René Rebe

Some time ago I got a black NEC display which comes with four video inputs: VGA, 2 DVI and even DisplayPort as well as USB hub with two upstream ports. As I found no setting available on the monitor to change the USB upstream port to use, I usually just changed the USB cable when I had another computer for some testing on my desk.

However, today, I found out that there is a NEC MultiProfiler setup utility which allows to permanently assign dedicated USB ports per video input. This way I finally got a full KVM switch inside the monitor, assigning the first USB port to the DisplayPort, and the second USB port to all the other video inputs, used for temporary testing of various stuff.

Oh, cool: one can hack, and restore old SDK (and GCC) support in Xcode 4!

And also install Xcode 3 on Mac OS X 10.7, Lion.

I have not yet checked how well that works, though.

Updated: hack-installed Xcode 3.2.6 appears to (mostly) work on Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), e.g. Xcode itself and the Interface Builder do work, Dashcode, however, fails to lunch due to some missing Framework symbol (_dispatch_get_concurrent_queue expected in /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib).

Update 2: As the link went dark, here is an archived full quote:

In looking through the isDevToolsCompatible function again, I noticed that it would return true if the COMMAND_LINE_INSTALL environment variable was set no matter what version Mac OS X you are running.

It’s now possible to greatly simplify the installation process:

• Mount the Xcode 3.2.6 DMG
• Open Terminal
• Enter the commands:

  export COMMAND_LINE_INSTALL=1 open "/Volumes/Xcode and iOS SDK/Xcode and iOS SDK.mpkg"

The open command will launch the installer app and allow you to install Xcode

We finally got another App for iOS. Actually I had this speedometer around with me for two years or so already for my own use. However, ad-hoc provisioned App certificates expire faster than you can watch after them, so often when I wanted to run it for my own use the provisioning profile was already expired. So I finally polished it for global distribution for all of you, and here are some free promo codes, enjoy:

LH3EKYM7JPXW
YLY7AW3PPJNE
HRAARNM7PMRX
WTNH3FF77E3N
YJLRA9JHLK7P
L49JW3NFHRX4
4JN3MWJMYE4E
7Y34J349PFLE
YMKYM9REKMR9
YKYT49RXKX9L
LM9YP4WEX6FR
NXL7MXNF7PPK
WHRJJXWTRXXK
93E63TFKPYF3
RE7H4APMLXH9
XTALKFX6PMN3

Just gave it a quick spin at a local store. quite nice so far, know and worked with QNX since the mid 1990s. But how the heck to you get out of an App, e.g. back to the home screen? Tried all kind of gestures, touched everywhere - nothing intuitiv worked :-(

Update: Aha - touch sensitive bezel: swipe on the border, …

ioreg -lw0 | grep EDID | sed s/.*=\ .// | xxd -p -r | strings -6

B… = AU Optronics
LT… = Samsung
LP… = LG / Philips
N… = ChiMei

Update: Can be used to check if a Retina MacBook Pro contains an LG display, apparently at times showing image retention / ghosting effects when the same pixel pattern is shown for some time, such as Safari website text, Apple Mail, or Xcode source code or word processing and similar high contrast patterns, …

So you got an “older” (pre 2011) MacBook Air with read-only USB recovery thumb-drive (stick)? Well, turns out it is only read-only by some firmware lock bit. Just run:

sm32Xtest.exe

On your favorite Windows (virtual-) machine to toggle the read-only bit. You now can use it for your personal data, or writing the Lion installer disk image to it to gain a Lion Recovery USB key, just as you like.

Some years ago Apple introduced a feature called “safe sleep”, which dumps the content of the system RAM into an on-disk file. If battery power falls below the threshold that can sustain the content in the system RAM while the Mac is asleep, OSX will use this fallback virtual memory state during the next power-up.

Dumping some GB (2, 4, 8, …?) to disk takes some time, though. If you do not move around your MacBook too often, you can choose to disable this feature for more instant sleep:

sudo pmset hibernatemode 0

You can also remove the perviously used file to regain some GB of storage:

sudo rm /var/vm/sleepimage

Using gdb to debug in assembly code without symbols:

layout asm

stepi
# or simply:
si

Who thought Apple’s Mac App review times would have improved since my last (iOS) report, just look at this:

March 28, 2011 08:07 Waiting For Upload
March 28, 2011 08:45 Upload Received
March 28, 2011 08:45 Waiting For Review
March 31, 2011 15:11 In Review
April 05, 2011 22:28 Rejected
April 06, 2011 10:31 In Review
April 07, 2011 08:37 Rejected
April 07, 2011 09:05 Waiting For Upload
April 10, 2011 05:58 Upload Received
April 10, 2011 06:00 Waiting For Review
April 10, 2011 06:15 In Review
April 19, 2011 11:07 Processing for App Store
April 19, 2011 11:10 Ready for Sale

Fun getting an App thru thy all-mighty review guards, heh?

diskutil resizeVolume disk0s3 40G

Life can be so nice!

However, now with Mac OS X 10.7 “Preview 2″ (11A419) my Logitech trackball’s scroll wheel is inverted, … How can a bug like that slip into a solid USB HID stack? Ieek :-(

Update: It’s not a bug, it’s a feature! Preferences -> Mouse -> “Move content in the direction of finger movement when scrolling or navigating” - inverts the mouse wheel, and a-like event’s orientation, … Ieek! Feels so strange, …