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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard’ Category

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Affordable MacBook Air physical USB ethernet adapter

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/01/13

DealExtreme product #34691: USB 2.0 10/100Mbps RJ45 LAN Ethernet Network Adapter Dongle

A big drawback from a MacBook Air is that it only have wireless LAN/WiFi (in the form of Integrated AirPort Extreme 802.11 a/b/n/n), no physical ethernet.

Transferring large amounts of data over any WiFi is can be a pain (being slow, suffer from signal quality) and for the MacBook Air: it makes the built-in fan swirl like crazy.

Since the MacBook Air does not have USB 3.0, I went looking for a 100 Mbps USB Ethernet dongle for it, and fone the DealExtreme product #34691: USB 2.0 10/100Mbps RJ45 LAN Ethernet Network Adapter Dongle.

At a price of about USD 7 including shipping, it comes in an Apple compatible shiny white color too, nicely fitting the 4 port USB hub (DealExtreme # 45773) on the right  :)

Even better: it works like a charm!

Note that first need to download and install the ASIX AX88772B drivers first. Choose the Apple Mac OSX 10.4 to 10.7 Driver for x86 and Power PC download package labelled “For Apple x86/Power PC, 32-bit/64-bit platforms”.

The install tells you to reboot at the end, but no need for that: as soon as the install finishes, the USB Ethernet dongle works. And it is fast too: 12 megabyte/second over a 100 megabit cable is fast!

In the readme of those drivers, it also mentions the AX88178, which is capable of gigabit (there is a separate AX88178 driver download page and Mac OS X download package).

NB: the cool thing about both these ASIX chipsets is that they are supported on a broad range of platforms (Mac, Linux, Windows CE, Windows 7/Vista/XP/2003/2000) and bit sizes (32-bit and 64-bit).

For even faster transfers, I might try the DealExtreme product #15336: Arkview USB 2.0 1000Mbs Gigabit Ethernet LAN Network Adapter.

It is slightly less than USD 20, and  user Janipro indicates it is based on the ASIX AX88178 chip at the DealExtreme forum.

On the other hand: I might not, as for more than twice the price, user cyberic mentions in the same forum thread it is only about twice as fast: 23 megabytes per second, about half the maximum USB 2.0 speed of 480 Mbps. And it is not Apple white :)

–jeroen

Via: USB 2.0 10/100Mbps RJ45 LAN Ethernet Network Adapter Dongle – Free Shipping – DealExtreme.

Posted in Apple, LifeHacker, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook-Air, Power User | Leave a Comment »

After restoring fresh HDD from Time Machine Backup: No results from Spotlight

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/01/02

My Mac Mini Server had its’ primary HDD failure. It got replaced by the iAmStore service center, but contrary to what they promised, they didn’t put the Snow Leopard Server image on it.

So I grabbed an external USB DVD player, booted from the Snow Leopard Server install DVD, and restored the Time Machine backup from my external USB HDD.

Somehow, after the restore, Spotlight wouldn’t work: only the search bar was visible, but nothing else.

I tried various tips all having to do with erasing Spotlight for my root volume (so it would be automatically be reindexed), or many-part steps including killing SystemUIServer, Clearing Caches and Rebooting.

In the end the most simple one worked: just “turn Spotlight indexing on”.

My assumption is that Spotlight information is not backed up, and during restore Spotlight is turned off because continuously reindexing during restore will make the restore slower.

If someone can confirm this (or deny and explain the real reason), please post a comment.

This was what user nkt00 had posted as solution on the Apple forum:

I figured it out. In the man page for “mdutil” (type: “man mdutil” at the terminal shell prompt), it describes the option “-i”, which turns indexing on or off for the specified volume. I just typed:

sudo mdutil -i on /

and away it went

This was the screen output:

Last login: Mon Oct 31 19:31:01 on ttys000
macminiserver01:~ jeroenp$ mdutil -s /
/:
No index.
macminiserver01:~ jeroenp$ sudo mdutil -i on /
Password:
/:
Indexing enabled.
macminiserver01:~ jeroenp$

Now I’m happily using my Mac Mini Server again.

--jeroen

via No results from Spotlight: Apple Support Communities.

Posted in Apple, LifeHacker, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, Power User, SpotLight | 1 Comment »

Mac RDP client uses “/console” after the machine name to connect to a server console (not “/admin”)

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/12/30

It took me a bit of searching to find this out, as the Windows RDP clients switched over to “/admin” for this a long time ago:

with the Mac RDC client, you can connect to a servers console by adding “/CONSOLE” to the end of the computer name

–jeroen

via MacUpdate: Member Profile – Nate Silva.

Posted in Apple, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Power User | Leave a Comment »

VMware KB: Sharing a folder from your Mac to a virtual machine

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/12/23

Note that Sharing a Mac folder through VMware Fusion to a Windows VM works, but is:

  1. not fast
  2. eats a lot of Mac resources
    (it would get the fan of my MacBook Air running like mad when copying about 1Gigabyte of files – about 20-thousand files total; a robocopy /mir sync when nothing is changes takes a whopping 5 minutes)

This is how you do it:

To configure a shared folder in a Windows virtual machine:

  1. Launch VMware Fusion.
  2. Power on the virtual machine.
  3. Click Virtual Machine > Settings.
  4. Click Sharing.
  5. Select Share folders on your Mac.
  6. Click the + button.
  7. Browse to the folder on the Mac that will be shared with the virtual machine and click Add.

Shared folders can be accessed via the VMware Shared Folders shortcut on the Windows desktop or the mapped network drive Z:.

–jeroen

via VMware KB: Sharing a folder from your Mac to a virtual machine.

Posted in Fusion, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, Power User, VMware, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

OS X (Snow) Leopard System Profiler reincarnated as System Information in OS X Lion (via: OS X Lion: Reclaiming the System Profiler Application | TMO Quick Tip | The Mac Observer)

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/11/21

Not only Microsoft has the bad habit of removing or changing features between (for Apple often minor) operating system upgrades.
This time it is between 10.6 and 107: OS X Leopard, OS X Snow Leopard and OS X Server had a “System Profiler” application that would tell you all about the hardware present in and connected to your Mac.

It has been named “System Profiler” over more than a decade (actually it had almost 3 lustrums), bot no more: As of OS X Lion, this is called “System Information”, and has been redesigned.

Both quoted names can be easily found by using the Spotlight quick search (which I think is still one of the brilliant pieces of software in OS X).

–jeroen

Via: OS X Lion: Reclaiming the System Profiler Application | TMO Quick Tip | The Mac Observer.

Posted in Apple, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Power User, SpotLight | Leave a Comment »

Mac practical joke: How to Invert Colors on a Mac – wikiHow

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/10

Press Ctrl–Option–Command–8 in your colleagues keyboard and watch them getting their inverted colours back :)

It is like the 3-finger salute on Windows, but much much nicer, as the inversion is all done on the GPU hardware :)

–jeroen

Via: How to Invert Colors on a Mac – wikiHow.

Posted in Apple, Fun, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, LifeHacker, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Download: Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2.1.1 (via Microsoft Office for Mac Downloads and Updates | Office For Mac)

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/30

If you use Mac and Windows machines, then – despite the Mac keyboards – it sometimes is handy to use Mac to remote login to a Windows machine.

For that, the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2.1.1 (especially the download <g>) comes in handy.

–jeroen

via: Microsoft Office for Mac Downloads and Updates | Office For Mac.

Posted in Apple, LifeHacker, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Power User, Usability, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

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