Miscellaneous Operating Systems/Hardware

Yosemite is a buggy bitch on my new MBP. It is slow like molasses on my old MBA, even if it doesn't crash as often. Both have weird bugs. ranging from the browser, to cursors in the wrong spot, to plain old text entry.

But I have not had a single problem with it on my *officially unsupported* with-a-hacked-efi 2006 mac pro. I even use the web, ftp, vpn, and calendar syncing in OSX server. And it runs Plex. And two windows VMs. And games.

It has not gone down once, the last reboot was when I allowed it to update to 10.10.1.



36 days is hardly impressive but given 10.10's reputation for flakiness (which it apparently recevied over just the past two weeks :/ ), somebody must have spilled magic fairy dust on my box to accomplish this?

Funny. I have Yosemite running here on a 1,1 -> 2,1 EFI machine ("because reasons"), but the machine is usually Bootcamp'd into Win 7 x64. Haven't looked at what needs to be upgraded in order to migrate the 3,1 to Yosemite.

3,1 (e.g. 2008, 5400-series) is supported by apple: you push the button on the app store and cross your fingers that it works... and that's it.

a 1,1 is 2006 model (32-bit) and a 2,1 is the exact same machine but with 8 cores. (so, you upgraded the CPU?) Neither one is supported by apple so you must put your board-id and tiamo's 64-on-32 boot.efi into a custom install disk. Also, the dog-turd of a 7300GT that is nearly 10 years old and was junk when new is not supported but apple will happily sell you a beefy new radeon to replace it.

You guys and your years, this is about as long as I've ever gone; my circa-1997 200MHz Pentium Pro all-purpose firewall, BBS dialer and wireless access point to my neighbor's networks:

ClassicHasClass wrote: mens526? Sounds like a total sausage fest.

ISTR Mensa (latin for table) was originally supposed to be "Mens" (mind) but it seems they saw their error and changed it...

On a sadder note, the alpha suffered a fan failure (the reset pin is triggered on the CPU if no tach signal is found on the fan) and my uptime is now a shaky 2 days, with hopes that nothing else is broken since it rebooted spontaneously once after the replacement...

I even got a nice HP DL160 with twin 4-core xeons and the 8-drive SAS backplane, battery backed 410i raid card and ILO (unlicensed, so completely gimped, grmbl) off ebay to replace the alpha for the more critical services, but it seems that the new machine superheats the air in my closet causing it to go into howling fan overdrive mode and I can't sleep in the next room with that. Sigh.

Still, the alpha seems to run again (knock on wood) so I guess I'll keep the HP as a rack ornament and occasional kernel compiler. Watching it blast through builds with -j 16 was fun.

duck wrote:

ClassicHasClass wrote: mens526? Sounds like a total sausage fest.

ISTR Mensa (latin for table) was originally supposed to be "Mens" (mind) but it seems they saw their error and changed it...

Ha ha, you guys are so funny! But as I've explained elsewhere, mens526 = "mechanical engineering sun number 526," so there are at least that many Blade 2500's in the building. Shocking, I know...

duck wrote: On a sadder note, the alpha suffered a fan failure (the reset pin is triggered on the CPU if no tach signal is found on the fan) and my uptime is now a shaky 2 days, with hopes that nothing else is broken since it rebooted spontaneously once after the replacement...

I even got a nice HP DL160 with twin 4-core xeons and the 8-drive SAS backplane, battery backed 410i raid card and ILO (unlicensed, so completely gimped, grmbl) off ebay to replace the alpha for the more critical services, but it seems that the new machine superheats the air in my closet causing it to go into howling fan overdrive mode and I can't sleep in the next room with that. Sigh.

Still, the alpha seems to run again (knock on wood) so I guess I'll keep the HP as a rack ornament and occasional kernel compiler. Watching it blast through builds with -j 16 was fun.

Sounds like a gold-plated opportunity to upgrade the cooling system in your closet!

Threadjacking alert! Threadjacking alert!

guardian452 wrote: 3,1 (e.g. 2008, 5400-series) is supported by apple: you push the button on the app store and cross your fingers that it works... and that's it.

Yeah, I know it's supported, and for good or ill I know the official procedure. I didn't want to go into my app inventory and worrying about what is/isn't going to work under 10.10. Besides, I can't afford to upgrade anything now anyway.

guardian452 wrote: a 1,1 is 2006 model (32-bit) and a 2,1 is the exact same machine but with 8 cores. (so, you upgraded the CPU?)

Close - the EFI and SMC firmware are different between the two models, as well as what CPUs came in them. You want the 2,1 EFI because it includes support for the Clovertown CPUs, and some fixed microcode. Anyway I upgraded the system EFI to 2,1 and the CPUs to a pair of X5355. (Haven't updated the SMC to the 2,1 version, which might be behind a sleep/resume issue in Windows 7.)

guardian452 wrote: Neither one is supported by apple so you must put your board-id and tiamo's 64-on-32 boot.efi into a custom install disk.

I went with the newer Piker-Alpha bootloader, which I gather is a fork of tiamo's, and prepared a USB drive with a Yosemite installer tweaked to allow the 1,1 and 2,1 board IDs. Mostly worked, somehow despite replacing boot.efi in two different places on the thumb drive I still had a stock 10.10 boot.efi post-install and had to put the machine in target mode to fix it from the 3,1. (Hmm... I might have allowed a 10.10.1 update before I rebooted, now that I think about it...)

guardian452 wrote: Also, the dog-turd of a 7300GT that is nearly 10 years old and was junk when new is not supported but apple will happily sell you a beefy new radeon to replace it.

Well the 1,1 came without a video card, so I was using the 2600 XT from the 3,1 in it. (The 3,1 has a Sapphire Radeon 7950.) But I wanted something with more punch than the 2600 for games under Windows, so right now there's a flashed Sapphire 5850 in there. If I can figure out how to get a working EFI on the MSI R6950 from the Dell, I'll drop that in the 3,1 and move the 7950 to the 1,1. The 7950 is flashed, so I get boot screens from it on either machine. (Yes, I know about netkas.org; I first flashed a 9700 for my G4 Cube about 10 years ago, when smalldogs was the place to be...)

(I may not need EFI on the 6950 for the 3,1 to work, but I'd prefer it.)


Note: I followed this guide at MacRumors to put Yosemite on the 1,1.

smj wrote: Threadjacking alert! Threadjacking alert!

guardian452 wrote: a 1,1 is 2006 model (32-bit) and a 2,1 is the exact same machine but with 8 cores. (so, you upgraded the CPU?)

Close - the EFI and SMC firmware are different between the two models, as well as what CPUs came in them. You want the 2,1 EFI because it includes support for the Clovertown CPUs, and some fixed microcode. Anyway I upgraded the system EFI to 2,1 and the CPUs to a pair of X5355. (Haven't updated the SMC to the 2,1 version, which might be behind a sleep/resume issue in Windows 7.)

yep, still looking for a second of X5365 to put in. I had a pair of 5355's ready to go but received an x5365 (3ghz) at the low low price of free, and it is just waiting for it's mate. Still working on maxing out the ram and next will be a pcie SSD from OWC. I'm not nervous about swapping the CPUs but it is a lot of work and the machine is at my house, yet all my tools are at work... It's just not a priority right now. And I think those upgrades will keep me well satisfied until the first-gen trashcans come down in price If I need real cpu power (typically video rendering) there is the rMBP for that.

smj wrote:

guardian452 wrote: Neither one is supported by apple so you must put your board-id and tiamo's 64-on-32 boot.efi into a custom install disk.

I went with the newer Piker-Alpha bootloader, which I gather is a fork of tiamo's, and prepared a USB drive with a Yosemite installer tweaked to allow the 1,1 and 2,1 board IDs. Mostly worked, somehow despite replacing boot.efi in two different places on the thumb drive I still had a stock 10.10 boot.efi post-install and had to put the machine in target mode to fix it from the 3,1. (Hmm... I might have allowed a 10.10.1 update before I rebooted, now that I think about it...)

There is a handy shell script called sfott that will take care of everything for you. Just point it at your downloaded 10.10 installer and flash drive, and it takes care of everything else I have not had issues with minor version updates, but I had to re-install with a usb key when I went from 10.9 to 10.10.

smj wrote:

guardian452 wrote: Also, the dog-turd of a 7300GT that is nearly 10 years old and was junk when new is not supported but apple will happily sell you a beefy new radeon to replace it.

Well the 1,1 came without a video card, so I was using the 2600 XT from the 3,1 in it. (The 3,1 has a Sapphire Radeon 7950.) But I wanted something with more punch than the 2600 for games under Windows, so right now there's a flashed Sapphire 5850 in there. If I can figure out how to get a working EFI on the MSI R6950 from the Dell, I'll drop that in the 3,1 and move the 7950 to the 1,1. The 7950 is flashed, so I get boot screens from it on either machine. (Yes, I know about netkas.org; I first flashed a 9700 for my G4 Cube about 10 years ago, when smalldogs was the place to be...)

I ordered my pre-loved 1,1 with an official-Apple Radeon 5750. It has never struggled in OSX, but some games in windows in vmware fusion have struggled, even older games such as UT3. I blame vmware. I love this gpu and have never had an issue with the performance, my only complaint is unfortunately, the 5870 exists At the time, the 5870 would have doubled the cost of the machine So no *real* complaints with the 5770

My workstation at $EMPLOYER, no UPS


At my previous workplace we had an old DELL running well over 600 days, no UPS.

Pontus wrote: At my previous workplace we had an old DELL running well over 600 days, no UPS.

In my experience, it's more likely to have a UPS break than a power failure.

Not a scientific sample size of course, but I can't remember the last power outage. Must be years ago.

That is the experience I've had with the UPS we ran at the computer club. More than once the UPS was to blame for downtime. (I suppose that a failing cooling system with fluctuating temperatures was not good for the batteries... but still)

vishnu wrote: Sounds like a gold-plated opportunity to upgrade the cooling system in your closet!

Yeah, I took a hole in the door and screwed a grille on it which that helped a little, but it seems more drastic measures are required. Plan B is to drill a hole in the panels above the door and install another vent, with the hope that convection could cause some kind of air movement. There's a tiny vent connected to the building air ducts near the ceiling, but it doesn't seem to do anything at all. (Plan A rested on the presumption that given a "cold" air intake, air pressure would not be reduced by any movement out through the vent and causing the flow to stop.) If B doesn't work, plan C is to add a fan to suck the air back out into the apartment. D involves a heavy-duty air movement device.

Fortunately the alpha seems to be running OK now, and that gives me a little time to think up a solution.

jan-jaap wrote: ... I can't remember the last power outage. Must be years ago.

There is no more certain way to cause a power outage than this - good luck, JJ!

One of my Linux servers:
$ uptime
11:50:36 up 284 days, 9:55, 1 user, load average: 1,06, 2,53, 2,70

duck wrote: Plan B is to drill a hole in the panels above the door and install another vent, with the hope that convection could cause some kind of air movement. There's a tiny vent connected to the building air ducts near the ceiling, but it doesn't seem to do anything at all.

I lived in a house built in the twenties - lath and plaster, Spanish tile roof, built-in ironing board, all that stuff. The pantry had a vegetable cooler that worked great : it was like a very tall closet where the shelves were parallel wooden slats, maybe 50-50 wood and air space. At the very bottom there was a big vent to the outdoors and same at the top. Things like apples and potatoes that a refrigerator is too cold for kept much longer in this thing. And they tasted better, too - didn't get soggy. My grandmother had a name for it but that's long lost to history. She had a Murphy bed, too, but I remember the name for that one.

Don't know if it would work for your HP but it was great for fruits and vegetables.

hamei wrote: I lived in a house built in the twenties - lath and plaster, Spanish tile roof, built-in ironing board, all that stuff. The pantry had a vegetable cooler that worked great : it was like a very tall closet where the shelves were parallel wooden slats, maybe 50-50 wood and air space. At the very bottom there was a big vent to the outdoors and same at the top. Things like apples and potatoes that a refrigerator is too cold for kept much longer in this thing. And they tasted better, too - didn't get soggy. My grandmother had a name for it but that's long lost to history. She had a Murphy bed, too, but I remember the name for that one.

Don't know if it would work for your HP but it was great for fruits and vegetables.

Sounds like the principle I'm trying to employ; I doubt my electronics would enjoy the humidity of the big blue (white today) room though.

I'm thinking about buying one of those portable room air conditioners, with 5 computers on in the computer room the whole house air conditioner just can't handle the watts. I don't know what the story is in Jakobstad, do you ever need an air conditioner there? All my ancsestors came from above the arctic circle in Norway and they all assured me that no one ever uses air condtioning there...

Back before they air conditioned the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome it used to get brutally hot during the height of summer, and the beer vendors would be yelling "beer, get your beer here, air conditioning in a cup!"

My server room has an LG portable A/C. It vents under one of the turbine vents on the roof so I didn't have to run it out the window. It pulls about 1.2kW when active and is good for 11,000 BTU, and can keep the room under 80 F even in the summer. In the winter, with Energy Save on, it barely turns on the fan now and then to blow over the condenser coils.

I keep the door closed when the central heat or A/C are on, and I've blocked the vent in that room, so it's basically on its own environmental circuit. The G4 server has a USB thermometer to log the current temperature so I can monitor it remotely.

vishnu wrote: I'm thinking about buying one of those portable room air conditioners, with 5 computers on in the computer room the whole house air conditioner just can't handle the watts. I don't know what the story is in Jakobstad, do you ever need an air conditioner there? All my ancsestors came from above the arctic circle in Norway and they all assured me that no one ever uses air condtioning there...

Back before they air conditioned the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome it used to get brutally hot during the height of summer, and the beer vendors would be yelling "beer, get your beer here, air conditioning in a cup!"

It used to be pretty rare, but the last couple of years I have started to notice the boxes on the sides of people's houses, but it might be what is known as a "heat pump"? I don't know anything about such things...

The temperature around here typically ranges from +25 to -25 C, occasionally going past 30 at either end. I actually have a portable AC unit for my apartment (they wouldn't let me drill a hole in the wall to install a proper one even as I own the apartment) because it's south-facing (receiving sunlight all day) and this concrete building seems to retain the heat. It's loud and not very powerful, but just the dehumidifying effect is nice in summer. Why do people think that a south-facing apartment is a good selling argument?

No, the biggest problem is that my closet is tiny, I just need to get the hot air out. Alternatively, I could move to a bigger apartment so the machines can have a room of their own, but I kind of like not being in debt

Current temperature: 0C with prospects of going to -2 tonight. Unusually warm for January.

I was all set to buy one but then made the mistake of reading the user reviews of the various portable room air conditioners that they sell at Home Despot which put the stop to that effort in short order. But if you like yours Classic I'm sure it will be more than good enough for me, what version is it?

Duck, heat pump do you mean swamp cooler? Those are awesome in arid environments but don't work for crap in humidity.

Current temp here is -4 degrees C on its way down to -11 later tonight, better take the dog for her walk before it gets too cold.