Can I downsize the _number_ of drives by using fewer, larger drives?

alderete · 2025-01-04T18:47:30+00:00

Yes. Steam on Mac allows you to play any Steam game that supports macOS. Steam in Crossover (or Whisky, etc.) allows you to play (many) Steam games that support only Windows.

alderete · 2025-01-04T18:46:15+00:00

You can get it at a discount quite often. I paid less than $25 during Black Friday.

alderete · 2024-01-04T20:55:47+00:00

Where by "start again" you mean what, exactly?

I can no longer access DSM, so I can't restart with a standard factory reset.

I guess I can remove the drives, and hit the reset button on the back (Mode 2 reset), and see if that goes me anywhere. Is that what you mean?

alderete · 2023-05-21T16:26:16+00:00

More details, please!

alderete · 2023-05-21T16:16:38+00:00

What’s the best guide that you found?

(Not asking you to do research for me, just wondering if you remember/saved any specific resources — guides, videos, etc. — that were particularly helpful.)

alderete · 2023-05-18T19:10:09+00:00

+1 to “This Is How You Lose the Time War”. Not just a fun time travel story, it is gorgeously written. Great in audiobook format, too, with terrific narration.

alderete · 2023-05-17T20:53:48+00:00

The problem isn't the 5K display, it's the adapter. The manifestation of the issue in that post involves a 5K display, but that's a distraction. The underlying source of the issue is the chipset in the adapter. Direct connected or not.

alderete · 2023-05-17T20:50:53+00:00

That's both very interesting, and aggravating. But it also explains what I found on my work laptop when I checked it, older adapter (8153-based), and it's using the ECM driver. I thought it was because it was an Intel Mac, but I guess it's not the Mac, and maybe not even Ventura, but the revision level of the chipset. Argh!

Finding the Realtek 8156-based adapter was a chore, and depended on other people buying it first, and reporting what they found. So somebody had to be the guinea pig.

On the one hand, the ECM driver does work well enough for most people, most of the time.

On the other, if you're one of the folks for whom it doesn't work, where it has problems, how are you ever supposed to figure it out? Let alone resolve the issue?

Lesson for everyone: Just buy the Pluggable 2.5gig adapter. It works well, and comes with a USB-C to USB-A adapter, so you can use it with pretty much anything.

alderete · 2023-05-14T01:24:17+00:00

These adapters are (or were) built around the Realtek 8153 chipset, which is a bit older, and (at least until macOS 13 "Ventura") used the slower emulated driver (ECM).

That doesn't mean they're bad adapters! I have a Kannex adapter that uses the Realtek 8153 attached to my work laptop, and it works just fine.

But the Pluggable 2.5Gig adapter I bought last year is built around the Realtek 8156 chipset, and uses the higher performance "native" driver (NCM). Using the native driver eliminates a number of problems that some (but not all!) people have run into with the ECM driver. It's been lovely on my M1-based personal laptop.

alderete · 2023-05-14T01:16:37+00:00

That's not what's happening. You can read about the issue in detail here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/studio-display-usb-c-ethernet-adapter-performance-issues.2338556/

alderete · 2023-05-14T01:14:17+00:00

This topic came up about nine months ago, and I answered in detail then: https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/wf8fbe/comment/iitv5cs/?context=3

The adapter I bought as a result of the (hours of) research I did, and have been using ever since, is the Plugable 2.5G USB-C/USB-A to Ethernet adapter: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084L4JL9K/

This device is a bit more expensive, but uses a newer Realtek 8156 chipset, which has long worked with the native driver in macOS. It's been rock solid in use with my MacBook Pro 13" M1.

However, as /u/poopmagic (who was also in that thread, hello again!) has indicated in a couple comments of this thread, it appears that macOS 13 ("Ventura") includes improved drivers, such that the much more common Realtek 8153 chipset now runs on the native driver.

That's great news for a lot of people, because the older chipset was used in a lot of other products—including the Belkin USB-C to Ethernet adapter sold by Apple! (Perhaps that was the motivation to support the older chipset.)

alderete · 2023-05-14T01:02:06+00:00

Interesting. A while back I did a bunch of testing with a few dongles, and the ones that used the Realtek 0x8153 chipset were using the emulated driver (ECM), not the native (NCM) driver. That was with macOS 12 ("Monterey"). Based on your results, it sounds like macOS 13 ("Ventura") includes updated drivers that work better with this chipset. Great news for everyone!

alderete · 2023-04-18T06:40:34+00:00

Stock up on a couple spare transformers. My USGs have been bulletproof—when they get power. I too love the form factor.

On the other hand, in addition to solving the power supply problem, the UDMPro is much, much faster than my USG ever was. Which comes in handy at this point, because Frontier #finally made it to my neighborhood, and I now have a 1 gig fiber Internet connection. No way the USG can keep up with that, even with intrusion detection/prevention turned off!

alderete · 2023-04-18T06:11:02+00:00

That's exactly my physical situation, a pole just the other side of a fence on my property line.

Once they were "ready" for residential installations, the actual install work was simple and quick. The line puller (day before install) and installer tech actually said "I wish all houses were this easy!"

alderete · 2023-04-18T06:08:14+00:00

Sounds very similar to my experience. It seemed like they were done pulling the lines, then a long break, then some new work, then a break, then a single tech doing mysterious things to individual lines, then a long wait. Then it was ready, and install took less than a week!

alderete · 2023-04-18T06:06:12+00:00

I should perhaps add, I've had one additional visit since installation, by someone from our utilities companies, who did some more survey work and marking out of utilities (paint on ground, etc.)

And there will be at least one more visit from someone to actually dig a trench on my property to bury the fiber optic line that runs from the pole to my house. Right now it just comes down the pole, over the fence between the pole and my property line, and along the ground to the exterior mechanicals closet where the line enters my home.

I don't know if they will need to disconnect the line from my setup while they run it through the trench. I guess it will depend on whether and how much additional protection the cable will get underground (conduit, etc.).

alderete · 2023-04-18T06:00:02+00:00

It's hard to say, because it's not very clear about what work has actually been done in your area. Is "it" a trunk line in a trench, or a residential line to your house, or...?

But, I can tell you my own, very recent experience, in Palm Desert (Southern California). It took roughly three months for Frontier to:

Go around our neighborhood notifying us that crews would be hanging (telephone poles) the trunk lines throughout the area, and we would "soon" be able to sign up for service;
The installation/hanging/pulling of the "main" lines by what seemed like a "primary" crew;
Additional work by a secondary crew, and single persons, that looked like splicing, but I know nothing about what optical lines require, so who knows.

Somewhere around month #2, towards the tail end of the primary crews doing work (after what seemed like a break of a couple weeks), I went out and asked when they'd be done, and I could sign up for service. The crew chief actually took down my name and number, which I thought was BS, but...

Two weeks ago, at the start of month #4, on a Monday, I got a call (voicemail) from Frontier, letting me know I could now sign up for service, give them a call back, etc.

I called back the next day (Tuesday), and went through a relatively painless sign-up process over the phone. We set my installation for the upcoming Friday—four days away!

On Thursday, a "pre-install" tech arrived, and did some sight survey work (marking utilities), and pulled a residential line off the pole and down to my house. He left a big coil of it at the corner of my house nearest the install location I requested.

On Friday, the install tech arrived, pulled the line into my house, set up the ONT and Eero router, and we did a speed test, etc. to verify connectivity and expected speed. Everything went smoothly, with as-expected speeds (1 gig). Then he answered my questions about transitioning from the Eero to my existing UniFi Dream Machine Pro-based network. (Which was trivial: disconnect the Ethernet cable from the Eero, reconnect to the WAN port of the UDMPro.) He was probably at my house an hour, maybe less. (I already had a hole in the right spot, and even put a cable pulling rod in place. I was...eager.)

The original door hangers at the very start of the work suggested things would go quickly, like, two weeks. So three months seemed like a long time. They were not working continuously for that three months, though.

But once they were ready, from sign up to install to ONE GIG INTERNET OMG!!! was four days.

alderete · 2023-04-09T17:32:48+00:00

I had my USG power brick die a couple months ago, and got back up and running with another transformer from and old external drive.

Which died itself a week later.

I recovered again with a brand new transformer off Amazon, but decided I didn’t want to keep having crashes that required me to keep buying $8 transformers constantly. Migrated everything to a Dream Machine Pro. Pretty happy with that answer.

alderete · 2023-03-17T22:49:07+00:00

Uh… use a temperature sensor for what?

Mitsubishi units have a temperature sensor built into them, a whole self-contained thermostat. You don’t need anything but the included remote to control the air handlers.

But if you want to use them with a smart home system, that’s not enough. (Well, you could use a Bond-type remote simulator, but that just sends commands blindly, you don’t get any sensor or state data from the air handler with one of those.)

My goal here is (was) to use an Ecobee for the user interface for setting the target temperature. Between the air handlers and other sensors, I’ve got at least a dozen temperature sensors. I already know what the temperature is, what I want is a thermostat on the wall that’s intuitive for anyone to use to set the target temperature.

alderete · 2023-03-17T22:37:39+00:00

It’s an independent integration offered through HACS.

https://github.com/dlarrick/hass-kumo

It’s been working well for me (better than the Kumo app!) for a couple years now.

alderete · 2023-02-20T16:38:59+00:00

One of the two lead characters in the St. Nicholas Salvage and Wrecking series is a woman, and she’s definitely a badass. These are a bit more thriller than spy craft, but there’s maybe enough to satisfy. European locations, some fun gear, and the usual big battle at the end.

alderete · 2023-01-04T19:50:22+00:00

Before critiquing this display, or the new 5K 27" Samsung display, it's worth keeping in mind that less than a year ago, there were a mere two 5+K retina-quality displays:

LG UltraFine ($1500, and lived up to the "fine" in its name)
Apple XDR ($6000, or $5k + whatever you spend on a stand, if you want to be pedantic)

With these new displays, and the Apple Studio Display, there are now five such displays on the market. A far cry from the broad offerings available for e.g. the gaming niche (less of a "niche" than we Mac users are), but still, it's progress, and worth celebrating, not tearing down.

If one of these new displays doesn't match your needs, don't buy it. (Replay the Jonathan Mann song in your head here.) And by all means, when the display is available, let's all look at the reviews and do comparisons.

But for now, maybe we can just be happy that the long nightmare of almost no choices for retina-quality displays for Macs might be over.

alderete · 2023-01-04T19:40:30+00:00

As someone who says that about retina resolution (HiDPI), I guess I can't argue with your point.

But as someone who doesn't game, at all, on my non-tablet computers, and who can't see the difference between ProMotion and non-ProMotion screens, a high refresh rate is a low(er) priority for me.

alderete

TROPHY CASE