Updating the BIOS of a gigabyte board without the help of Windows

GIGABYTE's support is pretty good. There have been a number of BIOS upgrades since I bought the board for my first hackintosh. However, the BIOS files all come as self-extracing Windows .exe files. I don't have a Windows machine anywhere in my house. Honest.

I found two programs to uncompress those files on a Mac though. Zipeg has has a simple gui and works a treat.

If you prefer to use the command line, then there is http://p7zip.sourceforge.net. If you have the MacPorts installed, then it's simply

sudo port install p7zip

This will install the 7z program in /opt/local/bin.

How to upgrade the BIOS

1. Download the BIOS from gigabyte.com
2. Download either zipeg or p7zip
3. Unpack the .exe file and put the BIOS file on a MS-DOS formatted USB stick
4. Restart your computer and hit the "end key". In case you have an Apple keyboard, then you may not have a key labelled "end". It's the one to the right of the "delete".
5. This will start the Q-Flash utility. Select the file you want and let it do its job

Success. The "F6" version is installed.

 

 

 

Garageband 1.2 GB download

I bought iLife '11 last weekend. As soon as I installed it from DVD, Garageband wants to download another 1.2 GB of instruments and loops. Rats! Not many people seem to mind - it only takes a couple of minutes or so, right? With my DSL connection it's going to take hours .... and I cannot even download it from the Apple website for any future installations.

 

 

Useful Mac Software

The web is full of useless top ten lists of must have Mac applications. But it's fun to make one. So here is mine - in no particular order.

• MarsEdit 3 - this is what I use to write this blog
• SuperDuper! - essential for copying stuff around
• iTerm - terminal replacement
• MacPorts - the FreeBSD ports system ported to the Mac
• Dropbox - this is simply awesome
• VirtualBox - for when you need something other than OS X

There is nothing really new on my list. I would like to here about cool hidden gems that the masses have not yet discovered.

You will find hackintosh specific links on the right hand side of this blog.