Post by 4aapl on Aug 23, 2020 11:17:42 GMT -8
Through the wonders of remote learning for the kids, and now being part of a learning pod, we suddenly need lots of extra tech items. The remote learning used teams and office, which wanted recent machines, so a few older machine didn't fit the bill.
Now the learning pod tutor wants to use a geography website that uses Flash, so iPads don't work with it.
Long story short, I'm getting a couple slightly older machines working again. It's a reminder to always backup, and ideally to limit the things on your boot partition. It's a whole lot quicker to clone a small drive, than a big one.
First up was an old PC laptop. Nothing exciting, but we previously changed the password and then forgot it. I finally found the install DVD, but instead I hacked into Windows 7, changing over a help feature to be the console, which let me blank the password. Ah, the wonders of the internet, while also trying to avoid downloading anything.
Next up was a spare security video DVR. Grabbing it's 2TB drive, it easily reformatted an 80 gig drive I put in it. Drive size would only matter if it even got used, but this was a hand-me-down from a neighbor, sans cameras. Wyze cameras instead aren't centralized.
The 24" iMac was the main goal here, my machine until 9 months ago when I upgraded. It had worked fine for my son for a while, and then it didn't. I had a bunch of guesses, but the leader was the 3TB HD. My parents recently had their external 3TB drive bought at the same time have issues, and my other 3TB external might have slight issues too. 7-8 years isn't too bad.
MacOS 10.15's disk utility might not be quite as good as older ones. It was giving me more trouble reformatting. With the iMac open, I put in a different drive that had 10.7.5 on it, and that let me format/partition the drive. 10.15 didn't like the 3TB, saying there were problems, but then eventually letting it mount with the warning that there were issues and to just back up. While I have a full backup, it's always a worry, so I made another copy of what I could. Just about everything copied, except for part of Library and part of the Users. But the 24" max OS is older than the 27" minimum OS, so more fun ensued. And then the problem I had hit a few ways, of 10.11.x giving an error saying "no packages are eligible" to install. Fun!
More searching on the internet shows there must be a date issue, so you have to turn off or limit time sync (ie unplug ethernet and turn off wifi), and then reset the date (you can do this if you have a good install, but if not you use the console and the "date" command, where he used 122218002014, but probably anything like 2018 would work). And with that, it finally lets me install 10.11.
Sadly, migration assistant doesn't want to download from a partially copied OS. That would have been nice.
It's amazing how many edge cases you can hit. Of course with the 24" iMac apart to give access to the HD, the temp sensor (and whole LCD) is disconnected, so the fans are running full. Fail safe!
It's tough to play with technology that is as much as 12 years separated. But this is a reminder to delete extra stuff on your HD, but have one or even two current backups. Time machine is doing it's thing, but that only helps if that HD doesn't fail. Still, with heavy smoke at times over this past week, and many photos of people that lost their homes, it's a reminder to have a backup that you can quickly grab, while having an offsite or cloud backup of at least some things is a smart idea.
This whole educational situation throws things for a loop a bit. We have the technology, with a newer Mac mini and the iPad mixed in. And, thanks to AAPL, I wouldn't mind if we needed to buy some more, though my wife and I just bought new computers within the last 1.5 years. But, while I think my kids would be good with them though accidents could happen, I'm more worried about the 1st graders in the pod. I admit, Costco's $1200 MBA special is pretty tempting, but I wouldn't feel good if it took a dive off a desk in a month or two.
Oh well. Looks like I have a 240 gig SSD drive that was too fast to go in the old MacBook (SATA III would give it panics on boot). Maybe the iMac can handle it (nope, so on to the Mac Mini, if wanted).
FWIW, I haven't been inside a normal computer for a while, after playing with laptops and iPhones. Everything is so big! I found a rouge screw in there from last time, maybe 6 years ago. Opps. I've never managed to ruin something, but this time was the first time ever I shocked myself a little. When running it for a while while open up, I touched the HD to feel it's temp. And then I touched the MB, though apparently the back side of the soldiered on power supply. It wasn't too much of a shock, though I thought I had fried the computer. But it worked again after being off for a few minutes.
Fun times! It's all back together, and working.
Now the learning pod tutor wants to use a geography website that uses Flash, so iPads don't work with it.
Long story short, I'm getting a couple slightly older machines working again. It's a reminder to always backup, and ideally to limit the things on your boot partition. It's a whole lot quicker to clone a small drive, than a big one.
First up was an old PC laptop. Nothing exciting, but we previously changed the password and then forgot it. I finally found the install DVD, but instead I hacked into Windows 7, changing over a help feature to be the console, which let me blank the password. Ah, the wonders of the internet, while also trying to avoid downloading anything.
Next up was a spare security video DVR. Grabbing it's 2TB drive, it easily reformatted an 80 gig drive I put in it. Drive size would only matter if it even got used, but this was a hand-me-down from a neighbor, sans cameras. Wyze cameras instead aren't centralized.
The 24" iMac was the main goal here, my machine until 9 months ago when I upgraded. It had worked fine for my son for a while, and then it didn't. I had a bunch of guesses, but the leader was the 3TB HD. My parents recently had their external 3TB drive bought at the same time have issues, and my other 3TB external might have slight issues too. 7-8 years isn't too bad.
MacOS 10.15's disk utility might not be quite as good as older ones. It was giving me more trouble reformatting. With the iMac open, I put in a different drive that had 10.7.5 on it, and that let me format/partition the drive. 10.15 didn't like the 3TB, saying there were problems, but then eventually letting it mount with the warning that there were issues and to just back up. While I have a full backup, it's always a worry, so I made another copy of what I could. Just about everything copied, except for part of Library and part of the Users. But the 24" max OS is older than the 27" minimum OS, so more fun ensued. And then the problem I had hit a few ways, of 10.11.x giving an error saying "no packages are eligible" to install. Fun!
More searching on the internet shows there must be a date issue, so you have to turn off or limit time sync (ie unplug ethernet and turn off wifi), and then reset the date (you can do this if you have a good install, but if not you use the console and the "date" command, where he used 122218002014, but probably anything like 2018 would work). And with that, it finally lets me install 10.11.
Sadly, migration assistant doesn't want to download from a partially copied OS. That would have been nice.
It's amazing how many edge cases you can hit. Of course with the 24" iMac apart to give access to the HD, the temp sensor (and whole LCD) is disconnected, so the fans are running full. Fail safe!
It's tough to play with technology that is as much as 12 years separated. But this is a reminder to delete extra stuff on your HD, but have one or even two current backups. Time machine is doing it's thing, but that only helps if that HD doesn't fail. Still, with heavy smoke at times over this past week, and many photos of people that lost their homes, it's a reminder to have a backup that you can quickly grab, while having an offsite or cloud backup of at least some things is a smart idea.
This whole educational situation throws things for a loop a bit. We have the technology, with a newer Mac mini and the iPad mixed in. And, thanks to AAPL, I wouldn't mind if we needed to buy some more, though my wife and I just bought new computers within the last 1.5 years. But, while I think my kids would be good with them though accidents could happen, I'm more worried about the 1st graders in the pod. I admit, Costco's $1200 MBA special is pretty tempting, but I wouldn't feel good if it took a dive off a desk in a month or two.
Oh well. Looks like I have a 240 gig SSD drive that was too fast to go in the old MacBook (SATA III would give it panics on boot). Maybe the iMac can handle it (nope, so on to the Mac Mini, if wanted).
FWIW, I haven't been inside a normal computer for a while, after playing with laptops and iPhones. Everything is so big! I found a rouge screw in there from last time, maybe 6 years ago. Opps. I've never managed to ruin something, but this time was the first time ever I shocked myself a little. When running it for a while while open up, I touched the HD to feel it's temp. And then I touched the MB, though apparently the back side of the soldiered on power supply. It wasn't too much of a shock, though I thought I had fried the computer. But it worked again after being off for a few minutes.
Fun times! It's all back together, and working.