USB Delorme Earthmate patch, it works!!!!

J

johnnybn

Bit poster
I've been a Parallels user for about 4 mos now, but this is my first post. The only thing I have been continuously annoyed at with Parallels is not being able to use my Delorme Earthmate GPS with Street Atlas. Every time I connected it, I would get an error message like:

"The USB device you have connected is being used by another process, please disconnect and try again in 5-10 seconds".

Osx was grabbing the Earthmate and not letting Parallels use it because OSX viewed it as a I/O device (keyboard, mouse). Well, the other day while I was looking at the new version of Street Atlas 2007 on the Delorme website, I stumbled across a patch. Some guy has written a driver patch for OSX that makes OSX hand the Earthmate off to Parallels.

I installed it this morning and its working! I can plug my Earthmate into the laptop and use it now. The only downside is that the guy is charging $8 via paypal for the driver. He's a real nice guy, I've talked with him on the phone a couple of times and he's legit. Please, do not purchase it and post it for free download. I'm trying to help him out by posting here and I don't want it to become a liability for him.

Here's the link to his website:

http://web.mac.com/michaelsimpson/iWeb/Site/Earthmate Driver.html
 
Now if Michael Simpson can do this for one device in his spare time, presumably without access to Parallels source code and other useful information, why can't the Parallels staff do that for a generic USB device, i.e. have a kernel extension that causes a popup dialog box like

"The USB device you have connected has been intercepted by OS X. If you intended to have this device used by your active Windows virtual machine, please press this button [in the dialog box], disconnect the unit and re-connect it within the next 30 seconds. Parallels will then assign the USB device to your active Windows virtual machine. This USB device will not be available to OS X or other virtual machines until you shut down your currently active virtual machine."

Is it that much harder to fix the problem than the current implementation of Parallels which just gives you a popup dialog box stating that there is a problem? Wouldn't MANY users benefit from this? Aren't there a lot of users whose main interest in buying Parallels is for use with Windows-only USB devices like GPS units, that currently don't work with Parallels?
 
bobodobo said:
Now if Michael Simpson can do this for one device in his spare time, presumably without access to Parallels source code and other useful information...
Click to expand...

Hello, this is Michael Simpson. Yes, I did this in my spare time because I wanted to use Street Atlas 2007 with the Earthmate LT-20 I had just bought. It took me about two weeks of research and experimentation to figure it out. LOL, you can really screw up your machine if you write kernel extensions wrong.

Parallels can't write a generic response. I've given this alot of thought I and I don't know how to write a generic extension that would not intrude on legitimate OSX devices.

If you have a device that says that it is in use and you want to try and get it to work, email me and we'll work together to see if we can get it to go.

Regards,
Michael
 
thanks for your hard work michael.

what's the possibility of getting the source code so we could possibly extend this to cover other HID devices?
 
nivenh said:
thanks for your hard work michael.

what's the possibility of getting the source code so we could possibly extend this to cover other HID devices?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the first. The second, zero. I once wrote a program, J2Exe. It was a program that turned java byte codes into a clickable Windows executable. I started out by selling it. And just the people who bought it talked to me about technical support issues. So there was not much a drain on my time. A friend of mine convinced me to open source it and just sell support for it. I did. I got so many I'll pay you if you help me. I got inudated with help requests. I spent a lot of time helping people and I made a grand total of $0 for all that time. Time is not free for me. It was alot of work for me and there was no reward and very little gratitude. I think it may be the way of the world. My reality. I have a job and a family. I try to spend my free time with my family.

If you think there are no support issues for usb devices, there are. Street Atlas 2006 does not update the GPS but every 5 to 30 seconds. On the other hand, 2007 leaves a nice trail of green dots for the track. One guy said that tracking was crashing Parallels. He finally figured out that turning the LED off fixed. It is weird but every USB device seems to have a personality of it's own and every person wants me to help them figure it out. It takes considerable time and if I'm going to do that, I only really want to do it for people who really need and want it. I don't want to spend my time with tinkerers. The 7.95 works as a very nice filter for me.

What I will do is if you have a device and you want to try and get it working, we can do that and you get a driver for nothing more than your time. Seems like a fair trade to me.

Barring that, source forge has a project emul that helped me figure out what was happening with some of the drivers. I did not use any of that code, but I was able to deduce how the Mac loaded usb HID devices. The other is on Apple's developer website under the iokit usb device driver development. There are some sample kext projects to help get you started.

Michael
 
krsmichael said:
A friend of mine convinced me to open source it and just sell support for it. I did. I got so many I'll pay you if you help me. I got inudated with help requests. I spent a lot of time helping people and I made a grand total of $0 for all that time. Time is not free for me. It was alot of work for me and there was no reward and very little gratitude. I think it may be the way of the world. My reality. I have a job and a family. I try to spend my free time with my family.
Click to expand...
Why did you make $0 if you were selling support? I charge for my time and have little trouble collecting. If the deal is pay for support, and you want support, pay me. Simple. If I know you, I'll bill you; if not, you pay up front.

I personally have no need for the driver or support, so I'm not arguing for release, but suggesting that you might be able to make some money if you handle it right. And FWIW, I'm grateful to people who help me. You may have had some bad luck.
 
I'm not sure how much money Michael is going to make at $8 a piece. What I do know is that the gps functions of Street Atlas was the one thing that I lost in my transition to a Mac. With his driver I have regained that while keeping all the benefits of Parallels. I know that I would have bought a special Parallels compatible version of the Street Atlas for $30 premium (if it was available). This driver at this price is a bargain.
 
rich_w said:
how about a patch that makes a keyspan serial to usb adapter to work reliably...I'd pay $20 for that.
Click to expand...

I second this motion...

The Keyspan "test" comes out OK but apps say that the device is not connected. Works under Windows on a native machine, so I know it is a problem with Parallels...
 
DeLorme Street Atlas and Earthmate LT-20 working

I used to have to use bootcamp to run my GPS on DeLorme Street Atlas 2007. Today i made a BootCampVM for parallels and it recognises the GPS. I am so glad i dont have to reboot into BootCamp now to use Street Atlas. Also CE creative cam works in that partition also , so every thing i need parallels to do for me is now done, Love the Coherence feature too, It works great. Only thing i have to remember is to get back to the small mac window of xp before I shutdown. Other wise the window size changes.

I am running 3120, on a 2 GB MacBook Pro. OS 10.4.8

Great job Parallels
 
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