Paul Shadwell RTFM

The New MacBook Pros Don't Come with BootCamp Drivers (How to find them)

For those of you, like me, who still have to have a foot in the Windows camp, having BootCamp is a great way to isolate work and play. 

Usually, the BootCamp drivers for Windows come on the OSX installation disk however, the new MacBook Pros released on the 24th of February 2011 do not have the drivers. Trouble is, you only find this out once Windows is already installed on your BootCamp partition.

This caused me a certain amount of stress while having to do an emergency build after a 13" MacBook Pro had been damaged. I was able to obtain one of the new machines, a 13" MacBook Pro with an i5 processor.

These machines have new graphics and a new chipset, so the old BootCamp drivers downloadable from Apple as BootCamp drivers version 3.2, don't work.

All is not lost. I had noticed that during the BootCamp setup I was given the option to download the drivers. During the 1st attempt I opted to use the drivers supplied on the OSX Installation DVD (That's what is says in the dialog box).

In the same dialog box is the option to download the drivers. Take this option and you get a full install of all the new drivers for the new MacBook Pros. You get the choice to either burn to a CD or copy it to an external drive. I copied them onto a USB memory stick.

Once I had booted back into Windows 7 I was able to run the startup.exe file suplied and the new drivers were installed. Support for the new graphics, chip set, network card etc etc was all there.

I could finally relax and get the install finished and backup restored for the user.

Hope this helps someone in a similar predicament.

Setting up a VLAN for use with a Drobo Pro

When using a Drobo Pro over ethernet (iSCSI) usually it is necessary to setup a 2nd ethernet port to dedicate to the iSCSI protocol. iSCSI is a bandwidth hog so best preformance is gained this way. However, if you have a computer with only one ethernet port, such as a Mac Mini or an iMac, you can setup a virtual network to isolate the iSCSI traffic while still using a single connection.
The following steps explains how to do this.

Open System Preferences

Click Network

Interfaces

1. Click the gear wheel.

Manage Virtual Interfaces...

1. Click Manage Virtual Interfaces...

Add a Virtual Interface

1. Click the Plus (+) button.
2. Select New VLAN...

VLAN Settings

1. Add a name i.e. Drobo VLAN
2. Enter a Tag number (1 is default)
3. Select the interface to use. (Usually you have only one, Mac Pros will have 2 to select from)
4. Click Create

VLAN Created

Click Done

1. Select Drobo VLAN (or the name you used) in the interface list.
2. Select Manually as the Configure IPv4 setting.
3. Enter an IP address on an unused subnet (i.e. My Ethernet 1 IP is 192.168.27.100, so I used 192.168.30.10)
4. Enter 255.255.255.0 as the Subnet Mask
5. Click Apply

VLAN is Ready

Now go to the Drobo Dashboard and set the IP address to the same subnet as your VLAN interface i.e. 192.168.30.11.