My visit to the Vintage Computer Festival SoCal

Vintage Computer Festival SoCal Logo

There were so many incredible computers from the 70s, 80s, and 90s!  Beautiful computers that might have just been taken out of the box.  I got to play with an Amiga 4000 with a Video Toaster! (My dream box from the 90s)  I used a Commodore Pet that is older than i am. Some of my favorite stuff is modern boards that work with the vintage computers like micro SD floppy drives and Wi-Fi modems.

Vintage Computer Festival SoCal - Amiga 4000 ToasterVintage Computer Festival SoCal - Amiga 500 DemoVintage Computer Festival SoCal - Commodore PetVintage Computer Festival SoCal - iBook Rainbow
Vintage Computer Festival SoCal - Analog TV Demo

Status update:

Big Sur install on desktop

I’ve played with Big Sur, but i’ve had serious reservations about running it on one of my primary machines. Apple backpedaled a bit on some of their decisions and i decided i didn’t have enough problems in my life. So tonight i’m jumping in with both feet to see how it goes and what breaks.  This may turn out to be a huge mistake.  We’ll soon see.

big sur beach ball

Not off to a great start so far.  Upgrades beget upgrades.  After a few rounds of up updating my 3rd party software my system is humming even better than before.  Finder is still clunky and has a tendency to hang in the most annoying ways, but they’ve added a few new tricks and an updated look.  Am i the only one who misses the brushed metal phase of UI?

Pro Tools users struggling with plugin licenses after activation try this. . .

Antares Auto-Tune screen

Users of Antares plugins, or others using Codemeter license manger may be locked out of their licences in Pro-Tools.  The licenses show up in the various license managers, but Pro-Tools says NO. This is due to added file system security of Mojave.  Add Pro Tools to the “Full Disk Access” list in Security & Privacy System Preference. That should solve the problem.  good luck.

Finally retiring my last legacy windows box!

Final transfer from an ancient windows

This particular ancient server has stood as the glue holding several ancient record keeping systems together.  Today marks the last day that it was operating.  I supported this computer for almost it’s entire lifespan.  This Dell ran consistently for over 10 years with very little trouble.  Now your watch is over.

I have been retiring or upgrading unsupported systems all year. it’s to know that all the critical systems are up to date.  Let this be yet another warning if you are running Windows XP, Vista, 7, or 2008 Server (or anything earlier), you should upgrade immediately if you are online in any capacity.  Same goes for macs older then 10.13 (High Sierra). Seriously, don’t let it become a problem.

Status update:

network infrastructure

Well, my day was canceled and my phone needs a rebuild, so it’s maintenance day! finally getting to some much needed upgrades That i have been putting off.  please excuse the dust and potential outages.

Open source artisanal iOS Jailbreak released using only grass fed locally sourced exploits.

Cydia - Package management system for Jailbroken iOS.

A long time in the works, this is the first completely open source jailbreak to be released for an almost current version of iOS (11-12.1.2).  This is an interesting jailbreak.  It is semi-tethered, but unlike previous jailbreaks, this can at least be untethered from the device itself.  Using Cydia Impactor, you can side load the unc0ver app and install the jailbreak directly from the app.  it also allow the easy rejailbreak upon reboot or battery drain. Great work all around despite the remaining bugs and instability (it is still beta. Huge thanks to the efforts of @pwn20wnd and @sbingner).  To be honest, there are very few tweaks and apps that are ready for iOS 12, but i am excited to see the tradition of jailbreaking continue.  I have cydia again!  For the first tine since I closed down my own cydia repo.  C’mon developers, do you thing!

iOS jailbreak 12 unc0ver iOS 12 jailbreak -Cydia on iPad Pro
In truth, i never got it going on my phone, only my iPad.  I get a crash on my phone immediately after this dialogue comes up.  It took a few passes to get a picture (this one extracted from a screen record).  Not sure exactly what went wrong, but “Unexported kernel task port” is my best clue.  With my phone cashing as soon as it becomes untethered, i am never actually able to run Cydia. On my iPad, instead of rebooting, it resprings.  either way, it is very hard to read the final message.

iPhoneX iOS 12 unc0ver jailbreak fail

UPDATE:  This problem was resolved in b38.

Just keep cobbling

Aerial AnimationI rebuilt my Mac Pro software completely and it appears to have resolved the idle hanging problem.  It is alway an annoying amount of work getting everything up and running again.  It’s nice to have everything fresh and clean and worth it to finally have a stable desktop.  The most frustrating part of this kind of solution is that nothing is learned.  How?  Why?  No answers, but at least an end to the frustration!

UPDATE!  – Nothing is resolved!  it just took over 48 hours for the problem to return. ?

Silver lining was my brief use of screensavers and discovering John Coats work to bring the beautiful Aerial flyovers from the Apple TV to all macs.  Looks amazing on 3 screens!

Update! – It’s finally fixed!

Sometimes I feel like the cobbler with no shoes

High Sierra InstallI upgraded my Mac Pro to High Sierra.  For the most part it was seamless.  The installer automatically migrated the HFS+ file system to AFPS and everything appeared to be working great.  As it turns out. . . I have a new intermittent problem that causes the computer to become unresponsive while idle.

It presents primarily as a failure to wake from sleep (backlit black screens instead).  Display sleep is actually all that is required to present and of course it is not every time.  It is often enough for me to return to the 90s habit of shutting down my computer after I finish using it lest I cause irreparable harm to my mounted file systems.  Here are some things i have discovered while trying to resolve.  Sometimes i can access the computer remotely, other times not, never graphically.  Sometimes the system hangs as soon as it goes idle, sometimes it continues to operate.  Sometimes it restarts from “sudo reboot” from an ssh session, other times it just hangs completely when i try.  The console logs are useless.  Nothing at all before the reboot.  When unresponsive, there is nothing to do but hold the power button.

The difficulty i am having at discovering the core of the issue combined with the fact that my remote backup has gotten stale is driving me crazy.  There seems to be people complaining about this on every Apple forum there is.  I am not alone:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8085995
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/300199/mac-pro-on-high-sierra-doesnt-wake-up
https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/73094p/mac_pro_2013_high_sierra_wont_wake…
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/high-sierra-causing-blank-screen-macpro.2073218/

UPDATE:  It’s finally fixed!

Modernizing a lifebook from 2003 with Lubuntu

Lubuntu 11.04 My doc was a bit confused about the age of this computer when he gave it to me to setup.  We spoke about a 5 year old laptop. It turned out to be a beast from 2003: a Lifebook n series by Fujitsu.  I’ve always said that Fujitsu must be run by a supervillain or at the very least, a rebel billionaire.  They make industrial equipment and infrastructure, while at the same time making laptops and other select home electronics.  Like someone just wanted their ideal laptop and then as an afterthought sold it as a product.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to disparage Fujitsu in any way.  Quite the opposite in fact.  I have relied on their hard drives for my most precious data and their Lifebooks have always been some of the best out there.  The fact that this 13+ year old laptop is operating with all original parts and a working battery is testament to Fujitsu’s commitment to quality.

My first clue was the XP sticker.  I decided to go with Lubuntu, a minimized variant on the popular Ubuntu Linux.  Ubuntu is a wonderful distribution, especially for those new to Linux, but it’s built on top of Debian, so it’s not just for beginners.  For years, I’ve used some of the older (still supported) Ubuntu versions for old machines.   I hate to see workin computers fail because of a lack of software support.  Thanks to the good people at Lubuntu, Ubuntu, GNU/Linux, this is a thing of the past. This guy is running all the latest in security and cryptographic technology, a fully modern web browser and a full suite of productivity software fully compatible with the latest MS Office.