PropellerIDE and MAC and FTDI Driver

hannah127

I have been using PropellerIDE on my Mac with HighSierra 10.13.4 for the past few months and it was working fine. I am TA'ing a class and the students need to download PropellerIDE so I deleted and redownloaded it to remind myself the process. I forgot to download the FTDI driver before downloading the PropellerIDE and now the build manager crashes every time I try to run any code. Deleted Propeller and all files related to it and I deleted the FTDI driver using the instructions here :

https://www.ftdichip.com/Support/Documents/AppNotes/AN_134_FTDI_Drivers_Installation_Guide_for_MAC_OSX.pdf

I then restarted my computer, redownloaded the FTDI driver and then redownloaded the PropellerIDE but it still does not work. If anyone has any pointers or tips please let me know it would be much appreciated.

Tracy Allen

Did you follow instructions to disable the AppleUSBFTDI driver? It used to be (starting with OS10.12.9) that there was an odd conflict between that and the FTDI's own driver. Having both installed would crash. It may be that Apple and FTDI have finally gotten onto the same page about it in the latest OS, but, Hmmm, I wouldn't count on it.

Another topical thread...
https://forums.parallax.com/discussion/166516/propelleride-on-macos-with-ftdi-and-other-issues

dgately

With High Sierra (actually some time before that version), Apple started delivering the OS with "AppleUSBFTDI.kext" as a driver for FTDI devices. Sometimes that causes issues with FTDI devices that have a product ID and Vendor ID that differs from the Apple driver specification. So, you end up needing to download and install the FTDI driver from the FTDI website. That driver has updated configs for newer FTDI devices. All would then be good except, sometimes the drivers appear to "fight" for control of your plugged in device.

On my working system (Mojave, 10.14.3), I noticed that the FTDI driver is located at: /Library/Extensions/FTDIUSBSerialDriver.kext and the Apple driver is located at /System/Library/Extensions/AppleUSBFTDI.kext...

Can you check to see if your system matches this config? You'll need to launch the Terminal application (inside /Applications/Utilities/) and do the following (you'll get a dump of all USB drivers/extensions, but look for the FTDI & USBSerial drivers):

$ cd /Library
$ ls | grep USB
...     <== various other kexts
FTDIUSBSerialDriver.kext    <== You should see the FTDI driver listed (among other USB kexts)
...

And...

$ cd /System/Library/Extensions
$ ls | grep USB
...    <== various other kexts
AppleUSBFTDI.kext            <== the Apple FTDI driver!
...
AppleUSBSerial.kext           <== Apple's generic USB serial driver
...

I 'think' getting your system to match the above should get it working... If you find that there are additional FTDIUSBSerialDriver.kext extensions in /System/Library/Extensions, you may need to remove them and re-install. Don't delete the AppleUSBFTDI.kext, though!

If you need help with command-line options to remove any kexts ("kernel extensions"), let us know...

dgately

hannah127

Thank you so much for your help. When typed the commands into the terminal the Apple FTDI driver and Apple's generic USB serial driver showed up, but when I typed in

$ cd /Library
$ ls | grep USB

I did not get any output in the terminal but I just searched in finder under library and then extensions and I attached a picture below and FTDIUSBSerialDriver.kext was listed in the extension folder. I also opened the system information application and under extensions, I found the .kexts listed and only have 1 FTDIUSBSerialDriver.kext, which is good.

I was thinking a bit more and I am wondering if the driver is not the issue. The first time I had proppelerIDE downloaded I had downloaded the driver first and the propellerIDE worked fine. Once I deleted and redownloaded just the propllerIDE it stopped working. The thing is when I deleted and redownloaded the propller IDE I still had the driver installed. Once I began to read more about it I figured out how to delete the driver using the root login in the terminal. I then restarted my computer, redownloaded the driver, restarted the computer, downloaded the propllerIDE and then restarted the computer. I then I typed in
'test
PUB Main
dira[0] := 0
outa[0] := 1

PropllerIDE did not crash and was able to save the file(I was trying different combinations of how I have been deleting and redownloading the driver and the propllerIDE and in the past, the IDE would crash when I would try to save a file or run a program I know had worked before). I don't know exactly what the errors mean but from my interpretation, it looks like it doesn't recognize the commands. My thought was that maybe when I downloaded it I was missing some library of information, but I really do not know how any of this works so I am probably completely off and this could still be a driver issue.



where I downloaded propeller: https://developer.parallax.com/propelleride/
I got the one for OS X that was at the bottom of the page
where I downloaded the driver from: https://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm
i got the one for Mac OS X 10.9 and above

dgately

hannah127 wrote: »

Thank you so much for your help. When typed the commands into the terminal the Apple FTDI driver and Apple's generic USB serial driver showed up, but when I typed in

$ cd /Library
$ ls | grep USB

I did not get any output in the terminal but I just searched in finder under library and then extensions and I attached a picture below and FTDIUSBSerialDriver.kext was listed in the extension folder. I also opened the system information application and under extensions, I found the .kexts listed and only have 1 FTDIUSBSerialDriver.kext, which is good.

Sorry, I meant "$cd /Library/Extensions"... It looks like it is properly installed on your system.

I was thinking a bit more and I am wondering if the driver is not the issue.

Looking at the image you attached shows at least one of the problems... It's reporting compiler errors, not a driver problem.

Your program is saved as a PropBasic program (i.e. .pbas)! But your code is Spin? You should save the program as test.spin instead of test.pbas and recompile.

Tracy Allen

Are you using the 0.33.3 software from
https://www.parallax.com/downloads/propelleride-software-mac-spin-pasm-propbasic
or one of the later releases from
https://github.com/parallaxinc/PropellerIDE/releases

Just curious. I'm using 0.33.3 on OS 10.12.6 Sierra.