If everything were this easy...
My friends second generation iMac had a severe crash that rendered the machine unbootable. They took it to Tek Serve where they were told the problem was a hard disk hardware failure, with no chance of recovery. One night, in a (most likely) drunken state I was boasting that they should let me take a crack at it. Although I do know a lot about Macs, I also know that Tek Serve is very good. So if they couldn't rescue it, I probably couldn't either.
But, I figured it would at least give me a chance to try the Mr. Barrett hard drive in the freezer trick. I've been dying to wow someone with that. Of course I'd only try it if all other avenues had been exhausted.
So first I put the drive into a blue & white g3 tower and tried to boot it. No luck, and worse, the drive was making some scary sounds as it spun up. So I popped Disk Warrior into the CD tray and rebooted from that. It couldn't mount the drive, but it was seeing it. So I let DW repair the directory structure. 10 seconds later the drive mounts on the desktop. I copied all the data onto my other drive without incident (although I don't know how much data was originally on the drive, so possibly some things were still lost - although it really doesn't look that way.)
So the obvious question is: why doesn't Tek Serve run Disk Warrior in every case like this? I really can't believe they don't. Maybe the drive "fixed itself" slightly by just sitting for a few days? Seems unlikely too. I wonder what the real story is.
Turns out tek serve had rescued the same info. And it wasn't the most crucial pieces.
I did feel smart for a few hours.
So are you going to freeze it?
While looking for this freeze article (still looking) I found this tip on "Hide from Dock" on OS X. I followed his link and read through it . I don't understand the concept but I'm intrigued. I have to say that so far I hate the dock. It won't accept folders and even with the genie effect turned off it seems slow. I'm missing that apple menu. Its' probably that I just don't understand the system well enough yet to make it work the way I want it to. Is there any way for me to access my folders without opening up the hard drive or storing them on the desktop? And do you understand this hide from dock biz?
BTW, I checked out the T mobile sidekick yesterday. They gotta come up with a better plan than 200 min.
Yes, the sidekick is no good for voice (well, the quality is fine here in NYC, but I mean the pricing.) I think they are doing this because flat rate data pricing is probably seen as a very serious gamble. No one has done it before, so they just want this to be a bounded experiment. If they had a good voice plan then everybody would buy one, and they might lose big if the experiment doesn't turn out well. The bad voice plan keeps the size of the gamble in check. Probably a lot of kids will buy it, but no business people. If you and your friends used AOL IM (like a lot of kids do for their main communicating,) this thing would be insanely cool.
You can put folders in the dock, but you have to put them to the right of the faint dividing line (you have to put them near the trash, not near the finder.) Control clicking on the folder in the dock gives you a pop up of the folders contents. I hated the dock at first, but now I like it. Same with window shades: I really missed it at first, now I see why it's not there. If you click on an open application in the dock all of that applications windows come to the front. But if you just click on the edge of a buried window on screen, just that window will come forward. This way I can have one out of any number of mozilla windows along side one of any number of text editor windows. You didn't used to be able to do that.
I've found I look for files on my desktop in the finder (as opposed to closing all my windows and really looking on the desktop.)
What view do you use in the finder. You should experiment with column view if you haven't. And did you know you can drag anything you want into the top bar of the finder windows (for instance, you could drag a folder that has your recent project into the top bar of the finder, and then any finder window you open will have that folder at the top like a hot key - press it and the finder window will jump to displaying that folder.)
If you control click an open application icon in the dock you get a contextual menu that lets you do certain things in the program. What hide from dock apparently does is enable an additional option in all these contextual menus to hide all windows belonging to that application. This is like 'hide photoshop' from the application menu in classic mac os. I haven't tried this, but it sounds cool. Installing stuff like that is pretty legit in OS X (it shouldn't screw up your system, or make you unstable.) Give it a shot if you want.
Here's the Mr. Barrett freezer trick link.
And also, you might want to start reading macosxhints.com every day. Lots of good little tricks there.
Thanks for the tips. I was going to say that I miss window shades and hide application. Just as I figured, there are good reasons for these functions not being there anymore. I do use column view and like it. It's time for me to read the visual quickstard guide and think I need a two button mouse.
Yeah, two button mouse seems to be the consenses, although I don't have one yet.
Also, if you haven't yet, open a finder window, and then choose 'customize toolbar' from the view menu. This helps you reconfigure the presets in the top line of every finder window (I guess they call that the 'toolbar'.) At the bottom of the customize screen you can make it show text only to get rid of those (in my opinion) super ugly icons.
Yeah, two button mouse seems to be the consenses, although I don't have one yet.
Also, if you haven't yet, open a finder window, and then choose 'customize toolbar' from the view menu. This helps you reconfigure the presets in the top line of every finder window (I guess they call that the 'toolbar'.) At the bottom of the customize screen you can make it show text only to get rid of those (in my opinion) super ugly icons.
Cool tips, Thanks. Yeah I hate those icons.
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My friends second generation iMac had a severe crash that rendered the machine unbootable. They took it to Tek Serve where they were told the problem was a hard disk hardware failure, with no chance of recovery. One night, in a (most likely) drunken state I was boasting that they should let me take a crack at it. Although I do know a lot about Macs, I also know that Tek Serve is very good. So if they couldn't rescue it, I probably couldn't either.
But, I figured it would at least give me a chance to try the Mr. Barrett hard drive in the freezer trick. I've been dying to wow someone with that. Of course I'd only try it if all other avenues had been exhausted.
So first I put the drive into a blue & white g3 tower and tried to boot it. No luck, and worse, the drive was making some scary sounds as it spun up. So I popped Disk Warrior into the CD tray and rebooted from that. It couldn't mount the drive, but it was seeing it. So I let DW repair the directory structure. 10 seconds later the drive mounts on the desktop. I copied all the data onto my other drive without incident (although I don't know how much data was originally on the drive, so possibly some things were still lost - although it really doesn't look that way.)
So the obvious question is: why doesn't Tek Serve run Disk Warrior in every case like this? I really can't believe they don't. Maybe the drive "fixed itself" slightly by just sitting for a few days? Seems unlikely too. I wonder what the real story is.
- jim 10-08-2002 9:08 pm
Turns out tek serve had rescued the same info. And it wasn't the most crucial pieces.
I did feel smart for a few hours.
- jim 10-09-2002 5:33 am
So are you going to freeze it?
- alex 10-09-2002 4:52 pm
While looking for this freeze article (still looking) I found this tip on "Hide from Dock" on OS X. I followed his link and read through it . I don't understand the concept but I'm intrigued. I have to say that so far I hate the dock. It won't accept folders and even with the genie effect turned off it seems slow. I'm missing that apple menu. Its' probably that I just don't understand the system well enough yet to make it work the way I want it to. Is there any way for me to access my folders without opening up the hard drive or storing them on the desktop? And do you understand this hide from dock biz?
BTW, I checked out the T mobile sidekick yesterday. They gotta come up with a better plan than 200 min.
- steve 10-09-2002 6:37 pm
Yes, the sidekick is no good for voice (well, the quality is fine here in NYC, but I mean the pricing.) I think they are doing this because flat rate data pricing is probably seen as a very serious gamble. No one has done it before, so they just want this to be a bounded experiment. If they had a good voice plan then everybody would buy one, and they might lose big if the experiment doesn't turn out well. The bad voice plan keeps the size of the gamble in check. Probably a lot of kids will buy it, but no business people. If you and your friends used AOL IM (like a lot of kids do for their main communicating,) this thing would be insanely cool.
You can put folders in the dock, but you have to put them to the right of the faint dividing line (you have to put them near the trash, not near the finder.) Control clicking on the folder in the dock gives you a pop up of the folders contents. I hated the dock at first, but now I like it. Same with window shades: I really missed it at first, now I see why it's not there. If you click on an open application in the dock all of that applications windows come to the front. But if you just click on the edge of a buried window on screen, just that window will come forward. This way I can have one out of any number of mozilla windows along side one of any number of text editor windows. You didn't used to be able to do that.
I've found I look for files on my desktop in the finder (as opposed to closing all my windows and really looking on the desktop.)
What view do you use in the finder. You should experiment with column view if you haven't. And did you know you can drag anything you want into the top bar of the finder windows (for instance, you could drag a folder that has your recent project into the top bar of the finder, and then any finder window you open will have that folder at the top like a hot key - press it and the finder window will jump to displaying that folder.)
If you control click an open application icon in the dock you get a contextual menu that lets you do certain things in the program. What hide from dock apparently does is enable an additional option in all these contextual menus to hide all windows belonging to that application. This is like 'hide photoshop' from the application menu in classic mac os. I haven't tried this, but it sounds cool. Installing stuff like that is pretty legit in OS X (it shouldn't screw up your system, or make you unstable.) Give it a shot if you want.
- jim 10-09-2002 7:03 pm
Here's the Mr. Barrett freezer trick link.
And also, you might want to start reading macosxhints.com every day. Lots of good little tricks there.
- jim 10-09-2002 7:10 pm
Thanks for the tips. I was going to say that I miss window shades and hide application. Just as I figured, there are good reasons for these functions not being there anymore. I do use column view and like it. It's time for me to read the visual quickstard guide and think I need a two button mouse.
- steve 10-09-2002 7:20 pm
Yeah, two button mouse seems to be the consenses, although I don't have one yet.
Also, if you haven't yet, open a finder window, and then choose 'customize toolbar' from the view menu. This helps you reconfigure the presets in the top line of every finder window (I guess they call that the 'toolbar'.) At the bottom of the customize screen you can make it show text only to get rid of those (in my opinion) super ugly icons.
- jim 10-09-2002 8:12 pm
Yeah, two button mouse seems to be the consenses, although I don't have one yet.
Also, if you haven't yet, open a finder window, and then choose 'customize toolbar' from the view menu. This helps you reconfigure the presets in the top line of every finder window (I guess they call that the 'toolbar'.) At the bottom of the customize screen you can make it show text only to get rid of those (in my opinion) super ugly icons.
- jim 10-09-2002 8:13 pm
Cool tips, Thanks. Yeah I hate those icons.
- steve 10-10-2002 3:09 am