Aaarrrgghh USB + MacAxe driving me mental!

[Andy1967]

Hi all,

so I couldn't get MacAxe to work with my work MacBook so I tried on my iBook G4 at home. Accidentally installed the Intel USB driver and when I connected got the message about not being able to access the USB even though it shows up in network preferences and appears to be installed correctly.

Followed the instructions about preferences both through terminal and by accessing the file. No difference.

Deleted the driver file thinking I should instead install the PPC driver. Opened that file and started the installation only to be met with a stupid message telling me I cannot continue because there is nothing to install!
Downloaded the file about a million more times thinking the first version might have been corrupted but same message every time.

Downloaded it on my other G4 thinking that the issue was caused by previously installing the intel instead of PPC driver but on the othe G4 and if I didn't make the same mistake on the other machine it would go better.

However, I still get the "nothing to install message" which suggests to me that the PPC download file is not correct.

I have 3 macs of varying spec and systems and yet can't get one of them to work!

Any thoughts, help, advice would be much appreciated.

Cheers

 

[hippy]

I'm a bit unclear so perhaps you could please clarify -

Was the "nothing to install" error given while trying to install the USB Drivers file or trying to install the MacAXEpad file ?

When you were earlier running MacAXEpad and you ran into the "problem opening .asm as textinputsteam" issue - was that on a PPC or Intel Mac ?

 

[Andy1967]

Sorry for not being clear, I'll try again.

The "problem opening .asm as textinputsteam" issue was from trying to run MacAxe on an Intel Macbook. That is out of the equation for the time being.

The "nothing to install" issue occurred when trying to install the PPC USB driver onto a PPC iBook G4 and also onto a PPC G4 Tower.

I first accidentally installed the Intel USB driver on the iBook G4. It showed the driver in network preferences so I assumed everything was fine.

However when trying to run the program it gave me an error message about not being able to access the USB cable. It did not, however, give me the "problem opening .asm as textinputsteam" error message.

I followed the instructions to set permissions but this did not solve the problem.

I then realised I had installed the Intel driver so deleted that and downloaded the PPC version.

On trying to install the PPC driver onto the PPC G4 iBook I encountered the "nothing to install error".

I then assumed that this might have been caused by installing the wrong driver in the first place, deleting it and then trying to install the new one.

For that reason I moved to my PPC G4 tower which had not had anything installed.

I downloaded the PPC version of the driver again but on trying to install it gave the same "nothing to install" message.

This indicates to me that there is a problem with the PPC USB driver package as that computer was totally 'clean'.

Does that explain it any better?

Cheers for the support.

Andy

 

[hippy]

Thanks for the clarification and I'll pass the information along.

 

[Technical]

We have just done a clean download on an older PPC using Safari 3.0.4
(400MHz, G4, 256 MB RAM) OS10.4.11
and it worked fine (see images).

Note that the driver is a 'generic' driver used by lots of applications that use the FTDI chip - maybe the driver is already installed for another product?

 

[Andy1967]

Thanks for that reply and the images, but I am able to get that far, it is once I go to the next step after choosing which drive to install on that the problem occurs.
Not sure if I can post images but if I can I will try.

 

[Andy1967]

Still no luck whatsoever.

Managed to install the driver on my PPC G4 desktop and checked that it showed up and that all permissions were correct.

The USB lead shows up as expected.

But as on my G4 iBook when I try to run any code I get a message about not being able to use the USB lead.

So, to recap.

Intel MacBook running 10.4.11 will not run MacAxePad
PPC G4 iBook can't access USB lead
PPC G4 Desktop can't access USB lead

I would have thought that with 3 Macs to choose from I'd be able to get up and running on at least one!

 

[Technical]

What is the exact G4 message? Have you hit the 'usb setup' button and changed the USB port pointer to the unique number on your computer?