Jun 8 2011
How to Boot Toshiba Portege M200 off an SD Memory Card
A long while ago I became the proud owner of one o the best Tablet PCs on the market, the Toshiba Portege M200. Problem is that if something goes awry on the internal hard disk, then you're in trouble because the M200 is notoriously difficult to boot on external media. This was something I needed to do after trying out Windows 7 on it (which worked extremely well by the way) - but it came at a cost too high - missing features and tools and drivers that the default factory install has.
Things are made complex because while it is technically possible to boot off an external CD/DVD ROM, the number of external drive it will actually boot off are very few. Additionally, the BIOS wont boot off USB thumb drives (at all!) and USB hard disks either. There is one saving grace - you can boot off an SD memory card (as long as it *not* SDHC) from the built-in reader. The trouble with THIS is that it will only boot off an SD card if its been formatted and made bootable 'just right'. Its so finiky that Toshiba have actually created some tools to aide in the process of making them bootable.
So, if you have a standard SD memory card, you can use the Toshiba SD Memory Format Utility and the Toshiba SD Memory Boot Utility to create a bootable image of the restore CDs. Obviously if the default install is bung, then how can you use these tools?
Well the good news is, I've got a copy of them from the Toshiba website. I have hosted them here in case they disappear, here is the Toshiba SD Memory Format Utility and here is the Toshiba SD Memory Boot Utility.
What I did to reinstall the factory image on my Portege M200 Tablet PC:
- Download the 2 links above and install them.
- Run 'as administrator' (if on Vista or Windows 7) the format utility and format the SD card.
- Run 'as administrator' (if on Vista or Windows 7) the boot utility and select the BOOT.IMG file from the /bin folder on the first restore CD. Here is a copy if you don't have the disks.
- Restart the computer pressing F2 at POST and with the SD card in the reader, and use the arrows keys to select the SD/Floppy boot device. Press [Enter].
When I booted it still gave me the CD ROM selection screen, which I eventually discovered was actually compatible with the External USB DVD ROM I was using (wouldn't boot off it - but option '9' worked in DOS) - after this, it just started installing the factory image as normal.
Any problems, drop me a line and I will try to help. I know how frustrating this can be after spending most of the day trying Linux boot disks and direct copying boot sectors etc. Ahh! but finally success!
Sep 9 2010
Windows 7 Drivers for Apple’s USB Ethernet Adapter
Listen up, all you Boot Camp’in Mac users … Can’t find Windows drivers for the Apple USB Ethernet adapter? Want to use use the adapter on another Windows machine? Are you crazy? Well, it turns out it CAN be done, with a little bit of trickery.
There is a lot to be said for Apple's simplicity of design. Even their adapters and cables look as if they were pain stakingly and lovingly hand crafted by an eccentric, gay, Swedish man. Everything just looks better.
Recently, after the onboard NIC died in my Acer Aspire L3600 (which runs Windows 7 x64, and I use as a dedicated Windows Media Centre). After flashing the BIOS and jumping through several hoops with no avail, I needed to go looking for another way to get a wired >=100Mbit/s network interface into the machine. Since its ultra-compact form factor makes an internal PCI option impossible, I needed to go looking for an external (USB) option. It didn't take long to realise that my options were going to be extremely limited and after checking out my nearby computer retailers, I had only two options. A reasonably generic SWANN adapter, or Apple's USB Ethernet Adapter - both were in stock at my local Dick Smith Powerhouse. The problem with the SWANN adapter, is that its a single solid block, and since my Media Centre lives very close to the wall, it wasn't desirable, while The Apple adapter can be flexed to a right angle.
Problem is, the Apple adapter says (on the back) that it can ONLY be used with an Apple MacBook. But the adapter's drivers ARE included as part of BootCamp, which means it can function when running Windows on a MacBook. So with a little trickery, you can get it working on any old Windows 7 or Vista PC (32 or 64bit editions).
- First, you need to download the driver for the adapter, either the 32bit or 64bit version.
- Next, extract the zip file and locate the file Ax88722.inf. It needs to be altered in order to get the device drivers to be installed. In order to simplify the process, I've simply got the tweaked version here, for you to download. Just replace the original Ax88722.inf file with this one inside this zip file.
- Next, attach your USB ethernet if you have not done so. Launch device manager (right-click on "computer" and select "Manage"). Locate the lonely unknown device "Apple USB Ethernet" and right-click it to select "Update Driver Software".
- Select "Browse my computer for driver software" and in the file browser dialog select the folder of your recently modified .INI file and continue the wizard. This should bring your Apple USB ethernet to life!
Apparently there are drivers for 32bit versions of Windows XP, put together by the BootCamp community, if you're an XP user and feeling lucky you can try your luck with this link (but like the rest of this post, use it at your own risk).
Aug 21 2009
Scale is the New Black
Cross-posted from the Particls blog.
Over the past two weeks, the Faraday Media development team have been hard at work migrating all our products and initiatives into a new datacenter. The new data center was much more suited to Faraday Media technology - much easier to scale, much faster and more reliable.
As part of our efforts, we’ve finally had the opportunity to give Particls and the Engagd platform their own dedicated servers, effectively quadrupling our processing capability. This will allow us to service our partners and customers with increased reliability and confidence.
We’ve taken the opportunity with the new servers, to finally move our blogs off Blogger and onto a hostedWordPress solution, giving us far more flexibility with our blogs and presentation.
One problem, however, after we upgraded to WordPress 2.6, was that when we changed the permalink settings (to something more tollerable than ‘?p=x’) suddenly, index.php worked fine, but any other page reported as ‘not found’. After serverl long hours Googling for the answer, there was lots of “answers” for WordPress on Apache (specifically about correct access to the .htaccess file and ensuring the correct PHP/Apache modules are installed) - but none about how to solve these issues on IIS. It turns out that there are a number of known issues with 2.6 on IIS, which are now solved with the release of WordPress 2.6.1.
With most of our migration issues now sorted, we can now confidently continue to deliver our attention and data portablity solutions to the masses secure in the knowledge that our services are scalable and our bandwidth is plenty.
Dec 28 2008
MacBook Nano
I am not ussually one to go spastic everytime an "Apple Rumor" hits the blogosphere, but If this is true, OH...MY...GOD...Don't you just have to have one?
Jan 6 2008
Press Releases Suck
For work, I've been trying (rather unsuccessfully) to get the bluetooth on my DiNovo Keyboard working with devices other than a keyboard or mouse.
I found the BroadCom press release stating that they aquired the WIDCOMM company, stating that all the downloads have moved, but didn't point to where.
*sigh*
Back to Googling device drivers. 