@All,
Ok i think i'm onto something but i need some help from you guys ....
It was these reports of 13 digit MLB's which had me puzzled, but i have a theory on how we ended up with the current 17 digit MLB format and why it may actually be incorrect for some people.
The only true way to see the raw MLB value is to dump the tables form your NVRAM and the best utility i've found to do that on real Mac's is to use Darwin Dumper which you can download from
here:-
This utility should work on all macs right back to snow leopard so hopefully this should work on some of those mac's that are having trouble running iMessage Debug.
Run Darwin Dumper and un-select everything except NVRAM
Set the 'Extra Options' at the very bottom of the screen to the following:-
Then Click on run, DD will do it's thing and once done it should open a finder window of the result files.
Navigate to the sub folder '
NVRAM' and then double click on the file called '
uefi_firmware_vars.txt' to open it in Text Edit.
Hold down the 'CMD' key and hit 'F' to open the find command, enter 'mlb' without quotes and hit enter:
You should see something like the following:-
Code:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4D1EDE05-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B38C14:ROM
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
000000: 73 ec 25 d4 ac 4d |d.6..f|
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4D1EDE05-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B38C14:MLB
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
000000: [U][COLOR=#ff0000]44 32 38 43 32[/COLOR] 30 33 30 46 38 [COLOR=#daa520]4e 43 5f[/COLOR][/U] |[COLOR=#00ff00]C0554[/COLOR]63F8LY[COLOR=#0000ff]3J8[/COLOR]|
It's ok you have not taken LSD .... i added the colours .. all will become clear.
Count the number of bytes (underlined above)
If your MLB is longer than 16 bytes then it will extend in to the next line (beginning with 000010)
If any of you guys have
real MAC's and want to help i first need you to do above on your real Apple MAC product, the wider the range the better - MacBooks, MiniMacs, iMacs, Mac Pros .. all will be useful.
I don't want anyone to post any complete values but i'd like you to post the following feedback ....
Number of
Bytes making up the MLB .... eg: 13
Number of Characters in the string .... eg: 14
Your System Type .... eg: MacBook 8,2
Last four digits of OSX S/N .... eg: 4566
First five hex values of MLB .... eg:
44 32 38 43 32
First five string values of MLB ... eg:
C0554
Last three hex values of MLB .... eg:
4e 43 5f
Last three string values of MLB .... eg:
3J8
Alternatively for the above four lines you could include a text copy of the output and replace the digits in black in the above example with x's like this (17 digit MLB example):-
Code:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx:MLB
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
000000: 43 30 32 33 34 xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx 52 31 |C0234xxxxxxxxxR1|
000010: 45 |E|
If you have enough credit you can PM the info to me, if not then it should be safe as i'm not asking you to post the complete MLB ....
Why do i need this info ?
First i want to confirm how many digits the MLB should be for each type of system.
Second it could be that Apple are now syntax checking the MLB via a new checksum of the prefix/suffix of the MLB something like the way the OSX S/N is derived (see Part-1, Step-3 of the guide)
Please only post results from Real MAC's .....
Having checked two real MB Pros here the MLB on both is 13
bytes long (13 x 2 hex digits), I know some Mac's do have 17 digits for the MLB but the discrepancy is a lead and i have to start somewhere.
It may be just the length that is important and that generating a 13 byte MLB for some Systems Types is all we need to do, but i seriously doubt it will be that easy so before we all go blindly doing that i'd like to see if there is a patten/format to the MLB.
Obviously if you change your MLB then the Customer code displayed by iMessage should also change.
Good Luck
Cheers
Jay
Tip: If you want to dump system-id .... etc via Darwin Dumper then also check IO Kit Registry
When DD is done navigate to the Sub Folder '
IORegistry'
Open the file
IORegDT.txt in text edit & search for the following key values (with quotes) :-
"IOPlatformUUID" = Hardware UUID
"system-id" = SmUUID
“IOPlatformSerialNumber" = OSX S/N
