Run Mac OS X from USB Stick

First, prepare all that need:

• USB Flash Disk (min. 2 GB required). You can use many types for this USB disk, such as USB Stick, USB Pendrive, ZIP Disk, your iPod, SD or MMC card, extrenal hard drive, etc.
  

• JaS Mac OS X 10.4.x Retail DVD

• Pacifist software. Download here.

OK. Ready? Now plug your USB Disk, and it will be mounted automatically.

Open Disk Utility (Applications->Utilities)
Select your USB Disk device in the left menu, and click the partition tab.
Enter a nice name for your device like osx86.
Hit Options... button, and choose Master Boot Record.
From the drop-down, choose 1 partition as the volume scheme.
Be sure the filesystem is Mac OS Extended (Journaled),
Hit the Partition button.
Next, we need to enable Owners, open a Terminal and type:

sudo /usr/sbin/vsdbutil -a /Volumes/osx86

Mount the JaS 10.4.x DVD or the Retail 10.4.x DVD.
Browse to the directory System/Installation/Packages on the DVD.
Open OSInstall.mpkg with pacifist (right-click->Open With Pacifist).
Expand Contents of EssentialSystemSoftware, then expand Contents of
EssentialSystemSoftwareGroup.

Select Contents of BaseSystem.pkg and Contents of Essentials.pkg and
right-click and choose Install to Other disk...

Choose your USB Disk (osx86) and hit the install button. Now be patient :-)
Now depending on what DVD you used, you will need to download the
right update from apple.com. I downloaded the 10.4.8 Intel update since I used
10.4.7 retail DVD.

Open MacOSXUpd10.4.8Intel.pkg with Pacifist and install to Other disk...

N.B.: Before installing the update, you may need to free some space on the USB Disk.
Just delete the asiatic font files in /System/Library/Fonts (= 100 MB bonus).

Since we installed with Pacifist, some of the files are missing. We need to copy them.
Get them from a full 10.4.8 working install. Those files are:

/System/Library/CoreServices/SetupAssistant
/Applications/Safari.app
/Applications/Address Book.app
/Library/Receipts/BaseSystem.pkg
/Library/Receipts/Essentials.pkg

You need to replace the following files:

/mach_kernel by semthex SSE3 or SSE2 kernel
/System/Library/Extensions/AppleACPIPlateform.kext
/System/Library/Extensions/AppleSMBIOS.kext

Optional:

/System/Library/Extensions/IONetworkingFamily.kext
/System/Library/Extensions/AppleIntelIntegratedFrameBuffer.kext (GMA950)

Add this for PS2 keyboard/mouse:

/System/Library/Extensions/ApplePS2Controller.kext

Put all your custom kext you use on your working install.

Do not forget to chmod -R 755 and chown -R root:wheel all files you copy.

Be sure that you have bless version 24.0 from 10.4.4.
Any other version of bless won't work.
Run bless -version in Terminal to check version.

sudo bless –verbose –folder
“/Volumes/osx86/System/Library/CoreServices” –bootinfo

Now, Repair permissions
Open Disk Utility.app, select your USB Disk and repair permissions.

Then set partition to active
Open a Terminal, be sure your USB Disk is plugged in

> sudo -s
> diskutil list

> /dev/disk1
   #:                   type name        size      identifier
   0: FDisk_partition_scheme             *1.9 GB   disk1
   1:              Apple_HFS osx86       1.9 GB    disk1s1

Note that here the USB Disk is disk1 (disk1s1).

> fdisk -e /dev/rdisk1

Enter 'help' for information

fdisk: 1> p

Disk: /dev/rdisk1       geometry: 999/64/63 [4028416 sectors]
Offset: 0       Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [  start -  size]
-------------------------------------------------------------
*1: AF    0   1   1 - 1023 254  63 [     63 - 4028346] HFS+        
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [      0 -       0] unused      
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [      0 -       0] unused      
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [      0 -       0] unused  

First time you do this, you should not see the star in front of partition 1.
We need to activate the partition.

fdisk: 1> f 1
Partition 1 marked active.
fdisk:*1> write
Device could not be accessed exclusively.
A reboot will be needed for changes to take effect. OK? [n] y
Writing MBR at offset 0.

During the first boot to OS X from the USB Disk,
you'll have to finish the installation setup.
For the first boot, you need to boot to your current working system.
And specify following boot flags:

mach_kernel -v rd=disk1s1

Notice that we specified disk1s1 from previous diskutil list command.

Next boot should be directly to the USB Disk,
so don't forget to enable USB boot in BIOS.
And set USB Flash boot order before harddrive.

Bring your osx86 with you and test it on any PC with SSE2/SSE3 processor like
Intel Pentium 4, Intel Pentium D, AMD Athlon XP, etc.
Enjoy it!

Source: MacGeek

Windows CE on your USB Stick : How To

Portable Windows CE is a 'launcher' for the Windows CE device emulator that can run an emulator-based image from a USB keychain.

Download the Windows CE 5.0 Device Emulator here.

Change "Mcft" in link to what it is supposed to be

Extract the emulator to a folder on your hard drive by running "setup /a". The installer will prompt you to specify a directory to extract to.
For example: D:\PortableCE

Download this launcher script.

Copy the following launcher script to the folder you extracted the setup to. You'll need to rename the file from launchce.cmd.txt to launchce.cmd

Once you have that set up, just copy the entire D:\PortableCE folder over to your USB keychain.

To launch the emulator, just plug in your USB keychain, navigate to the PortableCE folder, and run launchce.cmd. You should (hopefully) have the emulator fire up.

Recovering a Corrupt AMI BIOS chip

With motherboards that use BOOT BLOCK BIOS it is possible to recover a corrupted BIOS because the BOOT BLOCK section of the BIOS, which is responsible for booting the computer remains unmodified.

When an AMI BIOS becomes corrupt the system will appear to start, but nothing will appear on the screen, the floppy drive light will come on and the system will access the floppy drive repeatedly. If your motherboard has an ISA slot and you have an old ISA video card lying around, put the ISA video card in your system and connect the monitor.

The BOOT BLOCK section of the BIOS only supports ISA video cards, so if you do not have an ISA video card or your motherboard does not have ISA slots, you will have to restore your BIOS blind, with no monitor to show you what’s going on.

AMI has integrated a recovery routine into the BOOT BLOCK of the BIOS, which in the event the BIOS becomes corrupt can be used to restore the BIOS to a working state.

The routine is called when the SYSTEM BLOCK of the BIOS is empty. The restore routine will access the floppy drive looking for a BIOS file names AMIBOOT.ROM, this is why the floppy drive light comes on and the drive spins.

If the file is found it is loaded into the SYSTEM BLOCK of the BIOS to replace the missing information. To restore your BIOS simply copy a working BIOS file to a floppy diskette and rename it AMIBOOT.ROM, then insert it into the computer while the power is on.

The diskette does not need to be bootable or contain a flash utility. After about four minutes the system will beep four times. Remove the floppy diskette from the drive and reboot the computer. The BIOS should now be restored.

Recovering a Corrupt AWARD BIOS

With AWARD BIOS the process is similar but still a bit different. To recover an AWARD BIOS you will need to create a floppy diskette with a working BIOS file in .BIN format, an AWARD flash utility and an AUTOEXEC.BAT file. AWARD BIOS will not automatically restore the BIOS information to the SYSTEM BLOCK for this reason you will need to add the commands necessary to flash the BIOS in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

The system will run the AUTOEXE.BAT file, which will in turn flash the BIOS. This is fairly easy. Here are the steps you need to take.

· Create a bootable floppy diskette
· Copy the BIOS file and flash utility to the diskette
· Create an text file with any standard text editor and add the following lines

@ECHO OFF
FLASH763 BIOSFILE.BIN /py

In the above example I am assuming that you are using the FLASH763.EXE flash utility. You will need to replace the FLASH763 with the name of whatever flash utility you are using, and replace the BIOSFILE.BIN with the name of the BIOS file you are using.

You will also need to change the ‘/py’ to whatever the command is for your flash utility to automatically program the BIOS without user intervention. If you do not know the command to automatically flash your BIOS type the name of the flash utility with a space and then /? to display the utility’s help Publish Postscreen.

The help screen should pecify the command switch to automatically flash your BIOS. If you are using the FLASH763.EXE utility then the switch to automatically flash your BIOS is ‘/py’.

Boot Block Recovery For Free

You don't need to pay a measly sum of dollars just to recover from a boot block mode. Here it is folks:

AWARD Bootblock recovery:

That shorting trick should work if the boot block code is not corrupted, and it should not be if /sb switch is used when flashing the bios (instead of /wb switch).

The 2 pins to short to force a checksum error varies from chip to chip. But these are usually the highest-numbered address pins (A10 and above).

These are the pins used by the system to read the System BIOS (original.bin for award v6), calculate the ROM checksum and see if it's valid before decompressing it into memory, and subsequently allow Bootblock POST to pass control over to the System BIOS.


You just have to fool the system into believing that the System BIOS is corrupt. This you do by giving your system a hard time reading the System BIOS by shorting the 2 high address pins. And when it could not read the System BIOS properly, ROM Checksum Error is detected "so to speak" and Bootblock recovery is activated.

Sometimes, any combination of the high address pins won't work to force a checksum error in some chips, like my Winbond W49F002U. But shorting the #WE pin with the highest-numbered address pin (A17) worked for this chip. You just have to be experimentative if you're not comfortable with "hot flashing" or "replacement BIOS".

But to avoid further damage to your chip if you're not sure which are the correct pins to short, measure the potential between the 2 pins by a voltmeter while the system is on. If the voltage reading is zero (or no potential at all), it is safe to short these pins.

But do not short the pins while the system is on. Instead, power down then do the short, then power up while still shorting. And as soon as you hear 3 beeps (1 long, 2 short), remove the short at once so that automatic reflashing from Drive A can proceed without errors (assuming you had autoexec.bat in it).

About how to do the shorting, the tip of a screwdriver would do. But with such minute pins on the PLCC chip, I'm pretty comfortable doing it with the tip of my multi-tester or voltmeter probe. Short the pins at the point where they come out of the chip.


AMIBIOS Recovery bootblock:

• Copy a known working BIOS image for your board to a floppy and rename it to AMIBOOT.ROM.
• Insert the floppy in your system's floppydrive.
• Power on the system while holding CTRL+Home keys. Release the keys when you hear a beep and/or see the floppy light coming on.
• Just wait until you hear 4 beeps. When 4 beeps are heard the reprogramming of the System Block BIOS went succesfull, so then you may restart your system.

Some alternative keys that can be used to force BIOS update (only the System Block will be updated so it's quite safe):

• CTRL+Home= restore missing code into system block and clear CMOS when programming went ok.
• CTRL+Page Up= restore missing code into system block and clear CMOS or DMI when programming went ok.
• CTRL+Page Down= restore missing code into system block and do not clear CMOS and DMI area when programming went ok.

Btw: the alternative keys work only with AMIBIOS 7 or higher (so for example an AMI 6.26 BIOS can be only recovered by using CTRL+Home keys).

SP2 Tweaks

Here some tweaks for your Windows XP-SP2:

Disable the SP antivirus and firewall functions - and keep XP from nagging about it:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Security Center]
"AntiVirusDisableNotify"=dword:00000001
"FirewallDisableNotify"=dword:00000001
; don't monitor firewall and antivirus
"AntiVirusOverride"=dword:00000001
"FirewallOverride"=dword:00000001

Disable antivirus and firewall check at boot time

SP2 enables Auto Updates by default. This is good for you, but some folks disagree, so here is how to turn it off:



[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update]
"AUOptions"=dword:00000001
;disable Auto Update
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Security Center]
"UpdatesDisableNotify"=dword:00000001
;Stop nagging about AU being turned off

How to turn off the SP2 firewall (if you must):

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\WindowsFirewall\DomainProfile]
"EnableFirewall"=dword:00000000
; turn off firewall policy for domain profile
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\WindowsFirewall\StandardProfile]
"EnableFirewall"=dword:00000000
;disable firewall policy for standard profile

Change some popup settings:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\0]
"1001"=dword:00000001
"1004"=dword:00000001
"1200"=dword:00000000
"1809"=dword:00000003
;turn off IE popup blocker and return activeX handling to pre-SP2 setting for local system and current user
;1001 = 1 (prompt before download signed ActiveX)
;1004 = 1 (prompt before downloading unsigned ActiveX)
;1200 = 0 (prompt before download signed ActiveX)
;1809 = 3 (disable popup blocking)
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\1]
"1001"=dword:00000001
"1004"=dword:00000001
"1200"=dword:00000000
"1809"=dword:00000003
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\2]
"1001"=dword:00000001
"1004"=dword:00000001
"1200"=dword:00000000
"1809"=dword:00000003
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\3]
"1001"=dword:00000001
"1004"=dword:00000001
"1200"=dword:00000000
"1809"=dword:00000003
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\4]
"1001"=dword:00000001
"1004"=dword:00000001
"1200"=dword:00000000
"1809"=dword:00000003
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\0]
"1001"=dword:00000001
"1004"=dword:00000001
"1200"=dword:00000000
"1809"=dword:00000003
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\1]
"1001"=dword:00000001
"1004"=dword:00000001
"1200"=dword:00000000
"1809"=dword:00000003
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\2]
"1001"=dword:00000001
"1004"=dword:00000001
"1200"=dword:00000000
"1809"=dword:00000003
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\3]
"1001"=dword:00000001
"1004"=dword:00000001
"1200"=dword:00000000
"1809"=dword:00000003
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\4]
"1001"=dword:00000001
"1004"=dword:00000001
"1200"=dword:00000000
"1809"=dword:00000003

Or you can disable Security Center altogether by disabling the wscsvc service.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\wscsvc]
"Start"=dword:00000004
;Disable Security Center