[Ham-Mac] MacOS 10.12 Sierra Public Beta and fldigi-3.23.12

[Richard Kriss]

> On Jul 9, 2016, at 7:46 PM, Javier Henderson <javier at kjsl.org> wrote:
> 
> This problem is with the SI drivers for their chipset. I also have problems downloading data from my dive computer, which uses the SI chipset.
> 
> Using fldigi with an FTDI USB serial dongle works fine with macOS 10.12.
> 
> 73,
> -jav k4jh
> ______________________________________________________________

Jav,

I stand corrected. I think you were right about the SL Driver.  Thanks to some tests suggested by Dave Wright, K3DCW, I have confirmed macOS is not seeing the driver and have filed a support request with Silicon Labs

I have two partitions on my iMac (one for OS X 10.11 and one for macOS 10.12) and the following is the test I conducted:

1. This is a test of the OS X 10.11 partition with the Kenwood TS-590SG radio connected and ON:

Last login: Sun Jul 10 13:57:09 on ttys000
Dicks-iMac:~ dkriss$ cd /dev
Dicks-iMac:dev dkriss$ ls cu.*
cu.Bluetooth-Incoming-Port	cu.SLAB_USBtoUART
Dicks-iMac:dev dkriss$ 

Note the SLAB_USBtoUART is recognized

2.  This  is the same test when booted to the macOS 10.12 partition with the TS-590SG connected and ON:

DDicks-iMac:~ dkriss$ 
Dicks-iMac:~ dkriss$ cd /dev
Dicks-iMac:dev dkriss$ ls cu.*
cu.Bluetooth-Incoming-Port
Dicks-iMac:dev dkriss$ 

Note the SLAB_USBtoUART was not found?

This most likely explains why flrig and fldigi both work with OS X 10.11 but rig controls fails to initialize with booted to macOS 10.12. 

The last time something like this happened the Engineering Department at Silicon Labs could not duplicate the problem because they do not have access to a Kenwood radio and the same goes for the Apple OS development team.

The bottom line is either Apple or Silicon Labs needs to change something. Until then I will stay with OS X 10.11 that works great with fldigi and flrig

Dick AA5VU