So, now you want to move to OSX Mountain Lion.

July 25, 2012July 28, 2012 Steven Cogswell

I’m not kidding, I’m word-for-word copying this old post because ~~little~~ nothing has changed, and you feel a need to read this.

Want to move to OSX Mountain Lion? Concerned? Be Safe:

Make sure you have a Time Machine backup. If you don’t have a time machine backup, you’re a fool.
Make sure your machine can actually run OSX Mountain Lion, “iMac (Mid 2007 or newer), MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer), MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer), MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer), Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer), Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer), Xserve (Early 2009).” No, your G5 will still not run OSX Mountain Lion
Use SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner to make a clone of your existing system out to another hard drive. Buy an external drive, or buy a drive dock and buy bare drives to plug into it. Docks are great for Time Machine backups too. Do not whine that hard drives are expensive. How much is your time worth to you?
Buy and download the OSX Mountain Lion Installer. Don’t pirate it, for fuck’s sake. It’s only ~~$30~~ $20. Save a copy of the Installer somewhere safe, make an installable DVD or USB Key while you can.
If you’re using Filevault 1, turn it off (and you should be using Filevault, if you’re using a portable machine). It’ll make transitioning easier, and you’ll want to enable the “whole disk filevault” after Mountain Lion is installed. If you’re using Filevault 2 (the Filevault introduced in Lion 10.7), you can leave it enabled – OSX Mountain Lion can install to an existing whole-disk-encrypted volume without any problems.
Install OSX Mountain Lion to the SuperDuper’d Drive and not your internal drive. Don’t do anything to your internal drive.
(alternately: install OSX Mountain Lion to the internal drive, and disconnect your SuperDuper’d drive for safety. This is more work to get back to normal though for when your OSX Mountain Lion goes wrong.)
Boot from the drive you put OSX Mountain Lion on (the SuperDuper’d drive)
Find out exactly how many Rosetta apps you didn’t know you have. Start looking for replacements, since Rosetta is dead. PowerPC has been dead for years. Move with the times. I’m also looking at you, stupid developers still shipping PowerPC code
Use it like this for a few days. Try out everything you normally use to find out it doesn’t work anymore. Keep track. Nicely ask developers to get OSX Mountain Lion versions out.
If it doesn’t work out, don’t worry. Just boot from your untouched ~~Snow Leopard~~ Lion drive, carry on as if nothing happened. If you fuck things up, use your Time Machine backup to save your ass.

Did that all turn out nicely? Fine. Your choice at this point:

Install OSX Mountain Lion to your regular drive
SuperDuper your external clone drive with OSX Mountain Lion back to your internal drive. Disconnect external drive and keep it safe.

Make sure to keep your Time Machine backup for when you need to roll back.

Never work without a net.

More on the Speakjet and TTS256 Chip

October 4, 2011 Steven Cogswell

As fun as it is to use the Magnevation Speakjet shield for the Arduino, perhaps you want to do an application where you don’t want to have to program all those stupid codes, as I showed in an earlier post.

At that time I mentioned the TTS256 chip from Sparkfun, which is essentially a little text-to-speech dictionary chip made to work with the Speakjet. You pump in some regular boring text over the serial connection to the TTS256, it converts it to that phoneme stuff and presto, the chip speaks.

At the time I did that previous post I didn’t have a TTS256, but now I do. Sparkfun have a very nice tutorial on how to wire up the chip into your Speakjet shield. That tutorial is really good, and has demo code and so I will repeat none of it here.

I followed the instructions as shown and had no problems, but the difference to what I did is that rather than solder the speakjet onto the shield, I soldered on a 24-pin socket (technically two sockets, since I didn’t have a 24-pin, but the effect is the same). The advantage of doing things this way is that if you want to go back to the ‘old’ way of using the Speakjet – in direct phoneme mode – all you have to do is jumper two areas in the socket and it works as it did before you ruined it.

Seriously, always use a socket with a through-hole part if you can get away with it. Makes replacing the chip a dream when you blow it up.

I have the ‘newer’ version of the board which has the surface-mount version of the speakjet (the tutorial has the through-hole version), but the pins are the same so the locations of the solder points don’t change.

Also, the sparkfun pictures are good but aren’t so clear where the connections are, so I tried to take some clearer pictures.

So, you want to move to OSX Lion.

July 21, 2011October 24, 2011 Steven Cogswell

Want to move to OSX Lion? Concerned? Be Safe:

Make sure you have a Time Machine backup. If you don’t have a time machine backup, you’re a fool.
Make sure your machine can actually run OSX Lion, “Mac computer with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor”. No, your G5 will not run OSX Lion
Use SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner to make a clone of your existing system out to another hard drive. Buy an external drive, or buy a drive dock and buy bare drives to plug into it. Docks are great for Time Machine backups too. Do not whine that hard drives are expensive. How much is your time worth to you?
Buy and download the OSX Lion Installer. Don’t pirate it, for fuck’s sake. It’s only $30. Save a copy of the Installer somewhere safe, make an installable USB Key or DVD while you can.
If you’re using Filevault, turn it off (and you should be, if you’re using a portable machine). It’ll make transitioning easier, and you’ll want to enable the “whole disk filevault” after Lion is installed.
Install OSX Lion to the SuperDuper’d Drive and not your internal drive. Don’t do anything to your internal drive.
(alternately: install OSX Lion to the internal drive, and disconnect your SuperDuper’d drive for safety. This is more work to get back to normal though for when your OSX Lion goes wrong.)
Boot from the drive you put OSX Lion on (the SuperDuper’d drive)
Find out exactly how many Rosetta apps you didn’t know you have. Start looking for replacements, since Rosetta is dead. PowerPC has been dead for years. Move with the times. I’m also looking at you, stupid developers still shipping PowerPC code
Use it like this for a few days. Try out everything you normally use to find out it doesn’t work anymore. Keep track. Nicely ask developers to get OSX Lion versions out.
If it doesn’t work out, don’t worry. Just boot from your untouched Snow Leopard drive, carry on as if nothing happened. If you fuck things up, use your Time Machine backup to save your ass.