Tag Archives: Bootloader

[OSX86] Building a Hackintosh with ProQ’s AnyOS Motherboard

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motherboard back

Prolegomena

With all those different Apple Computers available like Mac Mini’s, Mac Book Air’s, Mac Pro’s, why the hell should we consider setting up a hackintosh these days, since a Mac Mini comes at a price tag of only 600€ here in Europe?

Well the answer to this is quite simple. Hackintoshs aim at people who are basically interested in understanding and tweeking. If you just wanna use you Mac for Mails and a bit of internet-surfing a hackintosh is most likely the wrong thing for you.

But if you are artist for instance, dealing with audio- or video-editing a hackintosh definitely comes a lot more handy than an original Mac. The reason is simple: original Macs have become a lot less flexible when it comes to manual hardware upgrading during the last eight years. Let’s take the latest Mac Pro for instance. The design is still outstanding, but this design comes at the price that Apple entirely dropped the PCIe Bus architecture. What means, that we cannot use dedicated DSP, soundcards or videocards in that device anymore and need to switch to Firewire or Thunderbolt solutions. Which is an additional economical strain. Continue reading →

[MacOS] Backup Chameleon Boot USB-Stick

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1. Abstract

You have the situation that you installed Chameleon for security and compatibility purposes on an external USB-stick. For safety reasons you should consider making a backup. But all diskimaging (either Apple’s Diskutility, Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper) tools fail to create a proper backup since the bootblock is just not copied. So you end up with having to create a second usb-stick, but this takes time. So why not copying it? In the following article we’ll show you some basic steps to create a proper backup of your precious Chameleon bootable USB-Stick.

This session is not considered for newbies. You need to understand the steps and understand that you can completely destroy your system when you apply certain steps in a wrong way. The following steps comprise a forum threat on OSX86.net.

2. Walkthru: Backing up your Chameleon USB-Stick

Continue reading →

[MacOS] Psystar Accounces OEM Licensing Program

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As of yesterday the Miami based company Psystar, which is still in legal trouble with Apple, announced to license their virtualization technology to third party manufacturers.

Computers preloaded with Psystar’s DUBL (Darwin Universal Boot Loader) would allow to make

“systems Mac OS X compatible. Psystar’s virtualization technology, specifically engineered for Snow Leopard, allows for seamless operation of the Mac OS on generic Intel Hardware and would be offered on all Psystar Certified machines.”

Find more information about this step in Psystar’s official press statement.

[iPhone] Baseband Downgrading Possible on 3G

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We’ve recently reported that exploits can be applied to the baseband bootloader 5.8 to install any bootloader. Now a working exploit has been released via Cydia.

As we have not tested this program we strongly recommend not to try this for two reasons: first it seems this package is in violation of Apple’s copyright, as it distributes a bootloader and second the script seems to have issues. In quite a few cases downgrading did not work, although everything seems to have applied properly. Don’t use untested exploits. Sideeffects and damaged basebands might be the result.

[iPhone] Geohot confirms 3G uses new Bootloader

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Although we didn’t get our hands on a new iPhone 3G yet, things are as expected: the iPhone 3G uses a new bootloader for its baseband modem as confirmed by Geohot.

Bootloader versions from the “old” iPhones

As far as we are aware the there are those 3 different bootloader versions known on old iPhones:

  • 3.8 (very rare)
  • 3.9 (iPhones before november 2007) and
  • 4.6 (iPhones after november 2007).

It is widely known, that exploits for these old bootloaders have been found, that allow to SIM unlock any of these old iPhones. No matter which software revision is running.

No Unlock for iPhone 3G, but for old iPhones

For the new iPhone 3G bootloader, there is no (public) exploit known yet. Although the iPhone Dev Team states they can unlock firmware 2.0 – the unlock is most likely meant to work on “old” iPhones only. The only exploit yet known (in both old and new iPhones) is an iBoot bug. The iPhone Dev Team provided a video showing Pwnage Tool neutering the baseband for firmware 2.0:

Video: Pwnage Tool Bootneuter on firmware 2.0 (on an old iPhone)

Bootneuter 2.0 from iphonedev on Vimeo.

A new jailbreak for iPhone 3G and old iPhones

The Pwnage Tool 2.0 (and Geohot’s yiPhone) will most likely feature an iBoot bug to jailbreak old and new iPhones. iBoot is needed by iTunes to talk to when restoring firmware. About a year ago, Geohot found out that iBoot provides a full interactive shell. The only problem was, iBoot only allowed signed code to run. The iPhone Dev Team now managed to break the chain of trust from the earliest boot stage. Thus allowing to run unsigned code and in the end jailbreaking old and new iPhones (see video):

Video: Talking to iBoot unsigned

Talking to iBoot? from iphonedev on Vimeo.

Both videos are provided by iPhone Dev Team. Kudos to you guys.

[MacOS] Boot native MacOS X with EFI-X USB Dongle

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Update 26.06.2008: Read latest news about EFI-X here…
Update 22.06.2008: Read latest news about EFI-X here…

The newest on the market is announced to be released on 23. June. It is called EFI-X and seems to be quite a revolution. Technically it is a small USB dongle that contains a bootloader. That bootloader allows booting of native MacOS X installer DVDs or yet installed MacOS X installations…

Are you yet shackling your heads? Well, we are. It is said it will support any PC hardware to run OS X. At that point we are skeptical, since even Apple themselves are not able to support any hardware… We expect this to allow seamless installation on close-to-original-mac hardware. Which means: Intel Core2Duo on MoBo’s with Intel chipset and typical ATI or NVidia graphic adapters. But anyway: the installation will become simple and easy. No more BrazilMac workarounds or illegal downloading thru torrents from darkest places on the net. More features – as far as known yet – to be found in the updates section below the video.

We are quite curious about more details but currently the project’s website doesn’t contain anything more than we just told you. Netkas provides a video that shows the bootscreen. Sadly it is of poor quality and light, but see here:

Update (14.08.08):
Rumors on forums are telling about the specifications of your PC required to allow EFiX to run MacOS X

  • Intel Core 2 Duo (not likely to support AMD)
  • Intel chipsets on MoBo’s req
  • ALC889A or ALC885 audio chipset on MoBo to work out of the box
  • USB stick needs to plugged all the time (well who cares?)

Update II (15.06.08):
Althought not finished, the website of EFI-X.com has been updated during the last few hours. It seems, the following product versions of EFi-X will be sold:

  • EFiX for desktop computers
  • EFiX for notebooks
  • EFiX PCI version
  • EFiX complete systems

That looks promising. More to come at latest on 23rd…
Update III (16.06.08)
An FAQ has been published by the EFi-X Team. It clearly states, AMD CPUs are not supported, yet – as expected…

[iPhone] Pwnage Tool Release Date delayed

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english

There has been a plenty of rumor about this new tool called “Pwnage”. But it seems like it’s right before becoming released within the next two weeks. The official iPhone Dev Team wiki pages indicate at least a delay of the release date. However a video has been released to Youtube showing how easy Pwnage works. The whole process of patching and completely unlocking via pre-modifying the bootloader seem to become more foolproof.

Features will include:

  • pwning the iPhone’s bootloader (patch code integrity/signing/hashing checks)
  • upgrade/downgrade bootloader (from 3.9 to 4.6 and the other way round)
  • building custom .ipsw’s (8900 container) files on the basis of stock Apple firmwares
  • custom .ipsw’s may contain patched lockdownd (status: factory activated) and patched baseband firmware (unlocked)
  • those .ipsw’s can be easily restored using iTunes

» See that amazing Pwnage video here…
» iPhone Dev Team Wiki here…
» How Pwnage works…

See how Pwnage works here:

deutsch

Es gab ja schon einiges an Gerüchten über das neue Tool “Pwnage” und es scheint so, als würde es tatsächlich kurz vor der Veröffentlichung stehen. Die Foren der Welt berichten, dass es innerhalb der nächsten zwei Wochen soweit sein wird. Im offiziellen iPhone Dev Team Wiki finden sich jedoch keine genaueren Zeitangaben. Dennoch wurde vor einigen Tagen ein Video auf Youtube veröffentlicht, das zeigt, wie einfach Pwnage funktionieren wird. Der ganze Prozess des Patchens und Unlockens wird dank des vor-modifzierten Bootloaders erheblich einfacher werden.

Folgende Features wird Pwnage haben:

  • Pwning des iPhone Bootloaders (Integritäts-, Signatur- und Hash-Checks werden gepatcht)
  • Upgrade/Downgrade des Bootloaders (von 3.9 auf 4.6. und umgekehrt)
  • Erstellen von angepassten .ipsw (8900er Container) Dateien auf Basis von Apples original Firmwares
  • solche angepassten .ipsw Dateien können vorgepatched Lockdownd (Factory Activated) und gepatchte Baseband Firmware (Unlock) enthalten
  • die angepassten .ipsw Dateien können mithilfe von iTunes ins iPhone restored werden

» Pwnage Video gibt es hier…
» iPhone Dev Team Wiki hier…
» Wie funktioniert Pwnage…