MacSailing.net

Hi,
Been out cruising to the Queen Charlottes and away for a while, but found a wireless buried on the west coast of Vancouver Island...

I've managed to get my SSB and Sailmail (via Parallels) working nicely since I left, but have one annoyance. When I boot Parallels, it comes up with a warning message something like "the USB hardware trying to connect to Parallels is already in use by another software; close that software and reboot" , referring to the USB Pactor Modem. If I reboot Parallels a few times the warning goes away and I'm connected. I cannot find any piece of software on the Mac that's trying to connect to the Pactor. As I finally get the Pactor connected to Parallels it's not critical, but is still an anoyance and shouldn't work that way. I've also missed a few critical weather fax broadcast trying to get the Pactor connnected to Parallels.

Thanks,
Scot

Note, I'm heading out of here tomorrow (Sunday August 5) so will again be offline for a while. Any help prior to that would really be appreciated.

The Pactor USB uses the FTDI chipset. As such I would suspect it is loading the OS X FTDI driver from the Macintosh HD / System / Library / Extensions folder. The driver filename is FTDIUSBSerial.kext. I would recommend its removal (before plugging in) unless you are using a TN-200 USB GPS or a Shipmodul USB Multiplexer.

On my vessel I use a Keyspan 4 port serial-USB adapter with a MacBook, Boot Camp, Windows Vista Home, and the Keyspan Vista drivers, and Airmail.

On the Windows side I needed one serial port for the SCS PTC-IIe modem, and one serial port for Airmail to control the SSB radio. I knew that with Parallels I could make one serial port work as a socket via SerialClient application but I couldn't figure how to get a second serial port to work. (When I bought my SCS modem they didn't have a USB model which controlled the radio via the same port.)

On the Mac side, the two other Keyspan serial ports are GPS input and AIS receiver input to GPS NavX.

I must say after using Windows 98/XP with Virtual PC for many years this new set up is pure joy. Performance is excellent.

90% on the time my onboard computer is a Mac, but twice a day I check my radio email and it becomes a PC.

It is a shame, however, that we don't have a Mac version of Airmail.
Winlink now has over 11,000 users. SailMail a coupla thousand more. Judging from the positive postings to the Ham-Mac list over the past years, a Mac version would be well received.

I know, for one, that I would have been happy to purchase a native Mac/Airmail application instead of another version of Windows.

Capt. John
S/V On Assignment
Abaco, The Bahamas

Capt. John,
I whole heartedly agree with you on a Mac version. I'd sure rather not have to use Parallels - Sailmail is the only thing I use it for.

The issue I'm having must be a Parallels software issue, as the warning is coming up in the Mac Environement when I start Parallels. While I don't have the bandwith to download it - I just did an 'update' check in Parallels, and noticed the latest version includes 'USB compatibility with Mac OS X 10.4.10 fixed', so maybe when I can finally download it my issue will be resolved. I'll post an update if it does.

Scot

The latest update to Parallels solved the problem.