Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Using Crossover or wine for linux or Mac OS

Crossover was a revolution for intel macs. But now a team of coders has built up CXZ and CXS for use by those who wish to experiment. This is even better. Not only do they use similar Wine distributions, but they are CX is free.
I've been experimenting a while, and I've come up with a few tips.

First, since these apps need windows compatible code to run, you're looking at serious overhead in app size. I suggest keeping the apps on an external drive when finished. I recommend using standalone packaging only when you have finished making your app. If you don't intend to share it, don't use standalone--it takes up way too much ram. Notice I mention the external drive being used for STORAGE when the app is FINISHED being made--in order to build up the wrapper with what you'll need to run it, you'll have to have the wrapper on your main internal hard-disk to keep root-path consistency. Don't worry, once the paths are created and running, you can move the app.
I recommend you check forums for any extra requirements a pc program may have. Make sure you meet those requirements in your hardware.
It is usually better to use the installers in the wrapper to install your programs or games. I recommend it. If you find them lacking, you can go ahead and use the ones in a virtual machine with the proper version of windows, then make sure the proper folders are moved to your wrapper and the PLIST files reflect those folders. The advantage of running in a wrapper as opposed to a virtual machine with windows installed is that there is less overhead in ram.
That should do for now. Happy wrapping.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault on linux and mac Version 1.1

Okay, so I put in some time on some CXZ (crossover) porting. I went to linux forums. Apparently, all you have to do is tell the programs what extensions of the graphics engine cannot be used, then the game will work around it. Here's a clue:
You have to alter the registry of windows (basically the fake windows kernel) and tell the engine that certain extensions are not useable, so when the game engine loads up, viola! It checks against the registry and runs the game accordingly. Bingo. Clap for me. And for the linux guys who actually figured out which extensions of the engine the VOODOO or OpenGL drivers don't support. I have been applying this to my own wrappers. You can download the registry file needed (Go to this site: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=20075&iTestingId=52545, and you can find all the info you need, including a link to the reg file). I will probably post the reg file and a prepared wrapper on Demonoid.com later next week.
Remember, where there is a will, there is a way. Just ask a programmer.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault on linux and mac

It is fundamentally stupid for programmers of games and software to limit the scope of their graphics to certain branded cards. That being said, I believe EA Games should be sued, Along with ASPYR media, for putting out a game and saying it is compatible with MAC when it crashes every ten seconds because of graphics issues. It cannot even be wrapped inside of WINE for the same reason. It does not use a proper subset of DirectX, but instead, relies on certain pieces of DirectX that cannot be duplicated or translated by OpenGL. The shaders and vertex graphics used by MOHAA are an extension (expansion) of the Quake engine and they don't comply with open standards. That means that you can only play this game from within windows itself, using windows-only compatible graphics architecture. Linux systems rely on VOODOO drivers to access the graphics cards, which is mainly an emulated card in itself (unless we're talking about a VOODOO branded card), with openGL translation of graphics. What's the problem? Unlike every other Quake Engine Game, MOHAA does not use the standard shader calls, instead, they tried to build their own and ended up ruining compatibility. Because they tried to build their own shaders, there is more memory leakage, and while windows is a crappy OS to begin with, it expects this kind of programming and just lets it go. Other OS'es do not allow errors of this type. They will start to complain or stop the program when the number of these errors reaches a certain boundary. When they are told to let the errors pass, eventually the memory on the graphics card overflows instead of refreshing and the graphics just get screwed up. Why is this an issue? The companies sold a game without testing it!!!!! They are still SELLING IT!!!! Even though they know it doesn't work!!! I'm not advocating a boycott, only pointing out a flaw in their business design. If somebody could build a different architecture into the WINE wrappers out there, instead of using the VOODOO standard driver, it might actually enable games like this to play on the mac using the windows version. Of course, I'm also shouting that the game companies are shitting on the little guy. At the very least, they should've made a solid note on the boxes about not using certain architectures. Hell, they could pay a few bucks to their programmers to rebuild the game with the proper shader support and do away with the problem completely.

Hard Drive Problems 1.0

This is your update for hard drive problems. Sorry it's been so long. I've been a little busy with this one.
The Hard Disk I started with failed completely. I went back through everything I did and came up with a few tips on how to deal with this kind of problem. Here's a shopping list for you, along with some reasoning.

Absolutely, the main "given" rule is that you have your own (or a friend's) bootable machine running just fine (as in this spare machine is not the one being repaired).

First, Make sure you have a spare hard drive, preferably bigger than (But at least as big as) the hard drive you're repairing. This will come in handy. If your damaged drive has SMART technology embedded in the controller board and it is the hard drive that came with the computer, you can probably se a utility in the bios to check it out. This will tell you if the drive is failing. If it is a replacement of a hard drive or you built the machine, you'll need a driver cd with those utilities if the drive has SMART technology. If your hard drive doesn't have SMART, You're stuck with moving on to the next step before you know anything about any physical drive problems, which might adversely affect any recovery you attempt (in this case I recommend a local data recovery expert).

If you feel you can move on...

Next, you'll need a way to connect both the original (damaged) drive and the new one to a working machine. I recommend using enclosures, but some get better results from items like the "iConnect" device (simple ide\eide\ata\sata to usb converter), as the information is passed directly to the hard-drive control board ( you wont get any boost in data speed or transfer rate, but it is easier to locate problems). Once you have both of the drives connected, you need to set up the new hard drive to be written to. You may use any method you like. I use the XP computer manager(http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Partition-a-Hard-Drive-with-Windows-XP) to partition the drive with 1 partition (the same type as the damaged drive and bootable; might save a step later). Once this step is complete, you may want to do a write check. Move a small file of 1-5mb to and from the new drive. This will show you that the drive can be written to. Next, wipe this file from that drive by finding it there, moving it to the recycle bin ( i prefer secure wiping, as it will keep us from recovering it by accident later; http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-secure-erase-utility.htm ) and then empty the recycle bin.

Now that you have 1 clean disk ready for writing and 1 damaged disk ready for recovery, you need to make sure you don't lose anything. My favorite is the freeware XXCLONE. It will make a fully bootable copy of the disk (if the disk is still bootable). If you'd like a try with it: http://www.xxclone.com/
Just make sure to chose the damaged drive as the source, and the new drive as the destination. At this point, we want to be able to work with the files on a clean, undamaged disk. If there is a problem within windows, we'll find it before it destroys the old drive completely (though it is not adviseable to use the old drive as a bootable disk again, some people do and it works fine for a long time). Once you have the files on a new drive, you can play with them. But we are not finished. I recommend finding a hard drive imaging utility. Some are free, but the best ones are not. If you have a recovery software in mind, check to see if it will do hard drive imaging. Find a drive as big as your damaged one (cheap on ebay or amazon if you go with OEM drives) and then do an imaging of the damaged drive onto it (saving a file with the sector by sector information as a physical and logical reference). If there is a problem with any of the physical motors or arms in the drive, the utility will let you know after a few hours of reading the drive and spinning it slow. If it can't find an issue with the physical, we will move on to the logical, and still have something to use for a recovery without having to work (and possibly further damage) the damaged drive. Nice how that works out huh? Disconnect the damaged drive.

Now we test for viruses and narrow down the scope to just the cloned drive. We want to scan all files on this disk without running them, so doing it from an external environment saves us from possible invasion of rogueware, trojans, etc. If you don't find any viruses, you may wish to do a search by hand. First search "Application Data". You should find a default folder, and another folder for each user (Might be "Application Settings"). Search each one for folders with weird names ( or names of adware programs you no longer want in there; Weird meaning a mix of letters that don't spell anything) and put those folders through a recycle or secure delete. Then defrag the disk, and wipe the free space. If your problem stemmed from something hijacking windows (rogueware) it should be fixed, but you'll need an install disk that matches your windows install to repair windows and start running again. TO do this you'll need your install key. Download a keyfinder that can load an external windows folder (One example:http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/). If you use my suggested finder, you can go to options, load hive and select the "WINDOWS" folder on the cloned drive. There are no guarantees if rogueware has been fighting you. Your registry may already be too corrupted (such was the case recently for me). If you can get the key (if you havent lost it or if you were able to recover it) you can do a repair install of windows, which will restart the registry, and allow you to open all your programs in order to reload their main function keys that allow them to work. If you don't know how to do a repair install for your machine, look it up(unless you built the machine and installed retail windows; you'll either have to reinstall, or see if installer actually recognizes the original install and allows you to repair it. This can take about an hour.

If none of this helps, and windows is not bootable or continues to crash, The problem may still be file based. If it does work, you may have had physical HDD trouble. If you want to throw away the old drive, I suggest you first try and do a secure erase of it so that any personal information is unrecoverable. Some freeware is up to the task in some cases, but more often than not, you get what you pay for. I suggest you pay a small price for the erase and make sure you keep a copy of the installer on a cd so you can use it later (and have it make up it's costs when you help others with their problems). I recommend however, that you keep the drive stored in a safe place, and continue working on the image of the drive ( or have an expert take a look at the image and tell you what's what). It may be that your computer has deeper issues that you cannot fix outright, and the problems will recur again and again. If you find this to be the case, check out my "Moving your Windows install" postings. This will also go into OEM implications.

This is a basic method. It is in no way intended to be a cookie cutter solution. Check the upcoming 1.1 of this post for the variations and problems I ran into when attempting this method.

PS
If working from virtual machines, remember that they will often defer to your own OS when writing data to drives; make sure that you're using the latest version of your OS, the Virtual Machine program and the OS inside the virtual machine. Also, make sure that the virtual machine has sole access and control of the hard-disks you're using. If you set up the VM to share the drives with your OS, you may run into read\write errors when partitioning, imaging or cloning.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Hard Drive Problems BETA Discussion

Welcome to the land of expectations. Now get the hell out.

This post brobably will NOT solve your problems completely. Use it as a jumping off point.
that said....

Lately I've seen all kinds of problems with hard drives (hard disks-same thing); especially PATA\IDE\EIDE drives. Where's the problem? Depends on the behavior. I have some terms for you to use:
Mount- this means that the drive is not only visible to your system, but it shows up with a formatted volume
format- denotes the filesystem used and how data is written to or read from the drive, also how the drive is mounted or booted
Bootable- this format feature is the sole feature responsible for determining whether or not a drive can start up a computer or system. If this isn't enabled, the hard drive cannot be used to start an operating system (OS), even if that OS has been installed on it.
unformatted- a drive that shows up on the system, but has no formatting or operating system info; brand new drives usually are formatted, and erased drives are unformatted; damaged format info can also show a drive as unformatted
readable- this means that the drive is formatted, and that you have access to any data on it, and for some security styles, that you have permission to read the data
writeable- this means a drive can be written to (any drive can be written to if undamaged)
Cylinder- a physical space on a cylindrical plate in a hard drive that stores information magnetically; see wikipedia.com for details (use hard disk cylinders as the search term)
block- can be a physical or logical chunk of space on a hard disk. see wikipedia for more info
Head- a physical arm that reads or writes data to a drive magnetically
Partition- a logical or software divided storage space; once formatted, a hard drive has a formatted, logical storage space called a partition, and a physical drive can hold more than one partition, but cannot have partitions that take up (collectively or singularly) more space than the drive can hold. Many systems have one physical drive that is split into several partitions, one possibly being invisible to all but the BIOS, in case there is any failure of the main partition (factory default setup). See the documentation on your system to find out how to access this, and for more info, go to wikipedia.com and look up factory default partition, or hidden partition followed by your OS.


I'm a mac user, so permissions are important (also to unix). Windows only needs to be logged in as the owner or administrator of the machine. Unix needs a password when performing any action that requires this type of access unless this eventuality is properly handled by a programmer.

I also dabble in XP and lower versions of Windows. Many utilities exist for these OS'es.

One utility that will enable you to solve a few data loss problems is called Testdisk (search in wikipedia). It will work across platforms, and will at least see most partition types. If you lose data or accidentally reformat or delete a file, this program is quite adept at helping you recover it. However, it is not a catch all. I recommend you use a third party service for sensitive data recovery, so you don't damage the drive or data any further. This is expensive, but can be more effective when physical wear and tear leaves a drive lacking in function. Buying utilities that track deletion and changes in files is also a great way to protect yourself.

If you have an older PATA\IDE\EIDE (PIE) drive, you are probably not taking advantage of SMART programming. SMART is:
Self Monitoring And Reporting Technology, and is built into most ATA or SATA, or eSATA hard disks, and has been included in BIOS chips for a long time. PIE drives, while widely available, cheap, and very compatible, are of an older access design. Newer PIE drives don't often fail, but when they do, the fix can be costly. If more of them came with SMART built into them, that would be an offset cost. Alas, those of us on a budget at the front end sometimes have to bend over and take it in the rear end when it comes to our computers and data.
While there are a multitude of devices for purchase that allow you to forego such extraneous costs, the devices are so expensive that they are only a good buy if you have a lot of drives to worry about. Most people have only one or two.
In the 1.0 I will make note of a device or two, and possibly some software that will allow you to be the hero once in a while. For now, I suggest you start by checking some of the above information.
Typical problems:
Hard drive clicking sound -- possible mechanical wear, backup data and replace drive is recommended
Wont mount, show as available, or boot -- the main file table or record may be damaged or the partition data may be damaged. You will need a utility to recover data and a drive with at least the same amount of space as the damaged drive (1.5x the space is usually the minimum for some utilities that also dredge up deleted files; 2x is recommended, and your OS needs to be able to handle it properly)
Won't whir, show, spin, or mount at all -- the mechanical parts of the drive have failed, use a data recovery lab to get your files, bend over and take it like a real hero. Of course you could have dust in between plates, or even in the motor, but you're better off assuming them dead unless you open the drive to find out (like the vietnam war vet says: "I've seen some things, man, and some stuff!... ...I wouldn't recommend it!" I don't recommend opening the drive).

More later.



Good Morning Dave

The title is reminiscent of Independence Day, when Jeff Goldbloom opens up his laptop on the alien craft. It is the perfect epitome of the comfortable feeling we all want from our computers and mini devices. Unfortunately, while factories and mechanical processes make these items very available, they also make some of them with flaws or defects (that or some idiot business freak tries to save a buck and ends up putting in parts that aren't up to par). We've all seen and heard of it. I can't help you much if you fall into this trap. You're stuck with the manufacturer.
However, even when the manufacturer gets it right, things can still go wrong. Welcome to the future, where the past comes back to haunt you. That's right, stuff happens. Even though we've come a long way, that fact never changes. This is where I come in... ...or rather, this blog. By searching the titles of my entries for keywords, you can view problems I've encountered, and if my luck holds out, the solutions. I regret to inform you, though that I am no geek squad. I am but one man, with a bit of knowledge, and some knowledge about how to obtain more knowledge pertaining to the problems that plague us in this techno-world of ours. That said, any solution you find here is covered under the following disclaimer:
Any solution found here on this site or any site linked, described, or referenced by this site or blog, is only applicable to the author's situation in which it worked, and is provided only as a description of the events that pertained to the author. As such, any application of any solution by a visitor or reader of these solutions or tips to their own problem or situation is the sole responsibility of the visitor or reader, along with any further problems or issues that result. Any physical, emotional, hardware or software damage done by acting on these solutions is the sole responsibility of the visitor or reader who performs the actions. The author makes no claim as to the feasibility of any of these solutions, only that they have been found, researched or tested by the author, found on other sites (the number of sites is 1-4 or more than 4)--the most relevant possibly listed--or read in manuals from manufacturers or reputable source authors (reverse-engineers). Again, this site or blog does not make any claims as to the feasibility, completeness, or accuracy of such materials, as they are provided to aid in research only and are not meant to be the ending thereof, but a starting point or lead for further exploration. Any action taken on such references is therefore the sole responsibility of the reading or visiting party who takes the action, and the authors of this blog, the site, and any site linked or referenced here take absolutely no liability for any damage that may result from that action. The information provided by this blog is freely available at the time of posting, and any costs incurred thereafter are the sole responsibility of the one attempting to procure that information from the direct source author. Any and all costs incurred by any visitor or reader are the sole responsibility of that party, and the author assumes no liability. The author reserves the right to change, alter, add to or remove any post without warning or recall, incurring no liability. Any changes, alterations, redactions, removals, or additions are the sole right of the author, with no incurred liability for any damage done by incomplete information, faulty information, obsolete information, or information that is faulted due to the nature of brand new technology (When there isn't much info available; or some of that information is flawed due to how new the technology is, and the learning curve of those who are trained in that field who provide such information). Every reader and visitor is encouraged to seek out the sources listed, and do their own research and compare the language and descriptions used, so that they may find their own sources by simply learning what search terms to use for different search engines. Any subsequent searches are the sole responsibility of the searching party, and this author assumes no responsibility or liability for any time lost or damage done.
Any damages or time lost as a result of visiting, reading or acting on the information provided by this blog, this site, or any site referenced or linked herein by the author, is the sole responsibility of the external party visiting, reading or acting on that information.

That said, I hope some of this information is helpful.
On a final note, since I wish to be able to provide the latest and best starting points and tips I can, any visitor who finds a broken link, a vague piece of info that needs clarification, or who doesn't understand any of it due to illiteracy with regard to the subject, may e-mail me at my blog address with the following subject headers:
Blogger.com
Zeroes And Ones
zeroesandones-hd2010

Any no-header mail will be trashed. These headers will be sorted by date, and at the end of each week (saturday night), hopefully I will have time to either e-mail you back or simply post on my blog and e-mail all with the update notice and a list of who was answered. Since some labels and titles will be added to or changed, check the version at the end. When I find a problem, the version will be BETA or 0.1 (similar to software convention). When I find a solution, the version goes to 1.0, and new solutions (different than the first) will have a different lead number (the 1 will go to 2--eg 2.0--and so forth), and adjustments to the solutions will change the number to the right of the decimal. They are not exactly chronological with respect to how new they actually are, only with respect to when I find, test or otherwise acquire the information. Anybody with information can e-mail me with site links, or documents or anything they have researched with the subject headings above, but add this to the end: "-info4you" but without the quotes. I can't gaurantee it will make my blog, but if it does, bully for you ( i will make appropriate referrences to you, just provide me with an anonymus handle name to use in order to maintain privacy). I will never ask for personal info. Make sure you use a secure e-mail address and always make sure your info listing is private. I'm not phishing, but some who view this site might be.

As always, there are only 10 kinds of people in the world; those who understand binary and those who don't. Besides, it might just be an ID-10-T problem. We all find those from time to time.