OSX screen /de/tty.usbmodem* problems

[jeep4x4greg]

hopefully someone here can help ! I just got my pyboard and am attempting to connect to it for the REPL prompt.

I am on a macbook running OSX 10.6.8
I am able to connect to the pyboard as a usb drive and load files to the main.py etc.

when I type:
screen /dev/tty.usbmodem*
or
screen /dev/tty.usbmodemdisk1, or screen /dev/tty.usbmodemdisk1s1 and some variation that replace tty with cu... the "BSD Name" is disk1 and disk1s1...for the "Pyboard Virtual Comm Port in FS Mode:" and "PYBFLASH" respectively.

I get the "screen" screen that pops up and says
"Cannot Exec '/dev/tty.usbmodem___ ': no such file or directory"
and then the screen goes back to the terminal program

I've tried searching here and elsewhere and found others have the identical problem, however I have not been able to find a post where someone actually solved it.

Note that I am fairly new to Mac OSX so dont get too complex if you can! I just got the laptop for free (wifes old one) so i'm learning so I can use it for my light programming, pyboard, R-Pi, and Arduino stuff

thank you I'm pretty excited about this board so hopefully I can resolve this problem !

[dhylands]

Try /dev/tty.usbmodem* instead of /de/tty.usbmodem*

[jeep4x4greg]

sorry that was a typo....I did type dev....not de.

[blmorris]

There may be an issue with the USB serial emulation in OSX 10.6.x
I think there were some reports that other users were having trouble with 10.5.x. My machine runs 10.7.5 (I think the minor version is 5, not sure because I'm answering from my phone.) Many other users run versions 10.7.x through 10.10.x without problems.

-Bryan

[jeep4x4greg]

There may be an issue with the USB serial emulation in OSX 10.6.x
I think there were some reports that other users were having trouble with 10.5.x. My machine runs 10.7.5 (I think the minor version is 5, not sure because I'm answering from my phone.) Many other users run versions 10.7.x through 10.10.x without problems.

-Bryan

Is this a software issue or a hardware issue? If a software issue would a different serial emulator program work possibly?

any ideas are welcome

[blmorris]

AFAIK it's an issue with the USB CDC (Communication Device Class) driver in versions of OSX older than 10.7
It's possible that a tweak in the MicroPython USB stack would fix it, but since the pyboard is known to work with current operating systems, it is unlikely to get fixed for an older version of OSX - and 10.6.8 is at least 6 years and four major versions out of date. I would suggest upgrading the OS if at all possible - and it should be, unless the laptop itself is quite old. (Mine is eight years old and is still supported by the most current releases, the only reason I don't upgrade is that it would mean buying upgrades to a few critical applications that I run, and that will just wait until I get a new computer )

[jeep4x4greg]

Ok im downloading 10.10 yosemite, its a free upgrade so hope it works! Will post up once finished

[jeep4x4greg]

SOLVED!

Thanks for your help! upgrading to OSX Yosemite 10.10 did the trick. it took 13hrs to download it on my slow rural internet....but it works like a charm now!

Thanks again!

[blmorris]

Thanks for reporting back. One more data point for people to find on the forum, and it gives me confidence to advise other users that OSX >= 10.7.x should work, and that <= 10.6.x probably won't.

-Bryan