"Souped Up"

image from clickz.com

Did I use that expression right? It's what I normally see in tech-centric Filipino forums to describe a machine that's been improved, upgraded. I thought I'd hop in the band-wagon and sing the campfire song as well.

When I came home this Friday, fresh from Google's exposing me to the world's "derision for disappointed hopes" as it disabled my AdSense account, and with all the Jane Austen melodrama ringing in my head, upon putting down my backpack on the dining table and seeing the oh so familiar yellow bubble pack envelope, I ended up still not quite involved "in the misery of the acutest kind".

At long last! The Atheros AR9280 b/g/n half-height WiFi card I ordered from e-bay last July 16th finally came through the post.

Not only did I have a new 2GB stick of fresh DDR3 1066 MHz PC-8500 (don't I just relish that long geeky appellation? Wihihihi) but I also have a new AirPort Extreme card! I mean the Atheros should be recognized by Mac OS X Snow Leo as a true blue Apple AirPort Extreme wireless module....it just should....

But I prevailed and arrested myself from having tantrums and managed to, here goes that expression I sometimes disdain, "soup up" my darling-little-brat-of-an-almost-baby-boyfriend (dear me, is that a sign of unhealthy romantic preferences? Haha).

Half-height PCI slot cause I didn't wanna have to re-route the U.fl antenna

Kinda dig the Kingston logo actually ^_^

And Snowy indeed thought the Atheros an AirPort Extreme card :D

3GB DDR3 - yummy :D

And I knew better than to destroy my new Atheros card and refrained from attacking that infamous PIN20. 

Oh and by the way, I can no longer use the wireless switch to turn bluetooth on/off. It did work before with when the Broadcom 4312hmg. A bummer; it's the same PCI slot - half-height...

A Typical Hackintosher's Saturday

or lack of a social life.

This not-so-hackintosh-noob is skipping M.A. school today because she accidentally rubbed some insect repellant lotion on her right eye last night and right now she looks like a pirate, or pirate-esse (if ever such a word existed) with one eye barely squinting at her Mini MacBook Pro 311's screen as she composes this post. Alright, that was an exaggeration. The irritation is already abating, hitting its worst last night as she slept at around 2:00 am watching TV. Enough of referring to myself in the third person (I must've been listening to too much podcasts for my M.A. - Antoine Compagnon's lecture at the Collège de France, "Proust, mémoire de la littérature" about narration first person vs third person, the validity and completeness of it).

Back to OSx86.

I gave the Atheros AR5B93 WiFi card I recently bought and destroyed one last chance. And in case you're wondering how I managed to work those tiny U.fl pins and screws, this transpired before the insect repellent lotion incident. The verdict? It's definitive that I've wasted yet another $17. Boot up just won't go past this line:

There's something I learned about this specific WiFi card; aside from it being recognized by Mac OS X 10.6 as AirPort Extreme right out of the box (or anti-static wrap and brown post office envelope), it's driven by the AirPortAtheros21.kext plugin inside of IO80211Family.kext with Dev ID "pci168c,2a". That there, is the exact Dev ID that I got when I inspected the card under Windows XP.

Yes, Windows XP - not on my Mini 311. On my MSI Wind. Yep, although the card would cause Windows 7 on the 311 to freeze, with the Wind, despite the PIN 20 disaster, it doesn't cause any freeze ups on boot. So I guess this means this Atheros card will just have to replace the Wind's aging, not to mention practically unused Realtek card. This will be solace for that act of imbecility.

And since I'm skipping school (my right eye still itches at times and I have to constantly apply hot compress), I thought I'd entertain myself with one of the things I love doing the most: installing Mac OS X. So I've currently transferred my little but very fortunate MSI Wind (much as I begrudge that it seems to be getting all those new hardware) to a larger table to reinstall a dualboot Snow Leopard + Windows 7 setup. I'm putting Win 7 in the first partition to avoid any problem with Chameleon not picking its NTFS formatted volume up at boot.

That's my MacBook Pro 5,1 on the left, and my MacBook 6,1 on the right - once I sort its smbios.plist out after the install and, hopefully, 10.6.4 update are done and over with.

Oh and by the way, since I'm on-line and e-bay is just a click away, I've just had this new Atheros ordered:

Remind me not to get ahead of myself and destroy this one again. Supposing e-bay seller cikeleapple didn't scam me.

I also wish I'd stop sabotaging myself with insect repellant lotion.