Curse of the Apple Thunderbolt Display

Hey all. This is a bit of an update to my previous post, detailing my attempts to get an Apple Thunderbolt Display working with my GIGABYTE Z390 DESIGNARE motherboard. (By the way, it's pronounced with a hard "g" and "a" - not like "designer.") I ordered some replacement PCIe 6-pin to 8-pin adapters, so now I'm able to use the GPU with the required DisplayPort port.

After having flashed the modified Thunderbolt firmware, I expected the Thunderbolt Display to power on and work just fine, at least after reaching the Linux desktop environment (my hopes weren't too high for the preboot environment, i.e. the BIOS menu). Unfortunately, there was still no video output to the display.

However! Using `boltctl`, I was able to see that the Thunderbolt Display was, indeed, detected by Linux! This is an improvement over before, where `boltctl monitor` was able to detect something being (un)plugged, but nothing more. I am now able to connect USB drives to the back of the display, and have them recognized natively in Linux. How wonderful... though obviously not ideal.

I did some more searching, and just a few days ago, the thread containing the custom Thunderbolt firmware was updated with details on an experiment to get Thunderbolt displays to work "during BIOS and OpenCore." In layman's terms, this means the folks over at tonymacx86.com are working on getting the Apple Thunderbolt Display working in the preboot environment of the Z390 DESIGNARE! (and its cousins)

Perhaps this was the key to getting my Thunderbolt Display working with my own Linux setup?

I made a reply to the post, showing my interest in this development, and telling them I was a Linux user who owns the same motherboard and wishes to get their own Apple Thunderbolt Display working with it. I asked if there was anything I could do to help.

In response, they removed my post, stating it was "offtopic" and to "best find a linux thread."

What a bunch of... knuckleheads.

Regardless, this is an exciting development! Hopefully something good comes out of it. Otherwise I might have to sell my Apple Thunderbolt Display and buy a better, more compatible, and probably cheaper display. Oh woe.

Z390 DESIGNARE Thunderbolt ROM Flashing

Hey all. I bought an Apple Thunderbolt Display to go with my non-Apple desktop computer because I am stupid.

It didn't work, obviously. Who would have guessed the Apple display wouldn't work with non-Apple hardware! (I say, having created multiple hackintoshes.)

So I did some reading. Turns out this has been an issue for years. After quite a bit of searching, I read that one person had success after flashing a custom Thunderbolt firmware.

After some "trial and error," including breaking a SOIC8 clip, I finally managed to get this "custom firmware" flashed to my Z390 DESIGNARE.

(EDIT: Oh yeah, I should mention. `flashrom` wasn't able to detect the ROM with just the SOIC8 clip attached, nor with Ethernet attached as well. I had to plug the ATX power cable in, and turn the PSU on (though not the PC). I also kept the Ethernet cables plugged in. Then I was able to read the chip and successfully flash the custom firmware.)

But, you see, the Z390 requires a DisplayPort input from a dedicated GPU to use a display over Thunderbolt - or an iGPU, which I do not have.

The GPU I was using with the DisplayPort port required for that recently became no longer viable, as the PCIe 6-pin to 8-pin adapter I was using burned itself up.

Go figure.

Install Mac OS X from a USB drive on a PowerPC-based Mac

When nothing else worked when trying to install Mac OS X Leopard onto my PowerBook G4 1.67GHz without the original installation DVD, here's what eventually did.

What you'll need

• PowerPC-based Mac you want to install OS X on by using a USB drive
• ...USB drive (16GB or more in capacity; 8GB might work, but come on, it's 2020)
• Second old Mac that already boots Mac OS X Leopard (other versions may work, but are untested. All I know is that my macOS Catalina hackintosh did NOT work)

Part 1: Preparing the disk image for restore

1. Boot up your second old Mac running Mac OS X Leopard
   
2. Download #31 (Leopard_10_5_4.dmg_.zip) from here and extract the DMG
3. Scan the DMG for restore using Disk Utility ("Images" -> "Scan Image For Restore...")
4. Lock the DMG (right-click -> "Get Info" -> check "Locked")

Part 2: Restoring the disk image to the USB

1. Format your USB as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" using the "Apple Partition Map" using Disk Utility
   
2. Restore the DMG to your USB using Disk Utility, making sure you check "Erase destination" (open the Restore tab, drag and drop the DMG to the "Source" field, drop and drop the partition you formatted in Part2Step1 to the "Destination" field)
3. Eject your USB drive and plug it into the PowerPC-based Mac you want to install OS X on
   

Part 3: Installing Mac OS X (okay kids, this is where it gets complicated - mostly copy/pasted from here; follow that if this doesn't work for some reason)

1.  Boot your PowerPC-based Mac into OpenFirmware (power it down and hold Command + Option + O + F while powering it back up)
2. Run dev / ls and look for the entry with "/disk@1" at the end of it (in my case "usb@1b,1")
3. Run devalias and look for the entry with the text you found in Part3Step2 at the end of it (in my case "usb0")
4. Run dir text_from_Part3Step3/disk@1:3,\System\Library\CoreServices (a.k.a. dir usb0/disk@1:3...) and make sure the entry that contains "BootX" also contains "tbxi" (if it doesn't, panic!)
   
5. Run boot text_from_Part3Step3/disk@1:3,\System\Library\CoreServices\BootX (a.k.a. boot usb0/disk@1:3...)
   
6. You should see a little spinner, then some white-on-grey text, and finally the Apple logo. Congratulations, you've successfully booted your accursed PowerPC Mac from a USB drive! The installation process is the same from here on out as if you were booting from an official Mac OS X Install DVD.
   

Mac OS X Install DVD 10.6 [10A432] - Two Different ISOs?

I'm compiling a collection of all Mac OS X installers ever released. I recently hit a roadblock when I found that my Snow Leopard build 10A432 ISO matched some checksums online, but not others.
So, I downloaded a second ISO, which matched the checksums the original ISO did not. This was a bit concerning, so I recursively compared the files of each DVD with Meld. One, single file was different.

/Instructions.localized/Installation Instructions.app/Contents/Resources/French.lproj/Instructions d’installation.pdf

This is the French translation of the Mac OS X installation manual. It turns out, one DVD still had the 10.5 Leopard variation, while the other had the 10.6 Snow Leopard variation. I guess somebody at Apple was fired on Snow Leopard's launch day.

Checksums of ISO with 10.5 Leopard "Instructions d'installation.pdf":
MD5: 8bce5139afaaa5a8fcda213edf5202b1
SHA-1: 41eca20763eb74c3e23f0bebc36095520e187dc1

Checksums of ISO with 10.6 Snow Leopard "Instructions d'installation.pdf":
MD5: e26826cc68281aa581cc181483bd232d
SHA-1: 0b6435228ddd9f39955c6b3f196d65dec17c2dfd

Legend of the PowerMac G5

A few days ago I bought a PowerMac G5 for $13 because hey, why not. The seller listed it as not working, and they had removed the hard drive for privacy reasons. From experience, I could extrapolate that it probably worked just fine. This would mostly be the case (making this a pretty boring blog post).

I set up the computer on my desk, plugged into a display and whatnot. It booted up with no issue to the flashing question mark folder; it couldn't find a filesystem because the HDD was empty. However, it did not make the "BONG" noise when booting up — I would later discover that this meant some of the RAM was bad.

So I burned the Mac OS X 10.5.6 installer to a USB drive and– uh oh, guess what's not detected by the OPTION menu. After a fiasco with trying and failing to get the Mac to boot from the USB, I thought, "Fuck it." I ran out to Office Depot, bought some DVD+R DLs, and burned the 10.5.6 installer to one of those. I put it in the machine and, once again, failed to get it to work.

It was at this point I reached out to Reddit™. "Try booting it off another Mac via FireWire," one helpful soul suggested. The only other Mac I had with a PowerPC 970 processor was an iMac G5 — with no OS installed, might I add. While digging that out of storage, I found a "Not for Resale" 10.5.6 retail installation DVD, which I then used to reinstall Leopard on the iMac.

Once that was done (it took about an hour), I decided to put the retail DVD in the PowerMac, because I figured it was worth a try. Lo and behold, it booted off the DVD and I had Mac OS X installed in no time. Absolutely maddening. But at least Mac OS X was working now.

Afterwards, I dug some old RAM out of storage (2GB total) and pulled out the broken RAM (4GB total), leaving my Mac with 4GB of RAM. Hey, that's pretty good. Don't forget to join me next week for "Twist Hopefully Sticks to the Trend of Not Saying 'fuck' That Much."

Folly of the iPhone. iFolly?

Today, I thought to myself, "Boy, what better time to restore my iPhone 5S to iOS 12 Beta 4 while simultaneously erasing the device than now. I am sure it will be a quick and seamless operation." I could not have been more wrong.

iTunes does not allow the user to erase the device as you restore it (EDIT: I think SHIFT/OPTION+"Restore" does just that), so I was forced to look for alternatives... just kidding, I won't touch iTunes with a ten-foot stick, so I already knew what program to use: idevicerestore. The aforementioned program is a command-line tool that acts like iTunes, but only for restoring/updating iOS firmware. It also allows the user to do some cool things, like downgrade devices, given proper circumstances (EDIT: No, I think only futurerestore/idevicererestore allows this). Unfortunately, idevicerestore is not readily available for Windows (my OS of choice), so I had to use my trusty macOS Sierra VM to use it. Little did I know that fuck-all would work.

Installing idevicerestore on macOS was a fairly painless process; I am no stranger to the command line. It even got pretty far in the restoring process - except, to my dismay, it didn't restore anything. It got stuck on "waiting for the device," despite the device being plugged in, recognized, and ripe for a restore. I thought to myself, "Fuck. Fucking fuck. Fucking fuck fuckity." That's when I turned to the trustier-than-macOS Linux. I didn't exactly want to install Debian on my primary desktop quite yet, so I used the 16 year old Dell desktop that sits at the other side of my room (this desktop was already running Debian). I once again installed idevicerestore, and started the restoring process -- but what's this? "Error 5"? Thanks for being so incredibly verbose, libzip.

It turns out libzip can't comprehend files larger than 2GB on i386 systems, which the IPSW file is and the Dell desktop is, respectively. "No big fucking deal," I thought to myself, cursing more than usual. "I'll just fucking recompile libzip with a fucking compiler flag that will fucking fix everything." It did not fix anything, as I was soon to find out. I append the flag, and recompile libzip. idevicerestore throws the same error. I append the flag again, this time by inserting it directly in CMakeLists.txt, and recompile libzip. Again, no dice. It was at this point that I exploded.

Afterwards, I decided to make a Blogger account for the sole purpose of writing this blog post. Wow, I feel like the average early 21st century Internet user! See you all next week, for another episode of "Twist Says Fuck."

Oh crap my iPhone is still in DFU mode.

P.S. For those interested, what finally worked was using idevicerestore on my Chromebook (running GalliumOS 3.0 beta).