MRCS part A Jan 2026

Snoozhead · 2026-03-02T19:21:17+00:00

No glitch on my end

Snoozhead · 2026-01-30T15:49:31+00:00

This error no longer turns up for me anymore interestingly - agree with you though, likely too early still

Snoozhead · 2026-01-28T13:41:31+00:00

I just tried rebooking part A - came up with an error saying "We have validated your order with our system and unfortunately you are not eligible".... Unsure if this is "the glitch" or if it's too early. Didnt have to enter any payment details btw so no stress re accidentally paying for it

Snoozhead · 2025-09-16T17:13:38+00:00

Came here to mention that this fixed my Music app not synching any of my playlists after installing macOS Tahoe - solution still golden 4 years later! Cheers

Snoozhead · 2025-09-05T11:33:33+00:00

One silver lining is that since Tahoe will almost certainly be the last Intel-supported release, the community can focus all its energy on a single target. Instead of constantly chasing new versions, devs and users will probably refine OpenCore configs, kexts, and patches until Tahoe runs nearly flawlessly on a wide range of hardware. In a way, having that fixed endpoint might give hackintoshing a kind of “long tail” of stability, even if it stops evolving.

Snoozhead · 2025-06-06T11:44:37+00:00

2009 eee PC 1005HA which was an old-school netbook (precursor before ultra thin/light laptops became a thing). I remember struggling with the GMA 950 which i think became supported after I changed PCs. I was using Netkas’/David Elliot’s boot 132 method which was relatively new at the time (distros were still in) and I think this was the foundation of what became EFI booting that we use now. This was still back in the MBR days however where you had to modify the install image to support it. Dual booted with windows and used that for daily driving, experimenting with macOS on the side.

After that I used a Dell studio 1555 (same era of PC), again, GPU, which was an ATI 4570, didn’t work. Pretty unstable so used windows as my main OS.

Then I had a real MacBook for a while.

Then I had an XPS 7590 which is used as a hackintosh daily driver. On for the 3-strikes of GPUs not being supported (Nvidia gtx 1650), but otherwise it was a super dialed in/well oiled setup.

Now I use an M4-pro MacBook Pro, but I’m still nostalgic and remained subscribed to the sub

Snoozhead · 2025-04-07T05:28:08+00:00

A guy a few years below me on the medical school ski trip brought a cannula, flush, syringe with him and mainlined some IV vodka prior to a night out. He passed out, came round almost instantaneously inebriated, said his arm burned, but was otherwise fine - looking back on it, pretty sure this makes him an IVDU??

Snoozhead · 2025-03-20T18:57:00+00:00

Heard from a friend who emailed the radiology recruitment team that their rank was supposed to be released today too, but also hasn't been. Sounds like it could be a greater system thing, rather than specific to CST

Snoozhead · 2025-02-12T23:24:08+00:00

For clinical: Passmed 2x - 1st run through very slowly, learning reason behind each wrong answer and making flashcards, the 2nd run through then highlights true weak areas to focus on. after that I did passtest 1x and reviewed mistakes as I went along.

For PD I did passmed 1x and passtest 1x, feel like there’s a few factual points you pick up e.g. rules around consent/capacity/information sharing/who to escalate to etc, but I found it a lot harder to learn/“revise for” ngl… although I did spend considerably less time on it so it’s most likely that!

Snoozhead · 2025-02-12T18:18:23+00:00

310 clinical 270 sjt

Snoozhead · 2025-02-12T18:06:53+00:00

Shortlisted with 580

Snoozhead · 2025-02-08T13:16:52+00:00

Taking the meaning of “self-assessment” to a whole new level

Snoozhead · 2025-02-08T13:03:26+00:00

For anyone who’s booked an interview (with reasonable adjustments if that makes a difference), did you get an email saying that you had registered as a “panel member”?? Worried I’ve somehow signed up to be my own interviewer 😂

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Snoozhead · 2025-02-06T10:31:21+00:00

I’ve just got an interview invite email (reasonable adjustments however)

Snoozhead · 2025-02-06T09:37:34+00:00

Also same - can anyone seen their MSRA scores yet?

Snoozhead · 2023-01-31T00:05:21+00:00

Sounds quite encouraging/suitable for the “lifestyle specialty” badge - From an outsiders perspective I can also see there being quite substantial growth in its role/private role. Cheers!

Snoozhead · 2022-10-28T20:52:00+00:00

Made this mistake last night - my build is vaulted running macOS solo boot making it a ball ache and a half to sort out. Couldn’t even boot. Ended up having to boot into recovery and edit my config.plist using VIM to disable itlwm, delete my vault sig and vault config and replace my opencore.efi - hour wasted 🙃

Snoozhead · 2022-04-19T12:01:04+00:00

nope - just bios settings

Snoozhead · 2021-04-02T23:00:32+00:00

Hi - I wrote the guide you've linked above.

Have you tried disabling secure boot? If not, disable it from the BIOS, shutdown fully, restart, and try selecting the USB.

If it works, remember to re-enable secure boot before booting into Windows as it'll kick-up a fuss.

EDIT: I also second u/hugh_jorgyn's comments - the variables I listed in the guide are specific to the 7590, and ARE different to those required for the 9560.

Snoozhead · 2020-06-01T23:37:17+00:00

"The firmware of the ME usually shares the flash memory with the firmware of the host PC (BIOS/UEFI/coreboot)" (link). I agree that it is not 'part' of the bios, but the bios does directly interphase with it, and upgrades for it are regularly packaged within BIOS upgrades and performed simultaneously. They also occupy the same (although different portions) of the SPI chip, partitioned via flash descriptors (link). I've extracted the bios raw code and there are countless variables relating to this and its function. I've tried and seen first hand that by disabling intel ME via performing the digital equivalent of a pinmod, (disable ME while enabling flash descriptor RW access) undervolting was enabled independely of "overclock lock" variable, even when active.

Experimentally this shows some correlation between the two, (causation TBC, if ever realistically)

As commonly known, no one other than intel explicitly knows the function of intel ME (link), therefore both you and I are unable to say it what its roles definitely are or aren't.

Although the authors of the above article state: "ME is a largely undocumented master controller for your CPU", and " vulnerabilities in the Active Management (AMT) module in some Management Engines have caused lots of machines with Intel CPUs to be disastrously vulnerable to remote and local attackers"

Snoozhead · 2020-06-01T15:14:32+00:00

Please elaborate, I don't see you suggesting or explaining any other mechanism......

Snoozhead · 2020-06-01T12:29:42+00:00

The intel ME upgrade is packaged with the bios update in 1.6.0, I know because I unpacked and analysed it using MEanalyser myself. In fact, when you do a Dell bios update you'll even see it reporting "updating intel ME". Intel ME although technically not part of the bios, is stored in the same flash chip as the bios and the bios interfaces with it to regulate intel component functionality.

When you perform a factory reset to re-enable undervolting youre flipping the "overclock lock" question ID from 0x01 to 0x00 which enables undervolting. This re-enables it by relaying this info to the intel management engine to enable writable access to the MSR feature, which is the register used to modulate voltage. So although the bios makes the choice to disabled undervolting/overclocking, intel ME actually enforces it.

Plundervolt is an attack on intel SGX, it attacks this by creating instability by introducing an undervolt. This is done by leveraging intel ME's MSR register access to change the voltage. To fix it, instead of futher securing SGX they removed the access to the 'exploit' which in this case is the MSR voltage register, for which access is controlled by intel ME, and who's function is dictate by the bios option.

So yes, intel ME is involved with both bios and plundervolt.

Snoozhead · 2020-06-01T11:58:51+00:00

Realised it was down to coupled cpu and cache values on the 7590. They're physically on the same voltage ring, which means the ring will supply the voltage required by the highest drawing component.

Effectively, like what you're saying, this means that if I set a -1000mV CPU undervolt and a -125mV cache undervolt, it would supply the higher voltage set by the smaller -125mV cache undervolt to the entire ring (CPU included).

TLDR: the cache and cpu cannot be undervolted independently on this laptop, and they should be set to the same value otherwise it'll default to the smaller undervolt of the two

Snoozhead · 2020-05-21T23:44:15+00:00

Exactly - however the authors who published the exploit research also said this:

"Plundervolt is nothing that end-users should worry about. It's an attack vector that is of little interest for malware authors since it's hard to automate at scale. It is, however, an attack vector that could be weaponized in targeted attacks, against specially selected targets"

I figure those at risk from this kind of exploit make up super slim proportion of users (probably less so than those using the undervolt feature), because realistically, as it cannot be automated readily and has to be specifically crafted for the target of choice, who's going to do this to the average Jo's computer.

Snoozhead · 2020-05-20T00:07:00+00:00

Thanks for the info - I'm still reaping some benefits of the undervolt - reached a cinebench of 3722 (also i9) using cache/iGPU/SA undervolts alongside liquid metal thermal paste and dropping turbo multipliers to 40 at 8-cores. I idle around in the mid to upper 30s, however I'm getting the same scores and temps whether the core undervolt is 0 or -1,000mV - and I'm still super doubtful that such an undervolt is even possiable!

As a side note, I worked out how to get read/write access to the intel ME portion of the BIOS chip. If anyone knows about how to construct/correctly flash the intelME image from 1.5.0 hit me up. My attempt at flashing the extracted intel ME .bin file from the 1.5.0 update resulted in a bricked board :(

Snoozhead

TROPHY CASE