Not sure why people want phones under Parallels

I admit I am brand new to the Mac but I was frustrated with trying to get my Sony Erricson k800i to show up in Parallels. I wanted to do two things-- synch my contacts/calendar and use the phone as a broadband modem. I was able to solve the synch problem with a plugin that I found that works great until there is an OS update to support the k800i.

The second problem seemed unsolvable because I kept trying to install the Sony Connection software in Parallels XP (its not Mac compatible) but I never got anywhere because I got the dreaded "another device is interfering message" even with the new beta. Turns out I didn't need to do this because when I got the bright idea to just to try hooking the USB cable up to the phone and putting the phone in "Phone mode." The built in Ethernet port showed up in the Mac OS networking preferences and I just filled around a bit and it works fine. I get about 45k/sec transfer which I think is about equivalent to a 300kb connection (excuse my bad measures) which is about an ISDN speed which is what I think it is supposed to be.

Anyway, I was impressed with how well the Mac setup the network connections without me having to do anything and maybe my experience will help somebody struggling to hook up the phone.

 

Using bluetooth & USB to connect the mac to the internet works well. Using iSync to get contacts & calendar synced also works well (albeit some phones need a hack or extra plugin for iSync). It's backing the whole phone up that is the problem. Only the phones own PIM software will do this, and it's here where the Parallels problem comes in. When one upgrades your firmware, you loose all your data - unless you've got a back-up. That's the problem. Funny enough, the SE P910i works perfectly with syncing, backing up, even updating the firmware via the internet, all within Parallels. So what ever SE does (or doesn't do!) works with Parallels. Other phones, like the V3, V3i, Nokia 9300, Nokia N91, etc can not sync or backup due to the Parallels error. Very frustrating.

 

Just what are you trying to back up with the PIM software? If the phone is synced, and you kill t, just sync again and everything is back. I've done this with my Nokia 3650 a while back.

 

All my phones, except for the V3 & V3i, are 'smartphones'. You don't just keep contacts & calendar data on them. You keep lots of programs, with serial codes, that needs to be re-installed & re-serialized if you don't have a backup after a firmware upgrade. Connection settings & 'look & feel' setups that you do, also doesn't get backed-up with a normal contacts/calendar sync.

 

Ok...never thought about Smartphones.

BTW, I was way over optimistic on the 3G speeds I am getting. Turns out that it is about 120 Kbit/s which is nowhere near the 384 kBit/s that is promised and compared to the 2000 kBit/s I get on my landline. Its just about double a 56k modem. I can't believe all the hype about 3G if this is all I can get. I have heard that providers cap voice customers at 100 kbit/s so I will try to find out about this.

Goodluck to everybody on their USB problem. I know it must be terribly frustratinhg.

 

Sounds like a product naming WTF in that case. Using the phone's PIM software to backup software and phone configuration is really intuitive...

Somehow I've never felt compelled to install any software on my phone aside from the iSync agaent which installs itself in the 3 years I've had it, and it is one of the smartphones too. Funny considering I write software for phones now, though a different platform than my personal phone.

The phone should back itself up to a MMC/SD/miniSD/whatever data card through a utility in the phone, but that would make sense, so we'll never see it implemented.

 

Backup to card

BackupBuddy will backup a Treo to its own SD card. So will NVBackup (free, but not as powerful).

 

Backup to card

BackupBuddy will backup a Treo to its own SD card. So will NVBackup (free, but not as powerful).

 

How to get phones to connect through to Parallels

So I know I'm in the minority (with Jerry here), but I actually do need my phones to punch through to Parallels without being interfered with by the Mac, so I can do BREW development.

The only way I've found to allow this is to remove the kernel extensions that handle CDC (Communications Device Class) connections. They're easy to find; just go to /System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns. Everything in there that's called AppleUSBCDC*.kext needs to go. I suggest you back up the entire IOUSBFamily.kext before you try this. Reboot and everything should work. Please be careful, it would be very easy to screw things up.

This will disable USB modems (and cable modems) and will prevent you from using your phone as a tethered USB modem. I'm not sure if it affects Bluetooth dialup, but I don't see why it would, I'll try it out at some point. You can put all the extensions back if you need them and everything will start working again.

But now I am able to get my v3c to show up under Parallels. Awesome!

 

Sorry for being dumb, but do you think this hack would work with Nokia phones (i.e. Active Sync, I have the 9300 smartphone) as well? And should not mess up with anything else than USB modems (no effect on USB printers, mice etc)? Would appreciate your clarification before I will do something I basically do not understand; I sorely need my phone connected to Parallels, though. Thanks!

 

It should work for all phones that are getting blocked from connecting to Parallels because they show up as a network connection in the Network control panel. It shouldn't screw up anything else; my USB hub and mouse work fine, and I can still USB sync my Palm with my Mac (syncing it with Parallels still doesn't work for other reasons). The changes are specific to CDC devices.

Good luck --

 

Thanks! I will try this later today when I back to work (and cross me fingers).

 

i tried doing this hoping to make my k800i work with paralles desktop.

it detected alright, but was not able to use se pc suite.

and unfortunately, it made me 're-install' os x since i can no longer restore all those AppleUSBCDC making my mighty mouse useless.

thanks anyways.

 

Works on OS X (10.4.7), details follow

I am using a MacBook 1.87 GHz, 2GB of RAM running XP SP1. Autoconnect is on.
I am able to connect a Nokia 6682 with PC Suite as well as their new firmware updater program!!

In order to stop the OS X system from keeping the USB device busy I simply followed the instructions above, but rather than delete any important system files, I used a simple backup procedure which seems pretty common in the Unix/Linux world. For any beginners, you need to use the terminal program located in Applications->Utilities.

once in the terminal I proceeded to the
/System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns
directory:

cd /System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns

Then I moved any file with USBCDC in the filename using the following command:

sudo mv USBCDC.kext USBCDC.kext.bak

This way, if my system was hosed I could use the disc that came with the Mac to get into the system and revert the files back to their original names just by reverting their names running the command in reverse, ie:

sudo mv USBCDC.kext.bak USBCDC.kext

There were about 6-10 files I had to use this command on. What happens here is the file is simply renamed with a .bak extension on the end, meaning it won't be found when the system looks for the original file name, which ends in .kext. sudo is required because these are system files, which shouldn't be changed lightly. You should not run into problems requiring reinstalling OS X using the method above. In fact, I was still able to connect a USB flash drive with no issues under OS X while running the VM. I don't use any tethered modems since my phone has bluetooth, so no issues should come up, but of course YMMV. If I do end up with issues from Bluetooth I'll let you know, but iSync worked beautifully for me as well following this hack, indicating that this won't interfere with the bluetooth connection either.

What I needed this functionality for was Nokia came out with software to update my phone's firmware directly from my PC, but required a USB connection. And of course the software is Windows only. Now, I know updating cell phone firmware can be tricky, so if this worked for me under Parallels than I say good job Parallels team. Of course, it would be nice to complete this task without a hack to system files on my MacBook, but I can hardly blame that on a third party developer! Hopefully USB compatibility will increase as newer versions are released. In the meantime, I have no problem renaming a few files that are non-essential, for me anyway.

 

IOUSBFamily.kext

I sure hope that people reading this forum do not take the advice of deleting this file. The IOUSBFamily.kext file controls total USB function of your Macintosh. After deleting this file and associated files, upon reboot you will notice that all USB functions including keyboard and mouse will be disabled and you will have no input device to wonder about your desktop, the only way to fix this problem is to reinstall system software or if your lucky enough to have a second computer to restart in disk mode and reinstall the file from another machine via crossover cabling. I really do not know where someone would get off telling a fellow community member(s) to do such a thing, personally, I feel they should be banned form this forum.

 

Macster2, I think you misread the post. It wasn't suggested at all that the IOUSBFamily.ktext file gets deleted. Instead it was suggested that certain files WITHIN that .ktext file gets moved.

btw. danmasOn & jayholler, THANKS for that advice - it worked!

 

___________

EDIT:

THANKS A LOT MathhewR and jayholler, i finally got Parallels Desktop to work with my p990i.

Everything is working, Sony Ericsson PC Suite and SEUS.

Again, thank you very much.

 

k800i_php, I know this wont make any sense, because it doesn't make any sense to me. First, the SE P910i actually works perfectly within Parallels without any of the tweaks. This was the first phone that I tried, and it just worked. I could even do the firmware update via the internet without any issues. The back-up just seem to take very long. All of this within Parallels. This was very exciting for me, but the excitement soon dwindled when I tried the Moto V3i, the Nokia 9300, the Nokia N91, etc. All of them brought up the dreaded 'wait 5-10 sec..' message from Parallels. With the info here that the other guys provided, I was able to get all my phones to work within Parallels, without that message.
I never used terminal. Just do this:
- open your startup drive window. Go to System/Library/Extensions/
- in there, find the file named IOUSBFamily.kext
- right click on that file and choose 'Copy', then right click on the Desktop and click 'Paste'
This just makes a backup incase something goes wrong.
- now back to System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBFamily.kext
- this is not really a file, but a folder with contents. Just right click (or control click) on this file, and choose 'Show package contents'
- now another window will open with a folder named 'Contents' in it.
- navigate to Contents/Plugins/
- inside that folder are the files that you should take out.
- Move any file with USBCDC in the filename out onto the desktop (I had 8 of them)
- and that's all. Now just restart, and launch Parallels and enjoy no more 'wait 5-10sec'!

After doing this, I could load the Moto Phone Tools, connect the V3i, send SMS's via the interface, and even dial or use the V3i as an external modem.
As for the N91, after install their software, I could use the N91 in 'PC Suite' mode, but the backup still got stuck. I updated the PC Suite software to the latest version and now all is working ok.

To Parallels: since we now know which files are 'hogging' the phone devices, wouldn't it be possible to write code within Parallels to prevent this?

 

@Jerry

thanks but i already updated my post.

i was able to follow jayholler's instructions based on MatthewR post.

About 8 kexts were renamed to .bak (its now a folder).

After restart, i never had problems installing SE PC Suite for my p990i. Did a syncronization and backup and all went well.

I also tried to update my p990i using Sony Ericsson Update Serice (SEUS) just to check if it will work, it detected the phone and went on to update my p990i.

This is a good hack. Will ditch boot camp for now.

After this 'modification' all my USB Devices are still working., Maxtor External Hard Drive, Mighty Mouse etc.


p990i connected via Parallels Desktop


p990i PC Suite Backup screen.


Backup properties



Visit my blog:
http://sep990i.blogspot.com/

 

I'm afraid it did not work on my system with a SE M600i, same system as P990. I deleted te files (after backup) and rebooted my machine. No change, the message is still there. Tried many times but to no avail.