mchelper cannot upload new firmware on OS X 10.5

[liamMT]

Due to a problem with the Atmel SAM-BA descriptors, and a change that makes the Apple CDC driver a bit stricter, it is not currently possible to upload new firmware with mchelper on OS X 10.5 Leopard.

See #35 for the original response from an Apple USB engineer. He says that he's optimistic that he'll be able to make the next release of the driver lenient enough for the SAM-BA descriptor to work ok, but until then we're a bit out of luck.

[liamMT]

Good news! This back from Apple:

We did put the code in to relax the check but up to now no build has accepted the change. Most of the Leopard builds are "invite only" and we've not been invited. I'll try and let you know when you can expect it.

Hopefully this will make into one of the builds soon...I imagine it's probably too late for 10.5.2 but who knows?

[rmann]

As a temporary workaround, you can unload Apple's CDC driver with the following command:

$ sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleUSBCDC.kext

Execute that, and you can run mchelper 2.0.0 without problems.

There's another workaround out there that lets you keep the CDC driver loaded (you may need it for other things you have connected), but I wasn't able to get it to work.

[tonyc]

Any word on whether this is fixed in 10.5.3?

[liamMT]

This has not been updated in 10.5.3 (grr) but I have repackaged a little AppleScript? that does what rmann suggests above in a more automated way. See http://www.makingthings.com/news-items/os-x-10-5-upload-helper for details and a download.

[liamMT]

So at long last we have a working codeless kext that prevents the Apple USB CDC driver from matching the board in sam-ba mode. Check http://dev.makingthings.com/browser/shared/osx-uploader

This also requires a slight change to the sam7utils code, which I have maintained locally and up-to-date sam7 binaries are released with it. I have submitted a patch to the sam7utils maintainer but it has not yet been accepted.