BlankerConfig Script-Central Theme

Script-Central disk magazine always opened with an image of the "Script-Central" virtual school building, which I recently learned was modeled on the UW Science Building by artist Bo Monroe. There were always themed animations around the building and they varied from issue to issue, providing an initial few moments of entertainment.

The Script-Central 2020 Special Edition includes a stack called BlankerConfig. BlankerConfig is a stack that allows a screen blanker to be configured that will execute while HyperCard IIGS is running and has been idling for some period of time. There are 5 possible screen blankers, the fifth of which is a Script-Central themed blanker that combines elements of several of the Script-Central issues and provides night and day views of the Script-Central building along with a fireworks display.

This video does not have sound recorded, but the screen saver stack itself includes the sounds of cars and fireworks. BlankerConfig also includes tamer screen savers that display messages, the time, and an aquarium.

Enjoy the video and download Script-Central 2020 Special Edition for tons of HyperCard IIGS fun.

Visit https://sites.google.com/view/silverwandsoftware/ to download Script-Central 2020 SE, which includes BlankerConfig.

The Dungeons of Fangborne Keep: A Developer's Tale

Fangborne main menu screen

 

Visit https://sites.google.com/view/silverwandsoftware/ to download Script-Central 2020 SE, which includes Fangborne.

Ten years ago, in 2011 I detailed my experiences as a youth with tabletop and computer based role playing games.  I had played several in the 1980's and by the 1990's, inspired by Dungeon Master (and also irritated that Dungeon Master 2 was never developed for the Apple IIGS) I had embarked on the development of my own cRPG using HyperCard IIGS. I envisioned creating a HyperCard based engine stack that would be used to run community generated dungeons, much like a 3D graphics version of EAMON. Unfortunately my reach exceeded my grasp.

Dungeon Master IIGS by FTA

Dungeon Master revitalized my interest in building my own games, but at the time of its release there was no way to modify it or build your own dungeons. So I turned to HyperCard GS and spent hours trying to create my own dungeon engine I called "HyperAdventure" and sample game I called "Fangborne". My goal was to combine the 3d dungeon exploration and point and click interface of Dungeon Master with the fairly simple real-time combat system of my own devising. My HyperAdventure system relied on predefined cards that defined every possible appearance of a hallway. This would have allowed for a nearly unlimited size dungeon within the constraints of the software and memory (a high-end IIGS typically had no more than 4 MB RAM, and it could be as little as 1.25 MB).  Also, since a dungeon was essentially defined by a set of text records it would have been easy to create a dungeon generator and save files would be very small text files. Characters were also saved in text files so that they could be migrated between games. It all worked but it consumed an enormous amount of my free time designing it and with the abandonment by Apple of the IIGS platform and HyperCard IIGS it became difficult to remain motivated to complete it. I stopped working on it in 1995. The final prototype version was only 750K in size.

Fangborne prototype in development

Flash forward to October 2020 and I was putting the final touches on Script-Central 2020 SE, my personal homage to the Script-Central HyperCard IIGS disk magazine that had been published by Resource-Central in the early '90's.  I had just enough room for one more stack and I decided to include the Fangborne prototype.

I decided that I still had time to release Script-Central 2020 SE in 2020, and so began adding some minor enhancements to Fangborne, hoping it would end up closer to an enjoyable game than just a concept piece. I worked on it through mid-February 2021 and enlisted the aid of a family member or two to test it out. In the end it became a 350 card stack of over 2 MB in size, eclipsing the 750k prototype I started with.

A demo of a beta version of Fangborne v1.0

Fangborne v1.0 is a completely functional single-player multi-level cRPG that includes editors for creating items, populating stores, and generating template-based dungeon levels of up to 20x20 size.

Some of the many features of Fangborne include:

• Player character generation, saving, loading with multiple races and attributes
• Game session saving/loading
• Help system stack
• Editors for developing items, stores, and map levels (5x5, 10,10, 15x15, and 20x20)
• A theme editor
• Auto-mapping
• Game and Sound FX menus for easy access to options while playing
• An on-screen mini-map
• A large 3D display with a mouse-driven interface
• Combat in the style of Bard's Tale with a variety of monsters
• Loot from both random drops and placed treasure troves
• A spell casting system resembling that of Dungeon Master
• A variety of normal and magical weapons and clothing
• Spell scrolls and notes, with a spellbook and a folio
• Dungeon features such as pits, traps, doors, gates, secret doors, one-way doors, and more.
• Sound effects that can be customized
• Built-in speed control so that it can be played on fast emulators
• A kid mode that allows exploration without fighting
• A master mode that doubles monster hit points and attack damage for replayability
• A developer mode that allows access to many hidden commands such as teleport, giveitem, etc.
• A non-flashing mode to reduce the amount of on-screen flashing

All of these features do come at a price though.  The game will function on a IIGS, but even on an accelerated IIGS the gameplay will be frustratingly slow. Loading the initial maps can take several minutes, as can viewing the in-game level map. Movement can take more than 15 seconds, even with the mini-map toggled off. For an enjoyable experience I strongly recommend playing on an emulator with a CPU speed of 40 MHz or more.  The faster the better really, although at faster speeds you will be more likely to encounter random monsters. Testing has been done on Sweet16 and GSPlus. I have found that the GSPlus emulator has problems playing sounds in HyperCard IIGS, so unless that is fixed I recommend using Eric Shepherd's Sweet16 emulator due to Fangborne's frequent use of sound effects. At this time Sweet16 works best on Mac OS 10.13. It has disk mounting issues on 10.14, and does not work at all on 10.15 or later. If you have Windows or Mac OS 10.15 or later then you can try GSPlus (without sound) or ActiveGS.

Visit https://sites.google.com/view/silverwandsoftware/ to download Script-Central 2020 SE, which includes Fangborne.

Character Inventory screen

An interactive gate

Typical dungeon view with mini-map

Combat screen

Map Level Generator

Item Editor Utility

Script-Central 2020 Special Edition

My Homage to the HyperCard IIGS Disk Magazine

About HyperCard and HyperCard IIGS

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

HyperCard is an Apple Computer application developed by Bill Atkinson and released in 1987 for the Macintosh. It was bundled with all new Macintoshes and provided an easy way for Mac users to develop applications, called "stacks", that utilized the WIMP interface (windows, icons, mouse, pull down menus) popularized by the platform. This made Macintosh development accessible to thousands of Macintosh owners in much the same way that AppleSoft BASIC had made programming on the Apple II series computers accessible to thousands of owners of Apple IIs. Because it was developed at a time when Mac allowed only shades of gray, HyperCard did not support color. HyperCard used the concept of a Home stack (much like the iPhone Home button) from which HyperCard stacks could (1) be organized and easily launched, and (2) provided a customizable programmable layer between application stacks and the HyperCard application itself. 

Macintosh HyperCard Home stack

The primary language of HyperCard, HyperTalk, is an object based event driven English like language that allowed rapid prototyping of concepts even for non-programmers. It was the inspiration for AppleScript, the Macintosh automation language, and is what JavaScript might have been if the developers of JavaScript had been native speakers of English rather than C. HyperCard is the direct parent of both the visual application product Microsoft Visual BASIC and ViolaWWW, which preceded Mosaic as the first popular web browser. The overall impact of HyperCard on the digital world far exceeds the impact of all the thousands of stacks developed for it.

HyperCard IIGS was developed by Apple Computer for the Apple IIGS computer and released in 1990 with an upgrade in 1992 to v1.1. HyperCard IIGS has many of the same capabilities as Mac HyperCard v1.2.5 with the notable addition of native color support for all object types. HyperCard IIGS was meant by Apple to be a gift to the Apple IIGS owners and facilitate their transition to the Macintosh platform. Apple even released a free utility called HyperMover which could dissemble and reassemble HyperCard stacks between Mac HyperCard and HyperCard IIGS. Because of its native color support HyperCard IIGS stacks often looked significantly better than their Mac HyperCard equivalents.

HyperCard IIGS Home stack

Also in 1990 Apple released Macintosh HyperCard 2.0, and finally added color support in HyperCard 2.2 which was released in 1992. Though Apple ceased HyperCard IIGS development in 1992 with v1.1, they continued Mac HyperCard development until its final update v2.4.1 in 1998.

About Script-Central

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Script-Central was a bi-monthly magazine for HyperCard IIGS enthusiasts published by Kansas City publisher Resource-Central. There were 22 issues published from July 1991 to January 1995, each issue distributed on two 800K 3.5" floppy disks. Implemented as a HyperCard IIGS stack, the disk magazine used a building as a metaphor, with 1st floor rooms dedicated to regular features and a 2nd floor for special features. Each issue had a theme based on the time of year, and the magazine was entertaining as well as educational. I was fortunate enough to contribute a few stacks to Script-Central during its run, and at the time of its abrupt cancellation had several stacks ready for publication.

Along with the rest of the Resource-Central catalog, Script-Central was released under Creative Commons license 3.0 in 2010.

Script-Central 2020 Special Edition

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the summer of 2020 I found myself prototyping a personal application with HyperCard IIGS and then using HyperMover to convert it to Mac HyperCard, and finally importing it into LiveCode for completion. I also began interacting with the online Apple II and Apple IIGS enthusiast communities. With HyperCard IIGS on my mind, I decided to polish and complete some of my never-released HyperCard IIGS stacks and release them to the community.  I decided that there would be no better way to release a collection of HyperCard IIGS stacks than to produce a special edition of Script-Central. I tried to contact both Bruce "HangTime" Caplin and Tom Weishaar, the respective editor and publisher of Script-Central, and was unable to reach either of them. Learning that Script-Central had been released under the Creative Commons license in 2010, I decided to move forward on the project and do my best to not only provide a vehicle for the release of my stacks, but to also dissect, document, and enhance the Script-Central front end and regular feature stacks so that it would be possible for other issues to be made in the future, if community interest warranted it.

Getting content for the special edition was not a problem though.  A standard issue of Script-Central usually included four feature stacks and I had recently written stacks as well as stacks from the early 1990's that could be included.  I did not want to require a follow-up issue, so I took the time to add a basement level to the Script-Central "building", allowing an additional 6 feature stacks.

In addition I reviewed all existing issues of Script-Central developing a glossary of all content, and developed documentation that provides enough information on the Script-Central front end and regular feature stacks for future issues to be developed. All the while adding visual and utility enhancements, cleaning up code, and correcting minor bugs.

Script-Central 2020 Special Edition is based on the latest issues of Script-Central but includes features from the entire run, and therefore should appeal to anyone who was a fan of the original magazine.

In addition to its regular features: Tips & Trix, the Lounge, Q+A, Scripter's Workshop, the office, the mailroom, and the bathroom, there are a number of special features, some entirely new and some updated versions previously released on Script-Central or online:

• Word Scrambler
• Stack Analyzer (a Mac HyperCard conversion)
• HyperTalk Tutor 101 with all 4 lessons
• Merlin GS, an enhanced emulation of the handheld Merlin device
• No Worries, a launcher modeled on Apple's Macintosh At Ease program
• Reminder
• DateFun
• Splash Color - A GS/OS Splash Color screen editor
• IIc+ Technical Look (an enhanced Mac HyperCard conversion)
• BlankerConfig - a HyperCard based Screen Blanker with multiple configuration options
• Fangborne, a 350 card 2 MB HyperAdventure single-player RPG (recommended CPU speed > 40 MHz). Inspired by Dungeon Master, Bard's Tale GS, and EAMON.

There are also a number of tools and applications that were used by the author to create Script-Central 2020 SE included.  In total over 11 MB of material distributed on a 16 MB hard drive image.

Visit https://sites.google.com/view/silverwandsoftware/ to download Script-Central 2020 SE.

Silverwand Software Collection website launch

Having recently lost yet another site where I hosted some of my materials I have decided it is time to launch a Google sites website of my own to serve as a single place to collect all of my freely distributed computer related work. I will not remove my software from sites where I have uploaded it in the past, but I think providing a single place for new content is a good approach going forward.

Over the next few weeks I will fill in the site, but the core structure is already set up at https://sites.google.com/view/silverwandsoftware/

Update to Setting up My Home AppleTalk Network

Look Ma, No Wires!

I described setting up  my home AppleTalk network to connect my vintage IIGS, Power Macintosh 5400, and Macintosh G3 B&W to my more modern network of Mac Minis and an Apple Airport Extreme Router in this blog post from May. At that time I used an Apple Airport Extreme Base Station as an Ethernet hub and connected a Mac Mini, my G3, and the Power Mac 5400 to it via Ethernet cables as depicted in this diagram.

May version of my Network using Ethernet cabling to a hub

While this functions well and allows my IIGS to see the G3 it did rely on an extra Ethernet hub and Ethernet cables for the 3 devices connected to the hub.  I decided that I could eliminate connecting things to a single hub by using two Airport Express routers for the G3 and PowerMac 5400. With the routers connected to those two computers via Ethernet cables I have more freedom in positioning the computers.  The only devices tethered together by wiring are the IIGS and the PowerMac 5400 which sit side by side on the same desk. The network now looks like this.

July version of my Network using WiFi

 

Installing NWN2 Complete on Windows 10

NWN2 Complete is the GOG.com version of Neverwinter Nights 2 for Windows sold here and includes the final version of the NWN2 Official Campaign (OC), both of the Mask of the Betrayer (MotB) and Storm of Zehir (SoZ) expansions, and the Mysteries of Westgate (MoW) campaign. The GOG version is the final version and has all game patches released by Obsidian already applied so there is no need for any patching after it is installed.

How is Neverwinter Nights 2 Different than Neverwinter or Neverwinter Nights?

All three games are set in the Forgotten Realms but in different time periods and use different D&D rule sets and characters. Neverwinter Nights (NWN) (purchase here) takes place before NWN2. Arc Games Neverwinter is a MMORPG set after NWN2. NWN and NWN2 both include toolsets for the development of community content. The content developed with each toolset is similar but specific to each game version. A module created for Neverwinter Nights cannot be played using Neverwinter Nights 2 and vice versa. Arc Games Neverwinter is an online multi-player game whereas both NWN and NWN2 can be played offline or online using game servers.

What About Playing NWN2 on Apple Macintosh macOS?

Macintosh versions of the NWN2 OC were released on DVD and from the macOS App Store at one time. These did not include the expansions though it is possible to install the Windows expansions separately with the Macintosh versions.

Playing NWN2 using WINE or a Wineskin may be done but you should expect some compatibility issues and no support. The toolset is unlikely to work. Emulators tend not to work well with NWN2.

The most compatible option is to use Boot Camp to install Windows.

For additional information on this see these older blog posts:

• Getting NWN2 expansions working on Mac, 11/2011
• Options for playing Neverwinter Nights 2 on Mac OS X, 2/2012
• Installing NWN2 Complete from GOG.com in a Wineskin, 11/2015 

NWN2 Complete Installation

Instructions for purchasing, downloading, and installing are on GOG. While you can install on multiple computers, the license keys are unique to your purchase and if you ever try to play online your keys must be unique. So you should never share them with friends or publish them. Keep them secret. Keep them safe. Do the right thing and tell your friends no pay, no play.

The first time you launch NWN2 after installation Windows 10 will prompt you to download and install DirectPlay. Allow this. This only takes a minute and afterward you should see the SoZ menu. If you start a new campaign you will see four options: the Official Campaign, Mask of the Betrayer, Storm of Zehir, and Mysteries of Westgate. If you start a new module you can play the standalone optional introductory module Uninvited Guests.

Enabling the NWN2 Toolset

NWN2 also includes the Windows-only Obsidian NWN2 Toolset which can be used to modify existing campaigns and modules and to create new content. The toolset is not an option on the main menu but ca be found in the Neverwinter Nights 2 application folder. If you took the default option when installing NWN2 Complete the NWN2 application folder will be located at “C:\GOG Games\NWN2 Complete”.

There are two ways to launch the toolset. The most direct route is to double-click on NWN2ToolsetLauncher.exe. The second way is to double-click NWN2Launcher.exe which displays a menu that includes options including “Play”, “Toolset” and the no longer useful “Update” option.

When first launching the toolset Windows 10 will notify you that the app needs .NET Framework 3.5. Allow this to be downloaded and installed. Then click the close button.

The Toolset has additional requirements though that must be acquired and installed manually. The Toolset requires the Microsoft DirectX 9.0c SDK that was included on the original NWN2 disc distribution but is unfortunately not included in any digital releases. Once you have downloaded DirectX 9.0c (try the Microsoft Download Center site) put it into the NWN2 application folder and run DXSETUP.exe. It will be installed into the NWN2 application folder and will not conflict with any other software you have (including newer versions of DirectX).

After completion of the DirectX 9.0c install you should be able to launch the Toolset. Once in the toolset it is strongly recommended that you immediately go to View >> Options and set Autosave to False. This is necessary because the autosave feature has been known to corrupt modules, so it is best not to use it. Also if you decide to poke around the official campaign modules you do not want to autosave or save as this will break the module verification step and you will need to reinstall in order to play.

If you have problems with the Toolset crashing inexplicably you may want to run it in Compatibility Mode with XP SP2, which is the OS that was current when it was released. Running as administrator may also prevent permission issues. These configuration settings can be made by right-clicking the NWN2ToolsetLauncher.exe or a shortcut to it.

The toolset is complicated and even if (especially if) you have used the NWN Aurora toolset you should spend some time to read about building NWN2 campaigns and content before attempting to do so. I personally recommend the following resources:

• Obsidian's NWN2 HTML-based Toolset Guide "nwn2toolsethelp.html" which can be found in the NWN2 application Documentation folder. 
• The NWN2 Toolset Guide by Bob Hall 
• NWN2 Toolset Guide v15
• Katrina's Guide to Neverwinter Nights 2 Toolset
• The BradyGames NWN2 World Editor Guide
• My Silverwand Sample Campaign which includes many scripts and features that are typically useful in a NWN2 campaign, designed to aid beginning modders

Some modding resources are documented here. For further community help I recommend the neverwintervault.org forums.

What Else Should You Install?

At the point of this writing there is no community fix pack that I can strongly recommend be installed. There is one being developed by the community but game breaking bugs are actually very rare so nothing further really needs to be installed in order to play.

You may want to consider playing a little bit before installing community content that alters the game just so you learn what you like and don’t like about the released version of the game.

That being said, there are a large number of enhancement modifications available to improve the appearance of objects within the game and those are often broadly compatible. For the most part you install such things into the override subfolder within the NWN2 Documents folder which should be in your user folder at “Documents\Neverwinter Nights 2\override”. Normally this folder is empty. Files put into the override folder will be used during execution to override files of the same name that are included in modules and campaign folders (with the exception of files of the same name included in haks).

Community content is not official and written and tested by only well-meaning individuals so installing multiple enhancements and modifications may result in unforeseen behaviors. Not all community content is compatible with other community content. Before installation of items into your override folder read any documentation provided by the author(s) and prepare to reverse the installation in the event of conflicts when playing.

Many players choose to install community content that improves the appearance of their characters (improved faces, more hairstyles, etc.). This is highly tempting because some of the standard faces and hairstyles are quite ugly and the community content is far superior. One important thing to keep in mind about using such modifications is that created characters are stored in the NWN2 Documents subfolder “localvault”. If there is a character in “localvault” that was created with a modified appearance using community content and then you uninstall that community content, the mere presence of the character in “localvault” can cause NWN2 to crash. This occurs because all characters in “localvault” are loaded when the game starts.

Finally because of the limitation in the length of allowable Windows path names, I recommend that anything you download that is compressed be expanded in your download folder or on your desktop. This will prevent files from being mistakenly skipped during expansion, which could prevent things from working as expected once installed.

What Else Do I Install?

There is a lot of community content available for NWN2. Some content affects gameplay. Some content is for builders to use when using the toolset. Other content may be completely new playable campaigns and modules.

I contributed to the community some items that I always install. For information and access to all of my NWN2 contributions go here. An important reminder that you should always backup before installing anything and read and follow any installation instructions carefully. Be aware though that the instructions for content that was published in the past may not match your current operating system setup.

The following items of mine are designed to enhance the OC, MotB, SoZ, and MoW:

• NWN2 OC Makeover mod (v20131228) 
• NWN2 MotB Makeover mod (v20150325) 
• SoZ Party Editor 
• SoZ Party max override 
• MoW Party Editor 

I also converted the PnP Harvest of Chaos modules into a NWN2 campaign (info here).

In addition to my own site, much of my content can also be found at neverwintervault.org and Nexus mods.

What Kind of Character Is Best to Play?

NWN2 includes a number of races and classes (base and prestige). During the course of playing the OC you will encounter just about every race and class and have opportunities to add those non-player characters (NPCs) to your adventuring party. So regardless of what you choose to start with, you will experience them all. So my recommendation is to pick whatever you want to start with based on the basic D&D types.

What About Character Romances?

There are a few romances that can occur. There are no sex scenes. There are no same-sex romances. If you have an interest in expanding on those possibilities you will need to use community content.

Can NWN Modules be Played with NWN2?

NWN modules would need to be converted in order to be used with NWN2. That would be a time consuming process and require a builder who has knowledge and talent with both toolsets. Use NWN to play NWN modules and NWN2 to play NWN2 campaigns and modules.

Enjoy your adventures in the Forgotten Realms.

A Tale of Two Operating Systems: Boot Camp installation troubles with macOS and Windows 10

Welcome to Boot Camp... Hope You Survive

This post describes the steps I went through to go from a Mac Mini running macOS 10.15 Catalina and Windows 10 Home (64 bit) to running macOS 10.13 High Sierra and Windows 10 Home. This took 9 days of elapsed time (and additional time to reinstall my Windows apps and apply Windows updates) and would not have even been necessary if Apple allowed memory upgrades for my Mac Mini.

Note: MacOSX (also MacOS X, Mac OS X, MacOS 10, Mac OS 10, “mac OS” and “macOS”) is the Unix based Macintosh Operating System.

What Did I Learn?

1. Catalina is another OS in which Apple made decisions to manipulate the hard drive without user consent. This makes it difficult to recover from.
2. Time Machine recovery is highly unreliable.
3. Migration Assistant requires far more available room on a hard drive than the volume of the files it is recovering.
4. 64 bit Macs must install Windows 10 64 bit, not 32 bit.
5. FAT32 has a file size limit of 4 GB which is a problem for Windows 10 installation. [see https://www.uubyte.com/boot-camp-not-enough-space-usb.html]
6. High Sierra Boot Camp Assistant has a nasty bug that prevents resizing partitions. [see https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8263514]
7. If you encounter problems with the download of the Apple drivers you can use the non-Apple utility Brigadier instead. Download from github at github.com/timsutton/brigadier .
8. VERY IMPORTANT: Unplug any external drives (like the one you use for Time Machine) before trying to install Windows from a USB drive. The Windows installer gets confused by multiple USB drives.
9. If reinstalling an activated version of Windows check accounts.microsoft.com to confirm the Windows version to install.
10. This was far harder than it should have been.

The Initial Problem

Problem: Performance of macOS 10.15 Catalina on my Mac mini was incredibly bad, probably due to the Mini having only 8 GB RAM. Unfortunately I found to my surprise that unlike older Mac Mini’s this Mac Mini's memory is soldered to the motherboard when you order it from Apple, making it impossible to upgrade.

I decided to try to roll back to macOS 10.13 High Sierra from Time Machine. This should not interfere with my working Boot Camp Windows 10 installation, or so I thought.

Problem: The Time Machine backups I had for High Sierra would not work for recovery. Multiple attempts just resulted in failure.

Compromise Solution: Wipe the Mac OS partition on the internal hard drive and clean install High Sierra. Then recover the files from Time Machine using Migration Assistant.

Problem: After wiping and installing High Sierra the Migration Assistant insisted that there wasn’t enough room to recover my files. Turns out that Migration Assistant wants working space on the target that significantly exceeds the actual volume of the files to be recovered.

Compromise Solution: Delete my Windows 10 partition to free up space and complete Migration Assistant. Plan to reinstall Windows using Boot Camp Assistant after files have been recovered. Deleting the Windows partition did allow enough space for Migration Assistant to complete.

Reinstalling Windows 10 (64 bit)

Problem:  High Sierra Boot Camp Assistant will not allow me to size the Boot Camp partition and insists on installing Windows 7. [see https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8263514]

Compromise Solution: Install Windows 7 on a 48 GB partition and use an external drive for PC storage.

Problem:  BootCamp will not automatically download the Apple drivers for Windows 7 any longer, so you have to use an alternative website.

Proposed Solution: Use my Windows 7 ISO to create the USB, then download the drivers manually and copy them to the USB, then continue with Boot Camp.

Problem: After all that Boot Camp claimed the USB was unusable and could not be booted from.

Plan: Give up on High Sierra. Use Time Machine to recover macOS 10.14 Mojave and use Boot Camp to install Windows 10. Plan to use Time Machine afterward to recover High Sierra, leaving Windows 10 intact.

Day 2

Problem: After recovery of Mojave, BootCamp says it is unable to create Windows Install USB on 16GB USB drive because not enough space. I do not have any working 32GB USB drives.

Solution: Purchase new 32GB USB drives (k’ching!) and wait 2 days for delivery. (A waste of both money and time since this should not have been necessary, see below.)

Day 4

Problem Unfortunately even using a 32GB drive, Boot Camp says there is not enough space. Turns out this error is due to Windows files exceeding 4 GB and Boot Camp formatting the USB as FAT32 and then giving an erroneous error message.) [see https://www.uubyte.com/boot-camp-not-enough-space-usb.html]

Solution: Format the USB as ExFAT using Disk Utility. Then open the Windows 10 ISO manually and copy the files to it. Then continue with Boot Camp.

Problem: Boot Camp will not allow the software drivers to be downloaded to the ExFAT formatted USB

Solution: Format a second USB FAT32 and use it to download the drivers

Problem: Download of the software drivers gets stuck half way and does not complete. Reboots, Disk Repair, etc. not effective at resolving the issue. [see https://www.reddit.com/r/bootcamp/comments/bkpn2u/windows_support_software_could_not_be_saved_to/]

Solution: Download Brigadier from github.com/timsutton/brigadier and execute from Terminal to manually download the drivers. This creates a mountable .dmg that contains the Windows drivers for the Mac model it is run on. Mount and copy those contents onto the ExFAT USB and then reinitiate Boot Camp at the installation step.

Problem: Boot Camp allows the Boot Camp partition to be sized and created and then reboots the computer into Windows 10 and then says that the Boot Camp partition cannot be used to install Windows 10 because it must be formatted for NTFS. Choosing the Format option reformats the partition in in NTFS and changes its name to UNTITLED but later attempts to use it results in the error "We couldn’t create a new partition or locate an existing one." No option but to quit the Windows installer which reboots the computer back to macOS Mojave. [see https://www.reddit.com/r/bootcamp/comments/3t7yai/we_couldnt_create_a_new_partition_or_locate_an/]

(Note that the cause of this may possibly be that I had a USB external drive connected at the time. See #8 in the What Did I Learn section above.)

Solution: Use Boot Camp Assistant to delete the new partition, then reboot with option-command-p-r to reset the PRAM, and try the third step of Boot Camp Assistant again. Same problem.

Day 5

Give up on Mojave. Reboot with command-R and restore from Time Machine a version of Catalina 10.15 hoping I can get Boot Camp to install Windows 10 and then restore the Mac partition from High Sierra. Unfortunately each restore attempt takes 6-8 hours and they often end with an error.

After 5 failed restore attempts over 2 days in which each attempt failed with less than 20 minutes to completion, I gave up on restoring Catalina and decided to do a fresh install and then try to set up Boot Camp and then recover High Sierra from Time Machine. The Catalina install warned me that a Time Machine file in the root of the hard drive would be destroyed if I proceeded with the Catalina install. Like I have a choice. Hopefully this will not bite me in the butt later. (It did not.)

Day 8

While I was eventually able to install Catalina, I was unable to use Boot Camp Assistant to then install Windows. The Windows 10 installer insisted that the BOOTCAMP partition created by the Assistant (partition 3 on the disk) could not be used to install Windows. Using the Format option did not resolve this problem. (Note that the cause of this may possibly be that I had a USB external drive connected at the time. See #8 in the What Did I Learn section above.)

Decided to give up on everything newer than the Mac mini and restore to original factory settings and its original OS version which was MacOSX 10.11 El Capitan. This Mac mini has no DVD drive and Apple provides no DVD recovery disks, so to initiate original OS recovery you hold down shift-option-command-R during restart and it will put up a message that it is restoring from the internet. After a while it launches the Restore utility but the “Restore OS X” option should theoretically reinstall the original OS shipped with the Mac. To be extra sure, before taking the reinstall option I went into Disk Utility and erased the internal drive.

I then connected to my WiFi network and began the restore. A dialog pops up that my computer’s eligibility will be verified with Apple to which I responded “Continue”. Then I agreed to the SLA (twice) and directed it to install on my now “Untitled” 1 TB internal drive. It estimated 45 minutes. My new plan after the restore is to try to upgrade to MacOSX 10.12 and then use its Boot Camp Assistant to install Windows 10 from the USB drive I had created earlier.

Approximately an hour later the restoration of 10.11.6 completed successfully.

I then copied the Mac OS 10.12 installer “Install macOS Sierra” to the Applications folder. The macOS installers can give the error “application can’t be verified” and fail unless you first change the system date to a time closer to their release.  This is done in Terminal by using the command: sudo date. The date command takes as a parameter the date and time in format MMDDHHmmYY where the YY should be greater than 15.

In this case I used:

sudo date 0101010116

I then quit Terminal and launched the Install macOS Sierra application. After about 45 minutes it completed successfully.

The Sierra Boot Camp Installer wants to install Windows 10 and had no issues partitioning the disk in less than a minute and then it correctly rebooted itself for the Windows 10 install from my USB drive. (Fingers crossed.)

Windows Setup now shows 4 partitions on my internal drive 0: 181 MB labeled EFI, 743 GB, 619 MB, and 187 GB labeled BOOTCAMP. It warns me that Windows cannot be installed on partition 4. After Format it still cannot install it. (Note that the cause of this may possibly be that I had a USB external drive connected at the time. See #8 in the What Did I Learn section above.)

Reboot. Use Disk Utility to remove the partition “—“. Reboot zapping PRAM. Try Boot Camp Assistant again. No dice. Same failure. (Note that the cause of this may possibly be that I had a USB external drive connected at the time. See #8 in the What Did I Learn section above.)

Maybe there are updates for Sierra to apply. Reboot. Use Disk Utility to delete the NTFS partition. Turn on WiFi and check for updates in the App Store. Try to download and apply macOS Sierra update 10.12.6. Unfortunately the thermometer bar under the update says “NaN GB of 0 bytes” and is not moving.  Force quit and reboot. Go into App Store and try again. This time it works. Must be my lucky day. It estimates 4 minutes to download the 1.97 GB update. Then it automatically restarts and 20 minutes later the installation of 10.12.6 completes.

Login and initiate Boot Camp Assistant. Oddly it now wants to install Windows 7 rather than Windows 10. Unchecked steps 1 and 2 and proceeded with partitioning and installing Windows 10. Partitioning completed without issue and the computer restarted into the Windows 10 installer. Same problem. After format Windows gives the message “We couldn’t create a new partition or locate an existing one.” (Note that the cause of this may possibly be that I had a USB external drive connected at the time. See #8 in the What Did I Learn section above.)

Google searching for the error message I found a suggestion on windowsreport.com that the Windows installer can become confused when external USB drives are connected:

If you’re planning to install Windows 10 from a USB flash drive you might encounter We couldn’t create a new partition error message if more than one USB drive is connected to your PC.

In order to avoid this problem, we strongly advise that you disconnect any additional USB drives and leave only your Windows 10 USB flash drive connected.

 

- https://windowsreport.com/we-couldnt-create-a-new-partition/

So I unplugged my external USB drive I use for Time Machine and rebooted holding down the option key and then selecting the EFI Boot which is the Windows USB thumb drive. At this point the BOOTCAMP partition already exists and is formatted in NTFS and named “Untitled”.

In the Windows installer the untitled NTFS partition I had created for Boot Camp is selectable so I select it and hit Next to begin the Windows installation. Hopefully I can rename it to BOOTCAMP at some point later. (Turned out this happened without any intervention on my part.)

During the install I did not allow it to connect to the internet as I did not want any Windows updates to start to be applied. Once I reached the Windows desktop the Bootcamp installer started up automatically and began installing the Apple packages and drivers. After finishing it required a restart which I complied with and it rebooted into Windows 10 successfully. After logging in the Windows System Assessment Tool (WinSAT.exe) automatically initiated. I waited for it to complete and then ejected and physically pulled out the USB thumb drive. Interestingly the Windows partition is now named BOOTCAMP.

I then did Shut Down. Plugged my Time Machine drive back in and started up. The computer started in Windows so I restarted again with the option key down and selected my Mac HD to boot off of.

Recovering High Sierra from Time Machine

I then rebooted holding down command-R to start the Time Machine recovery process. I selected my external drive that I use for Time Machine and then selected my most recent 10.13.6 backup for restore. The restore process began and estimated 6 hours for completion.  Time to make a sandwich.

The restore completed successfully after about 4 hours. My initial account was restored and I was able to login to High Sierra with it.

Post High Sierra Restore

After a restore you have to go into the Photos app and repair the library to regain access to your photos. This can take several minutes depending on the size of your Photo library. I don’t know why this is necessary, but it is. Fortunately the same is not true of iTunes.

Day 9

Restoring and Activating Windows 10

When I went to activate my Windows installation I found that I had installed the incorrect version. I had installed Windows Pro rather than Windows Home, as so I could not activate.  I should have logged into accounts.microsoft.com and checked for my activations ahead of time.  As a result I needed to reinstall Windows.

This theoretically is not a disaster though because the USB thumb drive is not Windows 10 edition specific and so there is no need to set up a new USB drive or re-download the Apple drivers. (Note that the Apple drivers are machine specific, so you cannot use the same USB thumb drive on different computer versions.)

So I unplugged my external USB drive, inserted the USB thumb drive and rebooted holding down option and then selecting the EFI Boot to boot into the Windows installer.

When you install Windows over an existing version of Windows the installer copies the old Windows files (including all installed apps) into an “Windows.old” folder rather than deleting them. Fortunately I had enough space on the BOOTCAMP partition to handle this.

The installer allowed me to select Windows Home edition and my BOOTCAMP partition for the installation.

The installer then rebooted and came up with a screen asking which version of Windows I wanted to use. Unfortunately the screen was displayed for only a split second and then inexplicably went blank. I clicked the mouse hoping that the default is the version of Windows I just installed and the screen turned back on and said it was setting up devices but there was no way to determine which version (Home or Pro) was being set up. (Checking later it did fortunately default to Windows Home.)

When the Windows desktop came up the Boot Camp installer started up and installed the packages and device drivers and then it rebooted itself into Windows again. After my login the Windows System Assessment Tool automatically ran, taking a few minutes to complete.  I then ejected the USB thumb drive, connected to my WIFi network, and Windows automatically recognized that Windows Home was an activated version. I then deleted the Windows.old folder in order to free up about 50 GB and began reinstalling my Windows applications.

I really hope I do not find myself having to do this again.