World O’ Apple & Macintosh

Sorted by eras

Timeless (spanning eras)

1/2AA Mac PRAM Battery Accessibility Modification: Not all Mac PRAM batteries are accessible. Some are extremely inaccessible. Here’s a pictorial of how i went to far too much effort to work around this problem, with suggestions for easier ways to go about solving the issue.

New Wednesday, 27 March 2024 iPod Mini CompactFlash Modification Tips: Suggestions for how to change the battery in an iPod Mini and/or upgrade from a spinning hard drive to CompactFlash memory without inadvertently damaging the device. Originally written in 2009 but never quite finished, now finished and posted as of March 2024.

Secure Email in OS X, Apple Mail: A years-in-the-making tour-de-force of everything i’ve been able to figure out regarding how to set up and use Apple Mail and OS X for secure email, via self-signed certificates or one person in a group becoming their own Certificate Authority. Comprehensive and simply amazing!
Setting Up and Using Accounts on Apple Time Capsule: Reveals the Big Secret which allows usage of file sharing accounts on a 4th. generation Apple Time Capsule without screwing up existing Time Machine backups. Provides examples of Apple Filing Protocol URLs for accessing one’s Time Capsule from the public Internet.
Unibody MacBook Pro Hinge Tightening: Which Screws?!: Thoughts on whether it’s even possible to adjust Unibody MacBook Pro display hinge clutch tension, and what all those 12 screws are doing.
Unibody MacBook Pro Keyboard Replacement & Repair Follies: The trials, tribulations, and disappointments related to striving to get a fully-working replacement keyboard into a 15" Mid-2012 MacBook Pro Non-Retina. Discusses various options for replacement keyboards, keyboard testing outside the machine, and issues and repairs of the one known aftermarket keyboard, in its iFixIt 161-121-1 incarnation.

Macintosh 1.4 MB SuperDrive Floppy Drives: Focuses on compatibility and interchangeability information for built-in floppy drives on desktop Macs.
Working with Macintosh Floppy Disks in the New Millennium: A common problem as folks seek to retrieve and preserve old data on floppies and migrate them to newer floppy-free systems.
Making a 400k MFS Boot Floppy on Any Beige Mac: Mac OS 8.0 and later by itself may not be able to mount nor format a 400k MFS disk, yet that does not mean that it cannot be done… Disk Copy to the rescue!

Apple CD-ROM & Apple CD/DVD Driver Reference: In-depth look at how the various versions of this extension affect the bootability of Mac CDs.
Standard Vintage Mac Removable Mass Storage Device Driver Operation: A few helpful tips/reminders for using mass storage devices with removable media on Vintage Macs.
Zip 250 Drive Repair: A (relatively) simple fix for one (of many) particular Zip drive-destroying failures.
SyQuest EZ 135, SCSI model: Basic Information: A few tidbits of information on this mid-1990s mass storage device, which once went head-to-head with Iomega’s Zip drive.
Nomai? Oh My!: A brief tale of Nomai’s MCD 540S drive and Power Disk removable cartridges.

P/N 387-622B (Apple part #922-1877) MS1705 Monitor Cable: The final word on whether this “special” cable is really all that special or not. Includes pinout/wiring information for making your own.

Epson 740 printer on 68030 Macs: Some testing i performed to find out just how far back one can go on unsupported Macs with the Epson 740. The results please me, and may please you, too.
Reviving a Dead HP DeskWriter Printer: Step-by-step description of finding the cause of a dead printer, and if it happens to be the power switch or its wiring, detailed repair and modification information.

MAXpowr G3 Processor Card Information Page: Experimentally-derived documentation regarding dip switch settings on this older yet still in use accelerator card.
M2452 Keyboard Repair: Notes on disassembly and repair of the popular small Apple USB keyboard which was original equipment with the early CRT iMacs and PowerMacs of the same generation.

Sonic’s Ultimate HTML Character Set pages: A collection of tables displaying and comparing names; glyphs; HTML character set; Unicode, Mac OS, and Wintel positions, plus definition and implementation information and some of the best links on the subject to be found on the Net.
-116 Error in Extensions Manager: Describes the cause and the solution, and includes relevant background information on this issue.
Siber-Sonic World O’ iCab: Featuring a vast array of useful, pre-made iCab filters. (This information was current as of May 2004 and is not currently being updated.)
TechTool Pro Review: A project from the late 1990s to the mid 2000s. Covers TechTool Pro versions 1 through 3. Note: version 4 and any later versions are not discussed because i do not own a copy of them and presently have no plans to upgrade. As of March 2005, now contains information on repairing defective TechTool Pro CD-ROMs that cause Type 1 crashes and a method for making homemade updated bootable CD-ROMs that actually work.
Macintosh Weather Software Review: A brief look at a few of the various Macintosh weather software packages i happened across, way back in January 2004. These days, i use the U.S. National Weather Service website instead. This article remains up for the historically curious.