Did you know that your Mac may have come with a pre-installed diagnostic test? Back in the days, you had to boot from the Apple Hardware Test disc that came with your Mac. For the past year or two, Apple has pre-installed these tests so you can run them without a disc.
Wondering if your Mac has a diagnostic test built-in? You could always just try booting up your machine while holding the “D” key, but if you’re having other hardware/software issues, this may not be successful even if the test is built in. Well, I just stumbled upon another way to check if your Mac came with a pre-installed hardware test:
1) Show invisible files in Finder (Onyx can do this but I prefer the free little app Invisibles).
2) In Finder, navigate to “Macintosh HD/System/Library/CoreServices”
3) If you see a hidden folder called “.diagnostic” (I think that’s the name, it’s “.diag[something]) then you have a built in test. If you don’t see “.diagXXXX” then you’ll have to boot from the Apple Hardware Test disc that came with your computer.
Next time I get a Mac with a built-in AHT I’ll re-post the exact name of the folder to look for.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Here’s a quick tip for other Mac repair technicians: use a 50 gram scale calibration weight to hold down keyboard buttons (like option, or shift). They fit perfectly on all Mac keyboards and only cost $5 with shipping.
You can find one of these weights on Amazon.com.
Popularity: 1% [?]
I’ve just compiled a list of all the known Apple recalls (aka Exchange & Repair Programs). It includes current and expired recalls (so people can know if there is a known problem with their system even if Apple won’t cover it anymore), how to identify problem models, and links directly to Apple’s site for each specific recall.
This information should be helpful for Mac techs (like myself) and fix-it-yourself power users, plus anyone else hoping to troubleshoot their broken Mac.
The list is in a wide (spreadsheet) format, so it will open in a new window.
* Please notify me of any errors or missing recalls.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Categories: Tech Tags: apple, apple recall, apple recalls, apple repair and exchange program, exchange, exchange program, mac, mac exchange, mac recall, recall, recall list, rep, repair, repair & exchange, return
Man I love ifixit.com. They’ve got a great looking (and easy to navigate) site for buying Mac parts along with dozens of custom made instruction manuals for many Mac computers.
But today they’ve stepped it up — showing us how to hack the Mini (by removing the optical drive) in order to fit a second hard drive, allowing up to 1TB of storage (with 2x500gb sata drives).
Photo from ifixit.com Mac Mini 1TB Installation Guide
It involves a little soldiering, but looks pretty easy if you know what you’re doing: take a look at ifixit’s Mac Mini 1TB Installation Guide and upgrade kit ($249 for everything you need, minus soldiering tools).
Popularity: 7% [?]
As previously mentioned, Transmission works for downloading torrents on your Mac. But lately, at least for me, it’s been slow and unreliable — so I’ve set out to find a new solution.
While browsing forums for ideas, I found a post mentioning uTorrent. A few hours later, I was downloading torrents VERY quickly and reliably using a streamlined process: downloaded torrent file, torrent automatically opens in uTorrent (in Fusion/XP), torrent downloads very quickly, once completed the file is moved back to my Mac.
Keep reading for instructions on setting up this streamlined process…
Read more…
Popularity: 35% [?]
Categories: Applications, Tech Tags: fast torrent downloads, fusion, mac bittorrent, mac bittorrent tutorial, mac torrent, mac torrent tutorial, mac tutorial torrents, mac utorrent, mac xp fusion torrent, torrent, utorrent mac, vmware fusion
