{"id":419,"date":"2002-03-12T19:29:20","date_gmt":"2002-03-13T03:29:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2002\/03\/12\/2-hours-in-the-life-of-a-puter-geek\/"},"modified":"2019-11-26T15:12:14","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T23:12:14","slug":"2-hours-in-the-life-of-a-puter-geek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2002\/03\/12\/2-hours-in-the-life-of-a-puter-geek\/","title":{"rendered":"2 hours in the life of a &#8216;puter geek"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:16445,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.adaptec.com\\\/worldwide\\\/support\\\/drivers_by_product.html?cat=%2fProduct%2fAHA-2930B&amp;prodkey=AHA-2930B&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20021113020744\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.adaptec.com:80\\\/worldwide\\\/support\\\/drivers_by_product.html?cat=\\\/Product\\\/AHA-2930B&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-14 09:13:11&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-14 09:13:11&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Ever wondered just what &#8216;geeking out&#8217; entails? Some nights it&#8217;s diving into whatever the geek&#8217;s code of choice is (HTML and CSS for me), other nights it&#8217;s more hardware based. Well, tonight I had a problem with my primary work Mac, and kept a log of what I was doing as I went along. Feel free to take a look if you&#8217;d like&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>17:15: home from work. Dock isn&#8217;t responding correctly &#8211; click on it work fine, but magnification isn&#8217;t. Decide to  restart box to see if that helps.<\/li>\n<li>17:20: restarting results in freeze &#8211; arrow frozen in top left corner of main screen against grey backgrouns. Panic button reboot.<\/li>\n<li>17:22: flashing question mark on floppy icon w\/&#8217;clicking&#8217; sounds coming from one drive or another. Panic button reboot.<\/li>\n<li>17:24: same as above, but after a few seconds the OS 9 drive kicks in and the machine boots to OS 9. Not an auspicious sign.<\/li>\n<li>17:30: haven&#8217;t booted into OS 9 since the install. Going through all the &#8216;first boot&#8217; crap (setup assistants and the like).<\/li>\n<li>17:32: run Software Update to make sure the OS 9 side is up to date (what the hell, I&#8217;m here anyway). Installs CarbonLib 1.5 and Mac OS 9.2.2 update.<\/li>\n<li>17:38: &#8220;An error occurred during installation. Please view the log for detailed information. [RESTART]&#8221; Shit.<\/li>\n<li>17:38: restart.<\/li>\n<li>17:39: flashing disk w\/?. OS 9 drive kicks in.<\/li>\n<li>17:42: &#8220;About this computer&#8230;&#8221; reports 9.2.2 installed.<\/li>\n<li>17:43: no 9.2.2 or CarbonLib install logs in root level of OS 9 drive.<\/li>\n<li>17:44: use Disk First Aid (OS 9) to verify OS 9 drive. Appears to be OK.<\/li>\n<li>17:45: use Disk First Aid (OS 9) to verify OS X drive. Invalid BTree Header, 0, 0. MountCheck found minor errors. Volume Bit Map needs minor repair, 4, 186. Drive needs to be repaired (no shit).<\/li>\n<li>17:48: start Disk First Aid (OS 9) on repairing OS X drive.<\/li>\n<li>17:55: OS X drive repaired successfully.<\/li>\n<li>17:55: verifying again to be sure.<\/li>\n<li>17:58: verifies as OK.<\/li>\n<li>17:58: Startup Disk app <em>still<\/em> crashes out (known conflict with whatever SCSI card I&#8217;ve got). This started w\/9.1, why hasn&#8217;t it been fixed yet?<\/li>\n<li>18:00: restart&#8230;crossing fingers. No clue which drive it&#8217;s going to try to start from &#8212; or how much success it&#8217;ll have.<\/li>\n<li>18:00: flashing disk w\/?. Clicking. OS 9 drive kicks in.<\/li>\n<li>18:03: re-verifying OS X drive with Disk First Aid (OS 9).<\/li>\n<li>18:06: drive still verifies as OK.<\/li>\n<li>18:06: re-verify OS 9 drive. Verifies as OK.<\/li>\n<li>18:09: shutdown.<\/li>\n<li>18:13: remove SCSI card (Adaptec AHA-2930B, sticker on BIOS chip says &#8220;BIOS 293A (c) 1997 v1.1&#8221; &#8212; maybe there&#8217;s a flash upgrade somewhere that might cure the OS 9\/Startup Disk crash? I&#8217;ll check that later. (Later &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adaptec.com\/worldwide\/support\/drivers_by_product.html?cat=%2fProduct%2fAHA-2930B&amp;prodkey=AHA-2930B\" title=\"I wouldn't try to pronounce this. Really. I mean it.\">this page<\/a> lists drivers for &#8220;Microsoft Windows 2000 | Microsoft Windows Millennium | Microsoft Windows 98 | Microsoft  Windows NT | Microsoft Windows 95 | Microsoft DOS&#8221; only. Card listed as not made but still supported. Shit &#8212; looks like I need a new SCSI card.)<\/li>\n<li>18:14: boot machine.<\/li>\n<li>18:15: flashing disk w\/?. Clicking. OS 9 drive kicks in.<\/li>\n<li>18:18: open Startup Disk (now that the SCSI card is removed). According to Startup Disk, the OS 9 drive was selected as the startup drive. Change startup drive to OS X drive, OS X system folder. Reboot.<\/li>\n<li>18:19: happy mac, but booting OS 9.2. WTF? Shit &#8211; booted from OS 9 system folder on OS X drive rather than OS X system folder. Close, but no cigar.<\/li>\n<li>18:21: my bad. Selected wrong system folder. <em>Really<\/em> select OS X system folder this time, reboot.<\/li>\n<li>18:22: happy mac. OS X rainbow cursor. Good start.<\/li>\n<li>18:23: successful boot into OS X. Logging in.<\/li>\n<li>18:25: open OS X Disk Utility &#8212; it only sees one of the two ATA drives in the machine (the one with OS X and OS 9 installed on seperate partitions) &#8212; the OS 9 only drive doesn&#8217;t register. Great. I also can&#8217;t even verify the OS X partition because it&#8217;s the startup disk. The OS 9 version of Disk Repair will do this, but the OS X version won&#8217;t. Crap.<\/li>\n<li>18:29: shut down machine to re-install SCSI card, decide to shut down and then restart to see if that much works.<\/li>\n<li>18:30: reboot.<\/li>\n<li>18:30: happy mac, OS X rainbow cursor&#8230;looks like we&#8217;re booting again.<\/li>\n<li>18:32: successful boot and login. Shut down to <em>really<\/em> re-install SCSI card.<\/li>\n<li>18:33: while I&#8217;m here, decide to swap positions of display cards to see if that helps problem w\/DVD Player 3.1 not launching.<\/li>\n<li>18:37: crap. Can&#8217;t switch positions of display cards. ATI Rage 128 has different slot configuration than Twin Turbo 128. Decide to <em>just<\/em> install ATI Rage 128 (3 long PCI slots, one short&#8230;ATI Rage 128 goes in the short&hellip;I  should know the difference between the slots, can&#8217;t think of it right now). Leave SCSI card out for now, also remove oddball &#8220;Miro Computer Products&#8221; video card that a friend gave me (no idea where it&#8217;s from, what the official name is, where drivers may be found, whether it supports OS X, or even if it supports Mac, though was told it came from a Mac. Has Din-8 (?) audio (in? out? no clue), RCA Video in and out, S-Video in and out).<\/li>\n<li>18:43: boot machine w\/just ATI Rage 128 video card, no other PCI cards.<\/li>\n<li>18:45: successful boot and login. One monitor. Wierd. Not used to that anymore.<\/li>\n<li>18:46: launch DVD Player. Success! So&#8230;great. To get DVD functionality, I need to remove one of my monitors? That wasn&#8217;t the case before the 10.1.3 update. Crapola&#8230;thanks, Apple.<\/li>\n<li>18:47: shut down to install Twin Turbo 128 video card.<\/li>\n<li>18:50: get curious. Twin Turbo has 2 video connectors (1 old-style Apple monitor connector, 1 standard VGA connector). Remove ATI Rage 128 from machine, switch monitor to VGA connector on Twin Turbo.<\/li>\n<li>18:52: boot machine w\/just Twin Turbo video card.<\/li>\n<li>18:53: appears to be booting. Display all farked up. Color, geometry, resolution, all very off. Looks to be 640&#215;480 resolution, major green tint, bowed in on sides. But &#8212; works. Interesting.<\/li>\n<li>18:55: open System Preferences to see if changing display settings will do anything. Sure, it does &#8212; clicking on the &#8216;Displays&#8217; panel causes System Preferences to &#8220;unexpectedly quit&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>18:57: for shits and giggles, open DVD Player. &#8220;This machine configuration is not supported. The application will now quit.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>18:57: shutdown to restore 2-video card setup.<\/li>\n<li>18:59: boot machine w\/both video cards installed, but with only one monitor attached, to the ATI Rage 128.<\/li>\n<li>19:00: booting, display back to normal (color, resolution, geometry, all normal).<\/li>\n<li>19:02: launch DVD Player. &#8220;This machine configuration is not supported.&#8221; Definitely dependent on number of video cards installed, not number of monitors attached.<\/li>\n<li>19:03: shut down to reattach 2nd monitor and reinstall SCSI card (finally&#8230;).<\/li>\n<li>19:05: boot machine w\/both video cards and SCSI card&#8230;crap, forgot to reattach 2nd monitor.<\/li>\n<li>19:06: hmm&#8230;I have Shutdown disabled in the Login panel, so I have to log in and wait for my login items to launch before I can shut down the &#8216;puter again. Is there an OS X equivalent of the OS 9 shift startup that will  disable login items?<\/li>\n<li>19:07: shutdown to reattach the fershluggin 2nd monitor.<\/li>\n<li>19:08: reboot w\/both video cards, SCSI card, <em>and<\/em> both monitors.<\/li>\n<li>19:11: successful boot and login w\/both monitors and all drives. So why does this SCSI card work fine under OS X but cause problems under OS 9? Grrrr&#8230;. Left that oddball video card out until I can find more information on it. In any case, I&#8217;m back up and running again. Still not sure why Dock magnification wasn&#8217;t working earlier (it is now), nor why\/how my OS X drive got farked up enough to cause me that many problems. Time to backup and cross my fingers&#8230;may have a dying drive. What fun. But&#8230;for now&#8230;all up and running again. Roughly 2 hours.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ever wondered just what &#8216;geeking out&#8217; entails? Some nights it&#8217;s diving into whatever the geek&#8217;s code of choice is (HTML and CSS for me), other nights it&#8217;s more hardware based. Well, tonight I had a problem with my primary work Mac, and kept a log of what I was doing as I went along. Feel free to take a look if you&#8217;d like&hellip;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2038],"tags":[65],"class_list":["post-419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}