Need to plug in / unplug a few times before it works.

[illdoc]

Hi Leighsmith,

First of all: Many thanks for creating midisport-macos :) I was ready to sell my midisport 4x4 until I discovered your 64-bit driver :)
When it works it works fine, but I have the following issue:

Need to plug / unplug a few times before the power led starts pulsating and Catalina recognizes my midisport 4x4.
I usually don't restart my mac and only use sleep mode. In sleep mode the power led keeps pulsating and after waking up it keeps working. I haven't really tested if it keeps on working after reboot.
I'm running driver version 1.3.0 on Catalina, on a Mac Pro 3.1
If I can do anything to help, let me know :)

kind regards,
Dirk

[margatalma]

Hi Dirk!
I've same problem with Mojave. Sometimes it doesn't recognize device, Led become ON and then quickly definitely OFF without pulsating.
I've noticed that USB cable can be affect this behavior. Something Like "insufficient startup current" :)
USB 2.0 cables that produce this "issue" work perfect on other devices (but externally power supplied).
It's strange ... But I tried 4 different cables and now it's working (2 of them brand new!)...

[illdoc]

Hi Margatalma,

Thanks for your reply. I'm going to try different cables. Maybe it helps. I didn't have this problem back on El Capitan but it could be that the cable broke in the meantime.

Led become ON and then quickly definitely OFF without pulsating.

In my case it doesn't become on at all, or it stays on.
I will investigate further tomorrow.

kind regards,
Dirk

[mattjazz]

Hi all,
I also had to plug / unplug sometimes to get my 2x2 working, until I discovered the driver deamon was not running and wrote this tiny script to launch it again if needed:

#!/bin/sh
ps | grep -E "[/]MIDISPORTFirmwareDownloader"
if pkill MIDISPORTFirmwareDownloader
then
echo "Killed running MIDI driver"
else
echo "No MIDI driver was running"
fi
/usr/local/libexec/MIDISPORTFirmwareDownloader /usr/local/etc/midisport_firmware/MIDISPORT_devices.xml &

Such file needs to be made executable in Terminal after editing using: chmod +x itsFileName
Hope it helps.

[illdoc]

Thanks mattjazz,

Jeej, I got it to work, although my "commandline skills" were under a thick layer of dust :)

In an attempt to streamline this, I set Terminal.app as the default application that opens .sh files.
So I can double-click the .sh file to run it. The problem is that pkill isn't allowed to kill processes. It says:
pkill: signalling pid 4790: Operation not permitted
When I run the .sh file with sudo. It works fine.
I guess I could use su or sudo in the script with my password in plain text in the .sh file, or is there a better way ?

kind regards and thanks again,
Dirk

[mattjazz]

Hi Dirk,

My own command line knowledge is quite limited, although I usually keep a Terminal window open and execute the script.
I guess experts would recommend not to associate the script files with Terminal for security reason.

Anyway, I also get the error message when pkill tries to kill the script process or itself, since I haven’t been able to have it target only the driver, as I have in the previous (informative only) grep command.
Type this simpler grep command when the driver is loaded and you’ll easily see what I mean:

grep MIDISPORTFirmwareDownloader

Not a big deal, and sorry for not mentioning.
I personally don’t need to su for pkill to kill the driver, and neither do you probably.
I don’t recommend to insert the password anywhere.

Btw, does it spare yourself reinserting the interface?

Good luck with this limited help and knowledge, hoping someone more skilled can jump in if needed.
Best