peecee where it underwent the ISOage.
Here we go a burning now. after all, it may take 5 minutes to copy an 190mb iso at usb1, but at usb2 it’s already done.
First stab, hdm booted once I could get a drive to let me put it in...after seeing the “no operating system” prompt (since I’ve completely bypassed the boot drive), I rebooted with the disk loaded, it booted from the dvdrom, loaded the linux live and hung on the lack of ethernet, just as it’s doing this 2nd boot.
First try I had the hard drive on the wrong channel. now it’s master and not a slave. and a few minutes, a few more ‘type yes’ instances and it’s building a c-drive on the hd. It already partitioned and formatted the f drive. c is where xbox keeps its brains. Gets to the part where it’s supposed to lock the dam hdd.
I remember T tossing it in my old amd box ceej built and having it boot, lock, and him being stunned/amazed that it worked like click bam and he didn’t have to wrestle with it. I think I’ve come these years later to understand why he was so surprised that day when it just worked, bam, locked the drive.
My HP box, another thrift store find, refuses to lock this drive. Says it’s frozen. The faqs, tuts, howtos and internet forums say to try and find a bios setting that lets me turn off “auto-detect” and then it should be seen as not frozen. I spent a half an hour flipping every toggle in the bios between reboots - but to no avail.
For future reference, keeping an old PC keyboard around is a good idea since the newfangled USB ones won’t work to trigger fkeys for bios settings during boot.
But there’s an xbox here that I thought was b0rked last week. I got it home that day, powered up and connected, the drive spit out a copy of segaGT/jsrf as I’ve already stated, looked like a used hockey puck on the bottom. I wasn’t surprised when it didn’t boot. But I popped in a nearly-perfect original pressing of Serious Sam II and it still wouldn’t go. I surrendered to the moment and resigned myself to solving the issue later.
I read about it a lot, slept, recovered. Then the day came when I tried it again, and blammo, it fired up MechAssault without fail on the first try? Is this the same box as before that wouldn’t boot? Seems so. I followed the faqs and tuts and hustled the ‘Install Linux’ file over, softmodded it.
Installed a load of apps and emulators compared to my initial experience with xmbc and the evolution dashboard. If an 8gb hd didn’t feel like half a phone-booth with a fat guy in it...I might be more drawn into investigating it. But my enthusiasm to explore the new install has waned. I don’t have the outcome I expected to achieve, mainly because of the box I bought to replace my old pc when its mobo went bork.
But that experience resulted in my first xbmc box, the softmodded and hard-drive upgraded xbox that's become a ubiquitous part of our entertainment center here in the casa. That particular install/instance of the video-playing swiss-army-knife that is xbmc/mplayer seems to be the ghost I'm chasing throughout this current project.
That box lets me copy stuff from the hdd to the usb sticks I have. Didn’t seem to choke on mac os formatted stuff, but preferred fat 16/32 format. Of course some sticks just don't work at all, but I didn't think that would vary from unit to unit. Duh...
Tonight I’ve been butting my head on the fact that the new softmodded xbox, even when booted to familiar xbmc territory and using the file browser I’m familiar with - wouldn’t let me copy to any of ‘em. None of my various usb sticks...??
I could dump the backups of the appropriate stuff on the FATX formatted usb stick that the xbox liked, but nothing else can read that. not even the win2k box, sadly to say.
I used my old standby long-ass blue ethernet cable to attach the xbox to the base station from across the room, but no luck. That dam cable should be crocheted into its own noose for all the trouble its caused me. I grabbed the whole stack of the xbox with controller on top, both sitting on top of the workhorse commie monitor. I moved them, replugged them in their new place within the length of the shorter ethernet cable, and blammo, it works right away and lets me ftp.
So I’ve got the backup folder dumping over ftp to the mac here in the background. I have to guess that I have the appropriate backups for the HDM creation, and then should be able to continue this bizarre circus of fail.
According to the xboxHDM howto, putting these ftp leeched files from the original xbox hd in the right folders, running the cmd line script will then generate an iso I can burn on cdr and use to lock the hd in the pc before tossing it in the xbox, which will then act kinda zombified and anticlimactic. It’ll be like it is now, just booting off the bigger hd with the barest essential dashboard on it.
Then I go through the installs from auto installer and get the basic apps and emus on the new bigger hd, and proceed to add all the shit that made my first softmodded xbmc box so much fun. If I can swing it, too, post project here, this may become my new core xbox, and maybe I can keep it on the network.
The win2k beast roars, buzzes and shudders back to life. about to load the usb stick, try to shuffle the necessary HDM stuff to the right folders before running the script to generate that iso. 7 minutes to go time on that score at usb1.1 speeds.
Back on the usb stick now is a finished iso to burn to cdr that should, hopefully, be a working xboxHDM for this hdd. I ftp’d the dam files myself. if the script worked and the files copied ok, first from the xbox over ftp to the mac, then from the mac to the fat32 usb stick, from that to the peecee where it underwent the ISOage.
Here we go a burning now. after all, it may take 5 minutes to copy an 190mb iso at usb1, but at usb2 it’s already done.
First stab, hdm booted once I could get a drive to let me put it in...after seeing the “no operating system” prompt (since I’ve completely bypassed the boot drive), I rebooted with the disk loaded, it booted from the dvdrom, loaded the linux live and hung on the lack of ethernet, just as it’s doing this 2nd boot.
First try I had the hard drive on the wrong channel. now it’s master and not a slave. and a few minutes, a few more ‘type yes’ instances and it’s building a c-drive on the hd. It already partitioned and formatted the f drive. c is where xbox keeps its brains. Gets to the part where it’s supposed to lock the dam hdd.
I remember T tossing it in my old amd box ceej built and having it boot, lock, and him being stunned/amazed that it worked like click bam and he didn’t have to wrestle with it. I think I’ve come these years later to understand why he was so surprised that day when it just worked, bam, locked the drive.
My HP box, another thrift store find, refuses to lock this drive. Says it’s frozen. The faqs, tuts, howtos and internet forums say to try and find a bios setting that lets me turn off “auto-detect” and then it should be seen as not frozen. I spent a half an hour flipping every toggle in the bios between reboots - but to no avail.
For future reference, keeping an old PC keyboard around is a good idea since the newfangled USB ones won’t work to trigger fkeys for bios settings during boot.
But there’s an xbox here that I thought was b0rked last week. I got it home that day, powered up and connected, the drive spit out a copy of segaGT/jsrf as I’ve already stated, looked like a used hockey puck on the bottom. I wasn’t surprised when it didn’t boot. But I popped in a nearly-perfect original pressing of Serious Sam II and it still wouldn’t go. I surrendered to the moment and resigned myself to solving the issue later.
I read about it a lot, slept, recovered. Then the day came when I tried it again, and blammo, it fired up MechAssault without fail on the first try? Is this the same box as before that wouldn’t boot? Seems so. I followed the faqs and tuts and hustled the ‘Install Linux’ file over, softmodded it.
Installed a load of apps and emulators compared to my initial experience with xmbc and the evolution dashboard. If an 8gb hd didn’t feel like half a phone-booth with a fat guy in it...I might be more drawn into investigating it. But my enthusiasm to explore the new install has waned. I don’t have the outcome I expected to achieve, mainly because of the box I bought to replace my old pc when its mobo went bork.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
the gr8 xbox softmod of 2010: chapter 4
another day...maybe more brain power. Who knows? Attempting to take a process that stretched across several days and chop it into roughly 750-1100 words per entry is a little more challenging than I thought it would be heading into it, but oh well.
Cracked the case, removed the lid, uncoupled the ribbon cable, found that the hdd tray was strapped down by its power cable. So I d/c the power cable, unwrapped it from its snaky path around the tray, removed the tray, unscrewed the drive, replaced it in the tray with the new one, then reversed the process.
I even put the screws back in, overly confident that AID 4.52 would know just what to do. I had the thought as I was doing it that it wasn’t done, probably wouldn’t work, and I was screwing it down tight just to have to undo it later.
Of course I turned out to be right, the thing booted to a series of error codes. First the disc couldn’t be read, then the dashboard could not be found, then the game wouldn’t boot. Some suggested that overcoming the missing dash could/might be fixed by installing it from a disc with xb live on it, since that usually updated the dash for xbl. But no luck.
Next on the list, set back but undeterred, will be loading the drive into one of the 2 spare bays in the peecee, running this XboxHDM and either copying over the necessary backups, creating the CDR iso of them for the appropriate moment, or merely locking the damn drive so I can get a game to install a dash on it.
I imagine a future blog post about “xbox modder’s toolbox 2010” where I’ve stumbled through the process years after most of the people already made the mistakes and perfected the process. So I’ve had to develop some sense of what’s too old to be useful and what’s new enough to be relevant - all over again in a new subcommunity or forum of users. This time things seem to circle around xbins and xbox-scene. With the wii it was wiihacks and gbatemp where most of the serious help came from.
I think I spent more time doing recon in the ninty forums since I found the users less boorish and concerned with typical American excessisms like fake plastic tits, beer and fatball. Xbox users tend more toward that since they’re in the emptyvee/Nascar bracket where the marketing was concentrated. Years later there seems to be a much more jackass-fratboy common denominator among the xbox 360 / xbox live crowd. Judged -if nothing else- by the profanity and heavy-handed homophobic rhetorical gist of their XBLA in-game videos posted here, there and everywhere. /digress
I envision this task's toolbox would have 3 main parts. The exploit, the auto-installer, and the hard-drive-maker.
I’ve just hit the 3rd step there. XboxHDM should prepare the new hdd so that once I’ve done the hardware part of physically installing it, it’ll boot up and recognize it, unlock it with the same key that’s on the drive it shipped with, also sitting there in the eeprom flash that's part of the customised xboxHDM disc I get to burn.
In fact, recalling the first xbox I ever had softmodded, my old cow-orker gave me a disc and said “never lose this” that says “XBOX HDM” in bright green highlighter on it. So I have the backup of the original drive that thing came with, despite having left the actual hdd itself with that guy the day he did the mod.
I did the diligence here, the software I have just isn’t prepared to work with the way I did it. I actually have the C drive backup, the dashboard backup, and the eeprom.bin all on my usb stick, just waiting to be tagged into this process.
I just have to back up and do it by the numbers since I don’t yet have the skills to make it up as I go along.
Cracked the case, removed the lid, uncoupled the ribbon cable, found that the hdd tray was strapped down by its power cable. So I d/c the power cable, unwrapped it from its snaky path around the tray, removed the tray, unscrewed the drive, replaced it in the tray with the new one, then reversed the process.
I even put the screws back in, overly confident that AID 4.52 would know just what to do. I had the thought as I was doing it that it wasn’t done, probably wouldn’t work, and I was screwing it down tight just to have to undo it later.
Of course I turned out to be right, the thing booted to a series of error codes. First the disc couldn’t be read, then the dashboard could not be found, then the game wouldn’t boot. Some suggested that overcoming the missing dash could/might be fixed by installing it from a disc with xb live on it, since that usually updated the dash for xbl. But no luck.
Next on the list, set back but undeterred, will be loading the drive into one of the 2 spare bays in the peecee, running this XboxHDM and either copying over the necessary backups, creating the CDR iso of them for the appropriate moment, or merely locking the damn drive so I can get a game to install a dash on it.
I imagine a future blog post about “xbox modder’s toolbox 2010” where I’ve stumbled through the process years after most of the people already made the mistakes and perfected the process. So I’ve had to develop some sense of what’s too old to be useful and what’s new enough to be relevant - all over again in a new subcommunity or forum of users. This time things seem to circle around xbins and xbox-scene. With the wii it was wiihacks and gbatemp where most of the serious help came from.
I think I spent more time doing recon in the ninty forums since I found the users less boorish and concerned with typical American excessisms like fake plastic tits, beer and fatball. Xbox users tend more toward that since they’re in the emptyvee/Nascar bracket where the marketing was concentrated. Years later there seems to be a much more jackass-fratboy common denominator among the xbox 360 / xbox live crowd. Judged -if nothing else- by the profanity and heavy-handed homophobic rhetorical gist of their XBLA in-game videos posted here, there and everywhere. /digress
I envision this task's toolbox would have 3 main parts. The exploit, the auto-installer, and the hard-drive-maker.
I’ve just hit the 3rd step there. XboxHDM should prepare the new hdd so that once I’ve done the hardware part of physically installing it, it’ll boot up and recognize it, unlock it with the same key that’s on the drive it shipped with, also sitting there in the eeprom flash that's part of the customised xboxHDM disc I get to burn.
In fact, recalling the first xbox I ever had softmodded, my old cow-orker gave me a disc and said “never lose this” that says “XBOX HDM” in bright green highlighter on it. So I have the backup of the original drive that thing came with, despite having left the actual hdd itself with that guy the day he did the mod.
I did the diligence here, the software I have just isn’t prepared to work with the way I did it. I actually have the C drive backup, the dashboard backup, and the eeprom.bin all on my usb stick, just waiting to be tagged into this process.
I just have to back up and do it by the numbers since I don’t yet have the skills to make it up as I go along.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
gr8 xbox softmod of 2010: chapter 3
here we go. hustled ISO over to ext usb hd. burned with disk utility. appeared to work ok. put it in the xbox, orange light. mild wait to see it load. now the music’s playing and it’s time to roll. the bounced burn is grinding away on that stock hdd and filling it with emulators, apps, scripts, and probably tons of shit I’d delete.
I winced when I saw a folder in the scripts portion of the hierarchy entitled “football”, entirely unable to imagine it referring to anything but the Great American Abomination that isn’t soccer, yet also is far from futbol.
I’ve loaded a couple videos, but it seems like this would be really easy. I don’t know if I can just chuck in the new hdd and roll from there, as the vids suggest AID can do, but older tuts and texts and howtos seem to be divided on.
I can set the jumpers the same. I just don’t know if I need the eeprom.bin or the backup of the original C drive, the HDM or whatever, to clone onto the new hdd. Unless AID has streamlined that also, which this evening’s forum reading, searching, skimming and stumbling would suggest.
It seems there used to be a lot of surgical single-file modding and re-FTPing back to the xbox required in the earlier days of the softmod culture. Now AID has streamlined a lot of that, and I get the idea that I could just chuck the new hdd in there and roll with it, be prompted for whatever’s necessary...
I know this saga is approaching miniseries length at this point, having burned at least 90 minutes and perhaps over 2 hrs on the peecee portion of this awkward fumbling attempt. Surreal64_XXX box art thumbnails are streaming by with anonymous alphanumeric strings for filenames, buzzing past in a blur.
Do I press onward, attempting to get the bigger hdd noticed, formatted, modded, installed?
Or do I put off what has become inevitable, the maxtor that’s clearly supported and lockable as per the xbox hard drive compatibility list at http://xboxdrives.x-pec.com/?p=list&v_modelnum=4K080H4
I have a smattering of somewhat organized rom-gathering binges I’ve gone on over the years, and a small pinch of very early console rom collections I first leeched wayback in my very first days of having a higher-than-dialup speed connection to ye olde internette.
Funny, now I see zsnexbox skins at 720 and 1080 that I know for a fact I’ll never use. If Auto Installer Deluxe were something I understood better, or it had further customizable install options, I’d opt out of that sorta shit, but meh.
I’m still actually floored that the thing booted MechAssault. The mod went according to the plan...I booted into xbmc since I’m used to it and wanted a file browser. Now I’m gonna copy the backup and the eeprom to the memory stick.
I don’t know if I can get anything else to read it, but the 512mb stick I have lets me copy it, claims its FATX formatted. So I’ll have another source of the backup and eeprom aside from the original hdd when I move the new one into the xbox. I’ll have it on this dam stick. Will AID let me copy it back if needed? Is that the question, or just senseless worry?
Ok. the C drive backup and the eeprom backups are on the fatx formatted 512mb stick. The one it seemed to like for that sorta thing. I might tinker around a little with the current hd, but I’d hope I could swap it back in if the other one flakes on me and won’t install or some such shit.
After all, if it asks for backups of C and eeprom, AND if it will recognize the usb stick in that condition, then I can provide it. That’s the big boogeyman everyone seems to be so afraid of. I did the same due diligence when modding my wii. I made damn sure I backed up the original NAND before I got all moddy with it, so that according to most of the FAQs and howtos, I could recover from 99% of brickish behavior if I had a NAND backup.
Similar rules apply here. Now onto the case cracking.
I winced when I saw a folder in the scripts portion of the hierarchy entitled “football”, entirely unable to imagine it referring to anything but the Great American Abomination that isn’t soccer, yet also is far from futbol.
I’ve loaded a couple videos, but it seems like this would be really easy. I don’t know if I can just chuck in the new hdd and roll from there, as the vids suggest AID can do, but older tuts and texts and howtos seem to be divided on.
I can set the jumpers the same. I just don’t know if I need the eeprom.bin or the backup of the original C drive, the HDM or whatever, to clone onto the new hdd. Unless AID has streamlined that also, which this evening’s forum reading, searching, skimming and stumbling would suggest.
It seems there used to be a lot of surgical single-file modding and re-FTPing back to the xbox required in the earlier days of the softmod culture. Now AID has streamlined a lot of that, and I get the idea that I could just chuck the new hdd in there and roll with it, be prompted for whatever’s necessary...
I know this saga is approaching miniseries length at this point, having burned at least 90 minutes and perhaps over 2 hrs on the peecee portion of this awkward fumbling attempt. Surreal64_XXX box art thumbnails are streaming by with anonymous alphanumeric strings for filenames, buzzing past in a blur.
Do I press onward, attempting to get the bigger hdd noticed, formatted, modded, installed?
Or do I put off what has become inevitable, the maxtor that’s clearly supported and lockable as per the xbox hard drive compatibility list at http://xboxdrives.x-pec.com/?p=list&v_modelnum=4K080H4
I have a smattering of somewhat organized rom-gathering binges I’ve gone on over the years, and a small pinch of very early console rom collections I first leeched wayback in my very first days of having a higher-than-dialup speed connection to ye olde internette.
Funny, now I see zsnexbox skins at 720 and 1080 that I know for a fact I’ll never use. If Auto Installer Deluxe were something I understood better, or it had further customizable install options, I’d opt out of that sorta shit, but meh.
I’m still actually floored that the thing booted MechAssault. The mod went according to the plan...I booted into xbmc since I’m used to it and wanted a file browser. Now I’m gonna copy the backup and the eeprom to the memory stick.
I don’t know if I can get anything else to read it, but the 512mb stick I have lets me copy it, claims its FATX formatted. So I’ll have another source of the backup and eeprom aside from the original hdd when I move the new one into the xbox. I’ll have it on this dam stick. Will AID let me copy it back if needed? Is that the question, or just senseless worry?
Ok. the C drive backup and the eeprom backups are on the fatx formatted 512mb stick. The one it seemed to like for that sorta thing. I might tinker around a little with the current hd, but I’d hope I could swap it back in if the other one flakes on me and won’t install or some such shit.
After all, if it asks for backups of C and eeprom, AND if it will recognize the usb stick in that condition, then I can provide it. That’s the big boogeyman everyone seems to be so afraid of. I did the same due diligence when modding my wii. I made damn sure I backed up the original NAND before I got all moddy with it, so that according to most of the FAQs and howtos, I could recover from 99% of brickish behavior if I had a NAND backup.
Similar rules apply here. Now onto the case cracking.
gr8 xbox softmod of 2010: chapter 2
the process continues. Erring on the side of caution this time means I’ve committed myself to dumping near 2gb of auto installer deluxe on the peecee. if I wired it into the network, provided I had a reliable cable long enough, it might go faster, but the wireless maxxed out at 250kb and I killed it when attempting to leech the file from the internet. even with our connection, the halfassed almost broken antenna on this wireless card couldn’t do better.
I’m at 24 minutes and counting downward before I can dump the last 2 roughly 95mb pieces from a 2nd usb stick. after dumping the pieces, I uncompress them, follow the tut for modifying Auto Installer Deluxe, tweak it as necessary... rom packs don’t bother me, they can be added later. I moved the recently modded xbox and old commie workhorse monitor off the desk and set up the dam peecee. Of course nothing I did with the usb hard drives would work. Not the 74gb maxtor 4k080h4 formatted as it was, not once I tried to reformat it with the mac to FAT/MSDOS.
I went to computer management in win2k, signed and reformatted the drive. I probably missed a step or some shit, b/c once I’d done that and it appeared a viable blank drive in win2k, I ejected it and plugged it into the mac mini’s usb hub. Nope. It sees it, but won’t let me write to it. Read only? Wtf? What did I do to make it like that?
Not being able to read the dam thing under windoze made me reformat it WITH windoze, hoping it would shuttle back n forth better like that. Nope. Mac wouldn’t write to it. So I forget that plan, went to usb sticks, and forget that the dam HP pc, this fellow thrift store find.
according to system properties its an AMD athlon with 512mb of RAM. I think it has another 60 or 70 gb hd in there. The floppy’s probably still connected, it buzzes every once in a while. It had a hp cdrw in there when I got it, I dropped in another thrift store salvaged dvdrom drive. I think it’s the one that had a copy of Friday in it the day I brought it home.
6 minutes. Hopefully the process will accelerate a good bit after this bottleneck has been passed. Tweak AID, find out how to dump the finished version back to the damn burner and burn it.
a few go-rounds with AID patcher and I’ve got an ISO small enough to fit back on the usb stick from whence it came when it was still lowly rar files. 25 minutes from now I can copy the damn thing at an actual civilized speed for usb, burn the ISO with disk utility ... if it will let me.
Then...nah. I need more coffee to have that much momentum. I’m still stuck on the now. Getting the dam peecee to function should not take this frakking long. I really need a win box for the basics like this shit, but with usb2 and a dvd burner and something approaching real world features.
maybe someday...
I’m at 24 minutes and counting downward before I can dump the last 2 roughly 95mb pieces from a 2nd usb stick. after dumping the pieces, I uncompress them, follow the tut for modifying Auto Installer Deluxe, tweak it as necessary... rom packs don’t bother me, they can be added later. I moved the recently modded xbox and old commie workhorse monitor off the desk and set up the dam peecee. Of course nothing I did with the usb hard drives would work. Not the 74gb maxtor 4k080h4 formatted as it was, not once I tried to reformat it with the mac to FAT/MSDOS.
I went to computer management in win2k, signed and reformatted the drive. I probably missed a step or some shit, b/c once I’d done that and it appeared a viable blank drive in win2k, I ejected it and plugged it into the mac mini’s usb hub. Nope. It sees it, but won’t let me write to it. Read only? Wtf? What did I do to make it like that?
Not being able to read the dam thing under windoze made me reformat it WITH windoze, hoping it would shuttle back n forth better like that. Nope. Mac wouldn’t write to it. So I forget that plan, went to usb sticks, and forget that the dam HP pc, this fellow thrift store find.
according to system properties its an AMD athlon with 512mb of RAM. I think it has another 60 or 70 gb hd in there. The floppy’s probably still connected, it buzzes every once in a while. It had a hp cdrw in there when I got it, I dropped in another thrift store salvaged dvdrom drive. I think it’s the one that had a copy of Friday in it the day I brought it home.
6 minutes. Hopefully the process will accelerate a good bit after this bottleneck has been passed. Tweak AID, find out how to dump the finished version back to the damn burner and burn it.
a few go-rounds with AID patcher and I’ve got an ISO small enough to fit back on the usb stick from whence it came when it was still lowly rar files. 25 minutes from now I can copy the damn thing at an actual civilized speed for usb, burn the ISO with disk utility ... if it will let me.
Then...nah. I need more coffee to have that much momentum. I’m still stuck on the now. Getting the dam peecee to function should not take this frakking long. I really need a win box for the basics like this shit, but with usb2 and a dvd burner and something approaching real world features.
maybe someday...
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