H's Blog

I bought an HP ProBook 4430s from e-bay just to build a Hackintosh laptop. This laptop is known as one of the best Hackintosh-able laptops with very little modification to the hardware, according to the list here: http://www.macbreaker.com/2012/09/best-hackintosh-laptops-2012-mountain-lion.html I followed this page, which is the best site for any Hackintosh info: http://www.tonymacx86.com/hp-probook/77057-guide-installing-mountain-lion-hp-probook.html Getting the Mountain Lion Installation app was easy (from torrent). However, the OS is cheap so if you want to try, please buy it from App Store. Building a boot USB stick was not so easy. I have a White Macbook with Mac OS X Leopard. I tried to run Unibeast on it but the app fails every time it tried to write to the USB drive. Tried 3 times and always the same result. I almost gave up on it and I thought all I have is a useless 14 inch laptop. Then it occurred to me how about using the Mountain Lion VM I created on Shuttle DS61. ...

Ever since I found a way to install Atari MultiTOS (MTOS) on Steem, I have been experimenting it with SpeedoGDOS and Atari Works. They work pretty well on Steem. It's fast enough at 128MHz. It is very slow on the real Atari ST (8MHz). MTOS works just just like Macintosh MultiFinder but with pre-emptive multitasking. Atari engineers back then put a lot of efforts to make it work really well. It's too bad Atari management abandoned it. Of course many music apps do not work under MTOS and without music apps there is no actual use of Atari's. Steinberg and C-Lab did not want to embrace MTOS to make their apps run under MTOS. I want to write some apps on Atari, but GEM is very limited in terms of provided APIs so developers had to reinvent a lot of things for their apps. To make a very responsive apps I need to write assembly apps.

I have been using my Atari ST since 1987. After exhaustive search for old Atari applications, I created some Atari Steem images so it is not necessary to install each apps. MultiTOS + SpeedoGDOS + Atari Works https://mega.co.nz/#!odBRWAbI!NrdQ7HhiPjdI1w4pi-5PExzQucYc8YAWbsvYAPD0loY Geneva/Neodesk 4 https://mega.co.nz/#!YAQDAR4D!HQ8GxRlzOttiUNFAoKf9ZCFvFtUujTBqEhqR1fGBlno Warp 9 https://mega.co.nz/#!FRpyGIzB!AhGkjGZBED_QXgsANTwZKkvXfZg7vsXA-NRHX2WnhvA NVDI 2.51 https://mega.co.nz/#!AZRAERrI!bWxjaQKruYASskQz6SQOUUlwkVdCf9JwZjicPtY8c8s Hatari 1.5.0 + XaAES https://mega.co.nz/#!lAQjjAqS!Do1q5AWR3GDnWEOw2rvK-AshVtcjUvXH1yOAfNnvGY8 Hatari 1.6.2 + XaAES https://mega.co.nz/#!pc5yWDwa!Ht32f1LjSOK0CuCdgvuHPRM4ga0sXxp-ogVpWt2ooA8 minipack https://mega.co.nz/#!kJYwlRzL!IMh_1Rl3_yeJj7EMunvMTm6mc1QDV7TZlITH3oUXoEw You will need the latest web browser version to download these files.

There seems to be no web site that describes in detail how to use disk images in Steem. I will describe how so you can even install Mint using Steem. Save disk images in Steem directory. Download pasti.dll from http://pasti.fxatari.com/ Save the dll in the same directory as Steem. After starting Steem, you get this dialog. Just click OK. Open Disk Manager and click on Disk Manager Options. Check Use Pasti. Click on Pasti Configuration.  Click on Hard Disk and click on Browse to select hard disk image and press OK. Click on Hard Drives and change H: and When drive A is empty boot from H: and click OK. Now start the Steem and it boots from the disk image. The C: is recognized as H: Update 7/17: This only works on Steem 3.2.

Windows 8.1 ISO became available this afternoon. I downloaded and installed 8.1 32 bit (English) on VMWare Workstation 9. It took about 20 minutes. Everything was smooth. It does not change in the way that it asks for my Outlook.com account to log in. I see big problem with this for corporate users. Do we need to create more fake Outlook.com IDs? The usability certainly improved over Windows 8. There were less surprises for me. But I am still puzzled by MS's decision to force users to use all touch functionality without giving users option to turn it on or off. There should have been an option to select if we only want Desktop, or use Metro. For the old PCs which had no touch sensitive screen, Desktop should be the only option. I am going to use it to see if I like it. So far I think I will stick with Windows 7. Problems with Windows 8.1 Removal of Classic Theme (My biggest complaint) I cannot show My Computer on the desktop. They removed Desktop Properties menu. Retu...

I was able to install Mac OS X Mountain Lion (ML) on Shuttle DS61 using VMWare ESXi 5.1. You need to install VMware unlocker available online to make it work because Apple/VMWare licensing prohibit running OS X on non-Apple hardware. It's not just letter but ESXi has a built-in mechanism to block running OS X on non-Apple hardware. Basically, I followed this site's info http://cloudjockey.me/2012/05/20/installing-lion-on-vsphere-5/ instead of Lion I used ML. He is installing on Mac mini so no need to run Unlocker. If you don't install unlocker, you get a turning beach ball of death forever. The unlocker is available here. http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/267296-esxi-5-mac-os-x-unlocker/ Copy the unlocker to ESXi host datastore (http://serverfault.com/questions/486633/how-to-copy-files-from-usb-flash-disk-to-esxi-5-server) Enable ssh (from vSphere client) Use putty (or any other ssh client) login as root Run find command to search for the files chmod ...

I wanted a Mac so that I can run XCode to develop iOS devices. I have a 13 inch White Macbook with Snow Leopard but I do not want to upgrade to Mountain Lion (ML) yet. But the cheapest Macbook Air is about $600 (used), which has Core 2 Duo. I even thought about buying a new PC and make it to Hackintosh. It's also about the same cost and more trouble to configure and it's not perfect. So I decided to go with the VMWare rouote. The laptops I have are powerful enough to run Mac VM on top of Windows 7 hosts. Download VMWare image from http://www.souldevteam.net/blog/downloads/ Ref http://www.sysprobs.com/easily-run-mac-os-x-10-8-mountain-lion-retail-on-pc-with-vmware-image Download XCode from Apple Dev Site. Xcode from AppStore on ML did not work. I installed XCode and now I have a iOS development machine. The performance is not great but it works.

I received an email from NYC Department of Health, after I posted my review of an old Italian bakery in Manhattan on yelp.com, where I ordered an cassata cake for my wife's borthday which made her and her colleagues to get sick (vomiting and nausea). =(Quote)================================================================ Hi Hiroto, NYCHealth D. has sent you a message on Yelp: Food Poisoning at De R*bet*s P*st*ccer*a "Greetings, We are emailing you from New York City Department of Health regarding the review you posted on Yelp. We are aware that someone in your party became ill after eating at De R*bet*s P*st*ccer*a. We would like to interview you about your visit, as this may help us determine the cause of illness. Please email C*ss*ndr* H*rr*s*n at c*****@health.nyc.gov with your contact information and availability for a phone interview. Thank you for your assistance. C***, MSPH New York City Department of Health" =(End of quote)=====================================...

I received below email entitled "Net*ork Solutions Policy Violation" regarding my web hosting service from Net*rk Solutions. =(Quote)=================================================================== Dear Hiroto, This is sent to inform you that you are in violation of the Acceptable Use Policy portion of the Net*ork Solutions' Service Agreement. At this time we have not suspended your hosting services at ******.COM, but action is necessary to secure your account and prevent a suspension. In regards to your account being in violation, we are providing the following information from our server administrators: /htdocs directory storing OS and software install files and ISO images and software cracking utilities in directory. Including your investigation of this information, we recommend a few best practices for your hosting account. Update any CMS software you use to the newest version Look for new versions of any scripts on your site Verify...

I looked for a complete list of planned Blockbuster closures but nothing is available. The closest one to my house to close is Store #: 91929 Intersection: Northern Boulevard/78th Street Address: 7802 Northern Blvd, Jackson Heights The final day is unknown. I saw a store closure and liquidation sale sign inside of the store. Of course, no more rental. I used to rent movies there but haven't done so so many years. It couldn't adapt to the change in industry. I don't feel sorry since they pushed so many small video rental stores during its expansion. But I feel sorry for the employees who will be let go. 15 years ago, who could have imagined Blockbuster, Tower Records, Virgin Mega Store, HMV stores would disappear. On 3/17 (Sun), I saw a sign in the store which said only 6 days left to close. So that means this week is the last week for the store. On 3/31 (Sun), the store was closed.The signs were removed.