Disaster Moments
Jan 11 2008
I’ve been struggling to get Linux installed on my macbook pro running 10.4. OpenSUSE installed fine, but rEFIt wouldn’t boot it from either USB or Firewire drive. So I shrunk my HFS+ partition using diskutil patched by the expired beta of Apple Bootcamp. Installed opensuse, with the rescueCD workaround to get MBR updated and booted. Thinking I am done I ejected the DVD, but then I realized I’ll probably need something installed without grabbing it off the net, I put it back in. Well I though I have, but instead I put in the damn PowerPC DVDRW I failed with on the iMac. It is cursed. Like seriously cursed.
The mac wouldn’t boot. If I let it boot, it showed the rEFIt logo and spin the drive and that’s it. Woudln’t even dim the screen if I closed it. Took about 10seconds holding the power button to actually shut down. I couldn’t eject it holding eject button. It was just a grey screen waiting for the drive before I could do anything useful. Time to disassemble, I thought. Luckily I still had my miniscule Phillips and Torx screwdrivers from my PSP experiments.
So I opened the machine up and disconnected the drive. Booted to OSX. Removed rEFIt. Power down. Attached connector. Booted to OSX. System info shows that no drive connected. Powered off. Made sure the connector is really attached properly. Rebooted. No drive. Wha? Rebooted using the option key to ‘Windows’ (insert MS&Novell; deal jokes here). No CD drive under Linux either. Wow. That DVD is really damn cursed. It makes whole drives disappear. Turned off and continued disassembly. Finally got the DVD out and put the machine back together.
How does that make me feel about slot loading drives, Apple? Gah. Now I need to find a way to ritually destroy the damned DVDRW. Suggestions welcome.