Sunday, February 25, 2007

RIGtalk procedure published for MacOS X

Yesterday I mentioned a small breakthrough that I'd had getting the RIGtalk USB serial interfaces work with MacOS X. I now have a procedure on my home page that outlines the steps necessary to get this nifty device working with a PowerPC-based Macintosh. Unfortunately, there are no Intel-based Macintosh drivers yet available. {sigh}
I'm going to write to West Mountain Radio in hopes that they will take the baton in this relay race. The next logical step is to have the small fixes I've identified rolled into the existing installers and distributed with the devices. West Mountain Radio could probably do that pretty quickly. After that it gets harder.
Silicon Labs, the maker of the little chip that does the conversion between USB and serial lines used by radios, needs to release an Intel-Macintosh version of this driver. They've had the PPC version out since 2004 (but nothing since). I hope West Mountain Radio will put the request to them to make this happen.
In the mean time, I can use these little devices with my PPC-based 17-inch PowerBook but not HamMac (which is Intel-based). Well, that's a step in the right direction. Let's see what happens next. With luck, my next 100 Pound DXpedition will be using these little gems instead of the big clunky things I'm packing now!

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