I’ve just finished developing the new site for THQ and 4A Game‘s Metro 2033™. It’s mainly a promotional tool for the games up and coming March release date. In other-words, don’t expect a demo anytime soon.

The game looks really decent so it’ll be worth your while checking out the trailer. The game makes use of the PhysX SDK and is out on PC and 360.

Details

Name: Metro 2033™
URL: www.metro2033game.com
Back-end: PHP using the CakePHP framework
Front-end: XHTML, CSS, Javascript using Prototype

Screens

Specification

This guide was tested with the retail Snow Leopard retail disk and the following specification:

Model: Dell Dimension 9200 / Dell XPS410
Chipset: Intel P965 Chipset (ICH8R)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo
Graphics: ASUS nVidia EN8400GS 512 PCIe
Ethernet: Intel 82566DC
Wireless: Belkin (Broadcom)
Audio: SigmaTel 9227

Here is the LSPCI readout if you want lower level information.

If you have a setup completely different to this then turn back now. You’re better off looking for a guide that matches your spec.

Prerequisites

You will need the following:

1. A working OS X installation. I used my iPC 10.5.6 installation. You could potentially use a friends.
2. Snow Leopard DVD
3. An 8+GB USB Flash Drive & spare hard disk
4. Chameleon 2 RC3 Boot loader Package
5. EFI studio
6. Kext Helper
7. A decent text editor, like TextMate
8. Some patience. This guide probably looks quite long, but in reality it takes no longer than an hour
9. The attribute of following instructions carefully.

You will also need the following, which I can provide:

1. A DSDT
2. A few driver kexts
3. A boot list file, also known as com.apple.boot.plist

Click here to get all of these.

BIOS settings:

1. ACHI mode (RAID off)
2. SpeedStep off
3. USB as priority boot

Preparation

Restore DVD to USB

1. Boot into your existing OS X installation, insert the Snow Leopard DVD & USB drive, and open Disk Utility.

2. Use Disk Utility to Restore the Snow Leopard DVD to the USB drive by:

3. Selecting the Flash Drive

4. Select the Erase tab on the right and then set Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Name the partition you’ll be creating Snow Leopard Install DVD so you can keep track of your installation device. After you’ve done this, click the Erase button.

5. After Disk Utility finishes erasing your old data on the flash drive and setting it as a new partition, it will be ready for the Snow Leopard install files. Select the Restore tab at the top and then drag the Snow Leopard DVD to the Source field. Select your USB device, now called Snow Leopard Install DVD for the Destination file. Click Restore and wait for the restoration to finish (about 20 minutes).

Boot loader & Kexts

1. Install Chameleon 2 RC3 Boot loader using the package installer to the USB drive where you restored the Snow Leopard DVD to. Not your working OS X installation.

2. Copy the ‘com.apple.Boot.plist’ & ‘dsdt.aml’ to the Extra folder in the root of the USB drive.

3. Create a new folder called Extensions within the Extra folder. Copy all the kext files to the Extensions folder.

4. Open Terminal and run diskutil list This will list out all mounted drives. Look for the one that corresponds to your USB drive and note the drive number and installation partition. In this example below, the disk number is 2 and the partition is 2, also written as disk2s2

Now run diskutil info disk2s2 You’ll need to substitute in your own disk and partition number after the info.

5. Copy the Volume UUID identifier from the information listed to you clipboard or somewhere safe.

6. Now lets go back to the Extra folder on the USB drive. Using that decent text editor I mentioned earlier, you’ll need to open up com.apple.Boot.plist.

7. We are now going to tell the boot loader which disk to boot based on the disk identifier we just retrieved. After the last </string> and before </dict> enter

<key>boot-uuid</key>
<string>000000000000</string>

8. Replace 000000000000 with your own disk identifier that should still be in your clipboard. Save the file and exit.

9. Navigate the Extensions folder within the Extra folder. Open up UUID-platform.kext in your text editor. Go to the contents folder and edit the info.plist.

10. Look for <key>PlatformUUID</key> and paste in your disk identifier in the <string>In Here</string> below it. Save the file and exit.

Graphics

1. Start EFI studio and locate your graphics card from the drop down. For EN8400GS I had to use the 7600GS EFI string. If you have trouble locating an EFI string, just have a Google around.

2. Click Add device. Then click Hex String to Clipboard.

2. Now back to the Extra folder on the USB drive and open up com.apple.Boot.plist again.

3. After the last </sting> which should be where you entered your disk identifier, start a new line and input:

<key>device-properties</key>
<string>000000000000</string>

4. Replace 000000000000 with your own EFI string that should still be in your clipboard. Save the file and exit.

Permissions

1. Open the Terminal and run sudo –s at which point you must enter your password. Sudo allow us to run programs with the privileges of root.

2. If you’ve followed the instructions exactly to this point, then you should be able to copy and paste the following commands. You may have decided to follow the guide slightly different up to this point. If you have, then you’ll understand what you need to change here.

cd /Volumes/Snow\ Leopard\ Install\ DVD/Extra
chown –R root:wheel *
chmod –R 777 *

If any of these throws an error then either I’m terrible at writing instructions, or you’re terrible at following instructions. No time to argue anyway, on we go.

Installation

1. Reboot your machine and if you’ve set your USB to priority boot the Chameleon boot loader should appear.

2. Select ‘Snow Leopard Install DVD’, which funnily enough is your USB drive and hit enter.

3. Fingers crossed within a few moments the Snow Leopard installer will appear.

4. If you get the ‘no smoking’ sign after a while then something’s gone wrong. Reboot, and at Step 2 this time, type -v before hitting enter to boot in verbose mode. This will then output an error message. From here, you’ll have to use your friend Google to help you.

5. Choose your required language.

6. Before continuing with the installation program we’re going to prepare that spare hard drive I mentioned you needed in the prerequisites. Open the Disk Utility under the Utilities menu.

7. Select the spare hard disk.

8. Select the Erase tab on the right and then set Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Name the partition you’ll be creating Snow Leopard. Now click the Erase button.

9. Now exit the Disk Utility and continue with the installation

10. Choose your newly formatted disk Snow Leopard as the destination and install. The installation should take around 15minutes or so.

11. It should be noted that sometimes the installer would display an error after completion. You can ignore this. I’m sure someone out there has an answer why this happens, just Google it if you’re that bothered.

12. Reboot!

First Boot

1. Leave your USB as the priority boot device as we’ll be using the chameleon boot loader installed on there to boot our Snow Leopard installation.

2. When the boot loader appears, you should see the Snow Leopard installation. Select it but don’t press enter yet.

3. Currently the boot loader is always going to look for the USB drive as the root device, remember we set this earlier when editing the apple.com.Boot.plist.

We now need to tell it which device we would like to boot this time. Now I can’t tell you exactly for your system what this is going to be. For me this was disk0s2. With Snow Leopard selected, enter rd=disk0s2 and hit enter. If this fails, it is worth trying the following: disk1s2, disk2s2, disk3s2 etc

4. If you’ve reached this point then you must be totally buzzing. You’re almost there, nice one.

Post Install

A lot of this is going to be the same procedure as in the Preparation section but we’re putting the Snow Leopard disk in place of the Snow Leopard Install DVD. I’ll write it out again for consistency.

Bootloader & Kexts (again)

1. Install the Chameleon boot loader to the Snow Leopard disk using the package installer.

2. Copy the ‘com.apple.Boot.plist’ & ‘dsdt.aml’ to the Extra folder in the root of Snow Leopard.

3. Create a new folder called Extensions within the Extra folder. Copy all the kext files to the Extensions folder.

4. Open terminal and run diskutil list This will list out all mounted drives. Look for the one that corresponds to your Snow Leopard drive and note the drive number and installation partition. In this example below, the disk number is 0 and the partition is 2, also written as disk0s2

Now run diskutil info disk0s2 You’ll need to substitute in your own disk and partition number after the info.

5. Copy the UUID identifier from the information listed to you clipboard or somewhere safe.

6. Now lets go back to the Extra folder on the Snow Leopard drive. Using that decent text editor I mentioned earlier, you’ll need to open up com.apple.Boot.plist.

7. We are now going to tell the boot loader which disk to boot based on the disk identifier we just retrieved. After the last </string> and before </dict> enter

<key>boot-uuid</key>
<string>000000000000</string>

8. Replace 000000000000 with your own disk identifier that should still be in your clipboard. Save the file and exit.

9. Navigate the Extensions folder within the Extra folder. Open up UUID-platform.kext in your text editor. Go to the contents folder and edit the info.plist.

10. Look for <key>PlatformUUID</key> and paste in your disk identifier in the <string>In Here</string> below it. Save the file and exit.

Graphics (again)

1. Start EFI studio, locate your graphics card, copy hex to clipboard. For EN8400GS I had to use the 7600GS EFI string. If you have trouble locating an EFI string, just have a google around.

2. Now back to the Extra folder on the Snow Leopard drive and open up com.apple.boot.plist again.

3. After the last </sting> which should be where you entered your disk identifier, start a new line and input:

<key>device-properties</key>
<string>000000000000</string>

4. Replace 000000000000 with your own EFI string that should still be in your clipboard. Save the file and exit.

Sound

1. 1. Open the Kext Helper.
2. 2. Navigate to the Extensions folder under Extra on your Snow Leopard disk.
3. 3. Drag the VoodooHDA kext into Kext Helper.
4. 4. Click install. You’ll be prompted to enter your password.

Reboot!

1. Now reboot and set your Snow Leopard disk to boot priority.

2. Chameleon should appear; select Snow Leopard and hit enter.

3. If everything’s gone to plan, and I’ll be honest, first time it probably won’t have, you should have a fully functioning Mac OS X Snow Leopard Hackintosh system.

Update

Just hit the Apple Software Update. It will download the latest package, which at the time of writing was 10.6.2. The updates will automatically be installed and then OS X will reboot. Job done.

EDIT 15/11/2009: Jimbeer has created a database of passwords, you can find it here: http://www.jimbeeer.com/?page_id=432

Since getting back from holiday a few weeks ago I’ve come across an annoying trend popping up on Usenet, and in particular from my search engine of choice, Newzleech. This is the practice of password protecting .rar archives that require you to visit some lead generation site & fill out a survey etc. to unlock your ‘premium content’. The lead generation site in question is CPALead and I’m not even going to entertain the thought of linking to them here.

The idea

I haven’t bothered to research the site in that much depth but as far as I’m aware the user…

• Signs up to the site and is presented with a referral ID of some sort
• creates some premium content, in this case a password to unlock a .rar archive
• now builds a load of .rar archives with accompanying referral id encoded url to lead site
• uploads this all to Usenet
• awaits a steady stream of income from cpalead when visitors have filled out the surveys etc etc to get access to the premium content.

Huh?

Here’s a screenshot incase all that was a bit confusing.

Where i’m at

Firstly, you can probably tell this has irritated me more than just a little.

Secondly, and more annoyingly, I’ve already wasted over an hour trying to bypass the damn thing. The lead page contains a whole host of scripts that I’ve tried running to unlock the content, but with with no success.

Thirdly, I know there are various pieces of software out there, that can unlock password protected archives but I can’t seem to find any for os x.

Any advice/help/nudges would be gratefully received

Edit: Figured it out!

The Fix

The ‘Click Here For Password .url’ file was actually directing me straight to the cpalead site. I don’t think it was actually meant to do this. In fact, it should have been directing me to the site of whoever uploaded the .rar in question. Here, the same bunch of scripts were running but hidden in the source was the password I was looking for.

When I opened up the web shortcut? file I found the following: (real addresses removed)

[DEFAULT]
BASEURL=http://hiddenforthispurpose.com/
[DOC_mygateway_iframe]
BASEURL=http://www.thecpealeadsite.com/
[InternetShortcut]
URL=http://hiddenforthispurpose.com/
Modified=00B9783DDB48CA015C

I was being taken straight to http://www.thecpealeadsite.com/blahblahblah instead of http://hiddenforthispurpose.com/2009/10/01/. Perhaps this actually has more to do with Safari’s handling of these shortcut files. Anyway, crisis averted

Having used this domain for various things over the years, I was finally nudged towards setting up a wordpress this morning. And here it is…

What is dee double-you emm?
That would be in the initials of my full name (trying saying it out aloud)

Who is dee double-you emm?
My name is David Morris. My friends know me as Moz. I’m a Web Developer. I studied at Bournemouth University and am currently employed by Lawton Communication based in Southampton.

What is earthview?
The last time I checked google, earthview was a ‘dynamic desktop wallpaper and screen saver’ made by DeskSoft. I can assure you that this site has absolutely nothing to do with that.

So why earthview.co.uk?
Many a moon ago, I played drums in a band named Earth and the website was located here. You can probably find it onhttp://www.archive.org/

Ever considered selling it?
If someone offered me £10k I reckon I might be tempted