I just bought a second hand mac pro 5,1 (mid 2010) with no hard drives and no installation CDs. I bought a 120GB Samsung EVO SSD. I am waiting on an IcyDock to connect the SSD to hard drive bay 1. In the meantime I'm using an extention sata cable to connect the SSD to the motherboard (HDD bay 1) and powering it via a power adapter to sata power. I've formatted the SSD using my 2008 iMac to extended (journaled). I've inserted my Snow Leopard disc (that I bought years ago) into the optical drive restarted the mac holding c to boot from CD.
Satechi also has a double-C-port adapter for the larger MacBook Pro range, for example the Type-C Pro Hub with 4K HDMI, USB-C port, 2x USB 3.0 ports and SD/Micro Card Reader for £89.99/$89.99. Here's how to narrow down the cause of Mac startup issues. Macs are reliable machines, but like many of us they get cranky from time to time. A USB flash drive which contains a bootable disk image, this can be very handy in an emergency. I have a Macbook Pro, It has had a new hard drive now, as the old one died,.
I hear the disc spinning, the white background with gray apple logo appear but nothing happens. The disc stops spinning. Background stays.??? Am I doing anything wrong? Does the macpro side door have to be closed?
I've contacted apple about needing the original installer discs and they said I could just buy Snow Leopard and use that. I already own it. Another symptom: If I unattach the SSD and restart the mac holding the mouse button on, the DVD drive doesn't open. It only opens with the SSD attached. Click to expand.I cannot tell you that the following will work, but it is what I would try. Apple suggested that snow leopard is supported on this machine, but you are unable to boot to the old version you have on DVD.
This might mean that some critical drivers for your machine were not added until a later version of 10.6. If this is the case, you might try: 1. Boot an older mac from that installer DVD while it is connected to the 5,1 in target disk mode via firewire. After the install install finishes boot back onto the helper system and then install the combo updater to the drive to get it up to the latest 10.6.x release.
It would help to download the combo updates from the website before trying this out, rather than creating an account on the fresh install, and running software update. After that is complete, unmount and eject the 5,1 drive from the helper, and disconnect the firewire cable. Now power down the 5,1 to leave target disk mode, and try to boot.
If the problem with the older 10.6 disk was that it lacked drivers found only in later 10.6 releases, this should work around that. Re: your issue with the DVD drive when you disconnect the SSD. Have you jumpered both of the drives to cable select mode? Hi JQuick, my SSD isn't showing up on anything now.
I tried what you said too using firewire target disk mode, but SSD doesn't show up on the iMac. If i just plug it into my iMac via USB it doesn't show up, if I plug it into my PC via USB it doesn't show up. And if I plug it into my PC via sata it doesn't show up in Windows Explorer or bios. It was working earlier today when when I formatted it connected to my iMac but now it's no show on anything. I think it may have been short-circuited or something when I was switching the mac pro on and off when it was stuck on the white installer screen. I can't think of anything else to do other than return it.
Any ideas what may have happened? Click to expand.You can still install OSX 10.6 on your SSD using you iMac and update it. Power down your iMac. Connect your SSD using USB, but connect it to a different port (not the same USB port). Then open Disk Utility on iMac, do the formatting for OSX (Journaled extended). Boot in OSX Installation mode on your iMac using the SL disc (or via USB) 5. Then install OSX on your SSD and update it.
One thing that you should be aware of, if the previous owner was using Mountain Lion on the same machine, you would not be able to load Snow Leopard on it even with a new HDD/SDD. Please post your results, there are so many options available. @eyeangle Could you please try safe boot? To start up into Safe Mode (to Safe Boot), follow these steps.
1.Please shut down iMac. Press the power button.
Immediately after you hear the startup sound, press and hold the Shift key. (The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone, but not before the tone).
Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple logo and the progress indicator. After the logo appears, you will see a progress bar during startup. This indicates that your computer is booting in Safe Mode. You will have to login as admin (depending on your login setting).
Afterwards, please use and type. Hi JQuick, my SSD isn't showing up on anything now. I tried what you said too using firewire target disk mode, but SSD doesn't show up on the iMac. If i just plug it into my iMac via USB it doesn't show up, if I plug it into my PC via USB it doesn't show up.
And if I plug it into my PC via sata it doesn't show up in Windows Explorer or bios. It was working earlier today when when I formatted it connected to my iMac but now it's no show on anything. I think it may have been short-circuited or something when I was switching the mac pro on and off when it was stuck on the white installer screen.
I can't think of anything else to do other than return it. Any ideas what may have happened? Click to expand.If you ever learned anything about electrical circuits you may recall that a voltage will take the past of least resistance to ground. As devices have gotten smaller, other laws of physics come into play. Instead of only relying on Ohm's law to migrate to a lower potential, electrons are influence by other factors: electrons will choose to flow through the most expensive and most critical components and they will preferentially flow though devices which are too small for you to solder. (True story, dude.) Seriously though, you handled the drive a lot. Mechanical stress, or a static voltage did it's nasty.
It's moot, though, the drive sounds fried. Since your target disk is fried it might be helpful to take a step back and look at your goals. Your proximate goal is to install a working Snow Leopard SSD in a Mac Pro 5,1. But is this your end goal? Have you chosen 10.6.x because you have legacy software which requires this version or is this a mere stepping stone to ML or Mavericks?
If you have ML or Mavericks on this system will you also keep a legacy Snow Leopard boot drive around? The SSD you have chosen is rather small. Do you plan to have one or more spinning platters for your data and/or to mount as a /User partition? How have you planned to back up the system? Do you have 4 empty drive sleds for this Mac or did you choose the icy dock instead of a 2.5'-3.5' mounting bracket because you have none?
Why ask all these question? If you plan to boot more recent OS versions you may want to manually lay out an EFI rescue partition before installing SL, since you will need one later in the life of the drive.
Even though you may wish to have an SSD boot partition, if you will later have a backup boot part ion on a spinning disk, it might be worth your while to go with that route for initial installation, and then migrate to SSD after you have that working. This might save time, since you are currently blocked by returning and getting a replacement for the SSD.
Click to expand.I guess I'm a little late to the discussion, but the OP having a 2008 iMac really makes the whole thing easy to solve. Too bad an SSD was probably fried in the process. You could have used the iMac to download Mavericks (or (Mountain) Lion for $20) and make a bootable USB installer following. The OP has a copy of Snow Leopard so there is no legality issue, besides Macs are sold with both hardware and software bundled, Apple sending a free copy of 10.6.4 disc to OP is proof enough. Since the SSD seems dead, OP could wait for the 10.6.4 DVD and new SSD's arrival before a straight installation or prepare a USB Mavericks installer to bypass Snow Leopard. You can still install OSX 10.6 on your SSD using you iMac and update it.
Power down your iMac. Connect your SSD using USB, but connect it to a different port (not the same USB port). Then open Disk Utility on iMac, do the formatting for OSX (Journaled extended). Boot in OSX Installation mode on your iMac using the SL disc (or via USB) 5. Then install OSX on your SSD and update it. One thing that you should be aware of, if the previous owner was using Mountain Lion on the same machine, you would not be able to load Snow Leopard on it even with a new HDD/SDD.
Please post your results, there are so many options available. Click to expand.Your advice to the OP is mostly correct, but I am unsure about your caveat regarding Mountain Lion. Unless there was a specific set of firmware updates for Mountain Lion on this hardware which is incompatible with 10.6, I don't know why this would fail.
I bought a used 5,3 mini which had originally shipped with Lion, and was later upgraded to Mountain Lion. It currently has boot partitions for both Mountain Lion and Snow Leopard on it.
My advice on this topic is based on my experience with the 2012 Mini Server, not a 2010 Mac Pro. If there is a specific reason it would fail for the Mac Pro then my advice would be worthless. I am assuming the following: 1. The latest widely available install media is 10.6.3. Mac Pro driver support for the Mac Pro 5,3 was not complete until at least 10.6.4.
The failures of people running Lion or Mountain Lion to install were not related to their current release level but by 1 and 2 above. Macman45 and flowrider, were thinking along the right lines here - getting bootable environment =10.6.4 is the right approach. However, Apple never sold retail DVDs more recent than 10.6.3 so eBay will be a dead end. If you have any specify information about how or why running Lion or above could alter the firmware of the 5,1 please share it. This would be critically important. Barring that, there is still a way forward. I guess I'm a little late to the discussion, but the OP having a 2008 iMac really makes the whole thing easy to solve.
Too bad an SSD was probably fried in the process. You could have used the iMac to download Mavericks (or (Mountain) Lion for $20) and make a bootable USB installer following. The OP has a copy of Snow Leopard so there is no legality issue, besides Macs are sold with both hardware and software bundled, Apple sending a free copy of 10.6.4 disc to OP is proof enough. Since the SSD seems dead, OP could wait for the 10.6.4 DVD and new SSD's arrival before a straight installation or prepare a USB Mavericks installer to bypass Snow Leopard.
@eyeangle Could you please try safe boot? To start up into Safe Mode (to Safe Boot), follow these steps. 1.Please shut down iMac. Press the power button. Immediately after you hear the startup sound, press and hold the Shift key. (The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone, but not before the tone). Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple logo and the progress indicator.
After the logo appears, you will see a progress bar during startup. This indicates that your computer is booting in Safe Mode. You will have to login as admin (depending on your login setting). Afterwards, please use and type.
I guess I'm a little late to the discussion, but the OP having a 2008 iMac really makes the whole thing easy to solve. Too bad an SSD was probably fried in the process. You could have used the iMac to download Mavericks (or (Mountain) Lion for $20) and make a bootable USB installer following this link. The OP has a copy of Snow Leopard so there is no legality issue, besides Macs are sold with both hardware and software bundled, Apple sending a free copy of 10.6.4 disc to OP is proof enough. Since the SSD seems dead, OP could wait for the 10.6.4 DVD and new SSD's arrival before a straight installation or prepare a USB Mavericks installer to bypass Snow Leopard. Click to expand.Hindsight's 20/20. Although i'm trying to avoid the bootable USB option.
When I pick up the SSD tomorrow I'm going to plug it into the iMac, boot into snow leopard install CD and install it onto the SSD after formatting it. Then boot into it using boot disk and upgrade to 10.6.8 then plug it into the mac pro. When the install disc arrives from apple in a few weeks, might do a clean install then with that, most likely will. Then upgrade to Mavericks and migrate everything from iMac. OK, by doing a clean install of SL first, you will create a partition layout without a recovery partition. Fresh installs of Lion and above create a recovery partition during installation. However, since this involves repartitioning the boot drive, it will wipe out the previous contents.
An upgrade install which preserves data from the earlier boot drive will not repartition the drive. Instead, if you can purchase and download the Mavericks installer via the iMac, you could follow Apples instructions for creating a bootable installer on a USB thumb drive. Using the thumb drive to do a fresh install to the SSD in the Mac Pro will lay out a recovery partition, and give you more (and easier) options for diagnosing or recovering from future problems. Eliminating a three phase DVD based recovery involving an intermediate upgrade from 10.6.4-10.6.latest seems like a big enough savings to outweigh the hassle of creating a usb bootstrap. I suspect that this will save hours of time on the initial installation, and alsi improve future disaster recovery or troubleshooting time. I'm being very careful this time round not to ruin my second SSD, I don't think I'll be able to return two Samsung 120GB EVOs. When I exchanged the first one he said, 'These are the best, they never fail.'
And gave me a weird look. Anyway, I tried again plugging the hard drive into the sata port in HDD bay 1 and powering the SSD externally with an adapter. I booted up holding Option and selected run Mavericks installer off USB thumb drive. It booted up the installer and I selected disk utility. No SSD showing up, DOH!
So I shut it down 'properly' and removed the sata cable connected to HDD bay 1 and unplugged it from the power. Then I connected it via a USB adapter instead and rebooted into Mavericks installer.
This time the SSD showed up in disk utility. Why wouldn't the SSD show up when connected via sata and powered externally?
Does the Mac Pro 5,1 really require the 2.5' to 3.5' adapter to be plugged in and connected to the motherboard power as well as sata from the same port? I'm expecting this adapter very shortly now I just hope the SSD shows up in disk utility when it's connected with this.
Otherwise, I have no idea why. I'm being very careful this time round not to ruin my second SSD, I don't think I'll be able to return two Samsung 120GB EVOs. When I exchanged the first one he said, 'These are the best, they never fail.' And gave me a weird look. Anyway, I tried again plugging the hard drive into the sata port in HDD bay 1 and powering the SSD externally with an adapter. I booted up holding Option and selected run Mavericks installer off USB thumb drive. It booted up the installer and I selected disk utility.
No SSD showing up, DOH! So I shut it down 'properly' and removed the sata cable connected to HDD bay 1 and unplugged it from the power. Then I connected it via a USB adapter instead and rebooted into Mavericks installer. This time the SSD showed up in disk utility. Why wouldn't the SSD show up when connected via sata and powered externally?
Does the Mac Pro 5,1 really require the 2.5' to 3.5' adapter to be plugged in and connected to the motherboard power as well as sata from the same port? I'm expecting this adapter very shortly now I just hope the SSD shows up in disk utility when it's connected with this. Otherwise, I have no idea why.
The easiest way to go about installing our is by starting with the device. If you want to verify that the adapter and the driver were installed properly click Connect the device to the Mac.
Once connected click on the Apple icon and on ‘About This Mac’ Click on ‘More Info’ Click on ‘USB’ on the left and on the ‘USB-Serial Controller D’ If all is well you should be seeing something like this: Time to get the driver! Fire up Safari and browse to and scroll down to Mac. Click on the ‘PL2303 MacOSX10.6 dmg v.1.4.0.zip’, the Safari Downloads window should come up: Double click on the mdPL23-3MacOSX10 Now double click on the PL23031.4.0.dmg to mount the image Now double click on the PL23031.4.0 to start the installation Once the installer comes up click ‘Continue’ to proceed. Then ‘Select a Destination’ click on your desired drive and click ‘Continue’ to move forward Now just click ‘Install’ to continue.
You may be asked of your username and password – enter them and click ‘OK’ You’ll get a warning about restarting the computer after the installation is complete. This is normal, click ‘Continue Installation‘. Installing should start (takes a couple of minutes to complete) When it’s done you should see this: Click on ‘Restart’ to reboot the Mac.
After you restart, check that everything has installed OK. On the Mac there are two methods to determine this: Method 1: Click on ‘Applications’ Click on ‘Utilities’ Click on ‘Terminal’ Type: kextstat grep prolific and: ioreg -c IOSerialBSDClient grep usb Your results should be very close to this: Method 2: Click on ‘System Preferences’ Click on ‘Network’ Now click on the ‘+’ sign on the bottom left, and then on the ‘Select the interface and enter a name for the new Service’ click on ‘Interface’ – you should be seeing the ‘USB-Serial Controller D’ there. This will create a “Network” interface for a modem or serial port. Because it’s a serial port, it’ll say “Not Configured” and that’s normal: From the “Advanced” button you can change default settings (usually not needed). And this won’t change the “Not Configured” message – that’s still ok.
Now finally, you need an application which will talk to the serial port. On Mac, the file which maps to the port is /dev/cu.usbserial. If you have a null modem cable and a terminal program on the other side, the Mac actually has a built-in terminal program called “screen” that you can use to test the connection.
Once that is up and connected (and if the serial ports are set to the same baud rate and paramters), you can type on either side and see the characters come across. Support USB Serial on the Mac is a real melding of the very new and very old.
If you have any trouble, just visit to see existing FAQs for. Where to Buy amtap amazon:asin=B00425S1H8. Hi Sam, we’re glad to hear you found our article helpful! Getting scrolling in screen working is a little different depending on which version of osX you’re running and requires editing screenrc, unfortunately not a single command for this that I know of. Here is the best thread I’ve found on enabling screen scrollback (and more): Here’s another thread from stack overflow that talks about some options to enable scrollback in screen: A lot of people also prefer alternative terminals like Zterm, iTerm 2, etc.
Several are mentioned in the stack overflow thread. Hi, Loaded it all up fine, however my main purpose was that so I can telnet to devices on the serial port. My question is running the telnet what would I put after the telnet command to identify the port, at the moment I have unknown-00-26-08-f5-af-f4: chrismccann$ kextstat grep prolific 85 0 0x58412000 0x8000 0x7000 com.prolific.driver.PL2303 (2.0.0) unknown-00-26-08-f5-af-f4: chrismccann$ ioreg -c IOSerialBSDClient grep usb “IOTTYBaseName” = “usbserial” “IOCalloutDevice” = “/dev/cu.usbserial” “IODialinDevice” = “/dev/tty.usbserial” “IOTTYDevice” = “usbserial” typically telnet com1 or an IP is put in, but for this device what would I use. Many thanks, Chris.
I wonder if anybody knows if there is any issues with the commonly available usb to serial cables that are so commonly purchased unwittingly that are a clone of the official pl2303. Prolific seem to be deliberately isolating compatibility against these devices in the newest Windows drivers, and wondered if thats the same with the mac drivers. Its just not worth wasting time putting in drivers to have to fight them out again when prolific deliberately make them to not work. Bah humbug @ prolific, not fair to cause issues for consumers when they should target the clone chip manufacturers directly!. Jeff Everett. Hi Denis- Thanks for posting with your question. Indeed we can confirm that on Windows, there is code to check and prevent the Prolific driver from working with a counterfeit chip.
As far as we know the check is only built into the Windows driver, we’re not certain if this is the same for OS X. Sorry we can’t provide more info here- I’d try and test on a lab mac but we don’t have any of the counterfeit cables lying around, only ours, the ones we know work ? If you have one of the counterfeit cables and find that these instructions don’t work, please post back for the benefit of all. Again, thanks for posting with your question. Best wishes- Jeff. Bernie Thompson.
Hi Frustrated- The short answer here is that you’ll need to make sure you’re properly terminating any applications or connections using the USB serial device to avoid this issue. We’ve actually seen this across platforms (Windows as well) and are communicating the issue back to Prolific, however in the meantime carefully exiting out of applications and killing processes where needed is your best workaround in the meantime. Here’s a more detailed explanation as to why: Best wishes- Jeff Everett MCITP Enterprise Support Tech Plugable Technologies. Alex. After following these directions, and the install of the PL23031.4.0 appearing to be successful, I do not see the USB serial monitor option anywhere. Whether I look on system preferences under network or in terminal.
In system preferences/netowrk, when I attempt to add a something, there is no USB option as indicated on this page. In Terminal, all I see is /dev/tty.Bluetooth-Modem /dev/tty.usbmodemfa141 /dev/tty.Bluetooth-PDA-Sync I believe the usb/tty.usbmodemfa141 is the Arduino USB driver I previously installed. But I never see a USBserial device or driver.
I have an Xbee module and Xbee adaptor connected to the computer via a USB cable. This is on a Macbook Pro running 10.6.8 also using CoolTerm I never see the USBserial option, only the USBmodem141 option. Thans very much for any help, I’ve been struggling with connecting to these Xbee modules for a few weeks now.
Jordan. Jeff Everett. Hi Jordan (and any others who might be reading this)- One reason our instructions would not work is if you have purchased an FTDI chipset based USB Serial Device.
Another common reason for the symptoms you describe would be trying to add the USB Serial Device to network connections when the cable isn’t connected to the system. If the Prolific Driver installer works without an error, then the commands below should return values similar to those listed above when run with the adapter connected: kextstat grep prolific and: ioreg -c IOSerialBSDClient grep usb If you are not seeing the expected output from these commands, please verify that your adapter matches the 3rd photo in our post, showing the entry in system profile: If your adapter does not match this entry, our instructions unfortunately will not be relevant for your adapter. If these instructions don’t work, please email with your Amazon order ID for further support.
Best wishes- Jeff. Pacman. I’m trying to use a PL2303 USB-to-Serial cable with my Olimex SAM7-P256 board.
I have the Prolific driver installed, and the device is recognized and appears as /dev/cu.usbserial The board has a standard RS232 port. It seems that no matter what I do, I get ‘gibberish’ characters. I’ve calculated the baudrate several times, it should be close to 9600 baud (9595) on the microcontroller. On my PowerMac G5, I tried using the network control panel to change the baud-rate, but no matter which rate I select, there is no change in the gibberish characters.
The characters.only. changes when I change the baudrate on my microcontroller board, not on the computer. I also tried using cu –parity=none -s 9600 -l /dev/cu.usbserial dir -But I still don’t see the characters I’m sending from the microcontroller. Which end really controls the baud-rate, the one at the RS232 plug end or the one at the USB-plug end? I am sure I can’t help you, because I gave up on my microcontroller communication, but I’d like to tell you what I would try (if you haven’t tried it already): 1: Try unplugging your USB-to-Serial adapter.
2: Open the terminal, type (without the $): $ ls /dev grep usbserial 3: You should see nothing after the above line, now plug in your USB-to-Serial adapter, then type $ ls /dev grep usbserial You should see ‘cu.usbserial’ and ‘tty.usbserial’. If you see those two device names, I believe you should contact the manufacturer of the UPS.
If you do not see the two device names, your USB-to-Serial adapter might be defective. Try verifying on a friends computer. OK, let’s assume you see the two device names. Open your “System Preferences”, then click your “USB-Serial Controller D” (or whatever it’s called), click the - button in the bottom of the panel (to remove it!), click “Apply” and quit System Preferences. Try your UPS software again and see if it works now.
You’ve come a long way already. It seems your USB-to-Serial adapter is working. Did you also try removing the interface in the System Preferences? Why would you want to do that? Answer: Because exactly this might conflict with the UPS software. If it still doesn’t work, add it back in, also try configuring the baudrate to 9600 baud. Another thing: Try asking the UPS vendor if the name of the serial port is important.
You verify that your USB-to-Serial adapter works by connecting either a modem or another computer via a null-modem cable (eg. A cable where only GND is connected and Rx is connected to Tx and Tx is connected to Rx; that’s all that’s necessary). Then open a terminal window on your Mac OS X machine and type $ cat /dev/cu.usbserial If you’ve connected another Mac OS X machine with another USB-to-Serial adapter, you can type $ echo “Hello” /dev/cu.usbserial Then the text should appear in the ‘cat’ window. You could also run for a ‘terminal program’ (I think PuTTY will work) on a PC and configure it to 9600 baud, 8N1. Or if you have an easier way, just use that; eg.
If you have an old 9600 baud Hayes modem, it would be fine for such tests.Hmm I actually have an old Hayes modem here, I could go and see if it works with my adapter. =) Also try and look in your manual for the UPS and read what it says about compatibility on the RS232 port. The vendor might have the manual available as a PDF download.
I just searched the Web and it seems I’ve found their site. Try this page: -There are 3 interesting links: Product Information, Support and Service, “Customer Issues Department” and “Request technical assistance on product(s) already in use”.
Perhaps the first one or the last one is most relevant. I’m not sure I can come up with other ideas, but perhaps someone else reading this might have a few suggestions. Thanks so much for all your input. I’ve tried everything. The interface wasn’t in the System Preferences to begin with so I added it and used different configurations, I also assigned the baudrate to 9600 baud, but still won’t detect there is an ‘Auto-search for UPS’ feature in the software of the UPS and this shows up in the terminal: “Broadcast Message from (no tty) at 23:21 EST UPS Monitoring Software Message: Communication Lost: check connection and port setting.
” It can’t detect the tty So i guess the UPS doesn’t support the adapter? I think there’s no problem with the UPS hardware.
RS232 is RS232; it’s the same all over the World with all devices; fortunately it’s not messed up like most other standards. ? -But the problem is with the software. Having written software for a PL2303 device myself, I know that there are a few things to do, to write the software properly. One thing.not.
to do when writing software, is to use ‘/dev/somename’, because this changes like the weather; different device, different name. There might be one more thing left to try If you right-click on your software application, you’ll see the “Show Package Contents” in the contextual menu. Choose this menu item.
You’ll now see a folder called “Contents”, open it. In this folder, there might be more than one interesting file. You’ll have to do a bit of hunting yourself, but one thing I can suggest, is that you try dragging “Info.plist” onto your TextEdit application and look at the contents.
Try and see if you can find a name of a serial port in there. If there’s nothing interesting in that file, try looking inside the “Resources” folder. Files ending in.plist are usually the places where the developer would store such things, which could be tweaked or changed without re-compiling the application.
From the terminal, you can also trying CD’ing to the application’s Contents folder and do a $ grep -R -i “serial”. if nothnig found, try “tty” instead of serial.
Still nothing? -try “rs232” or “uart” or “usart”.
(Just a thought: I find it a bit weird, if the UPS vendor writes sofware to communicate with the UPS via RS232 and the same vendor does not mention anything at all about compatibility or how to actually connect the UPS in the manual – because why then use several months/years on writing the software? -But I guess some companies want to be strange.).
James. Thanks for posting! The USB serial adapter is not working with the current version of OSX 10.11, as you have discovered. El Capitan is still very much in development, and it is normal at this stage for drivers to not work, then start working again as Apple addresses various functions in each new release.
Apple doesn’t give much information to third party developers that allow them to understand the changes Apple is making, and often we can’t know for sure until the final release version is made available shortly before the public release what, if any, driver changes will be needed. If the driver doesn’t work in the final version, we will immediately begin looking for work-arounds while working with the chip maker, Prolific to develop a driver that does work. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful, but as long as El Capitan is in beta, we won’t be able to guarantee support for it. The enemy is called SIP. A newly integrated feature which does in fact prevents any unsigned KEXT to be loaded. This means the Profilic driver is shown in the system overview but does in fact have no KEXT loaded to make this thing work. I’ve found a workaround which is kinda annoying and does in fact work only as long as you don’t plug any other USB devices into the port after getting the adapter to work.
This means: If you use the routine i’ll describe in a few moments you have to be aware that after you plug any other USB device into the port you’re using the profilic with you have to REDO all these STEPS!!!!! @Mitchell Yes it still doeas have the issue with 10.11.1. I found out that if you leave SIP disabled the whole time you can use it normally with having to do my described steps once.
This has been the case here and i thought i had turned it back on which gave the impression as if they’ve had fixed it. Unfortunately you have to stick to my procedure described above but if you leave SIP disabled you can plug in any usb device afterwards it will still work. If you reenable SIP you have to do everthing again, as soon as you plug a different device in. I hope this driver gets signed soon with apple because it is a pain in the a.
This method works with any unsigned driver!!! If you have a non working USB device check the /System/Library/Extensions path for a.kext file with the name of your device. If you find it there and your device is not working you can be sure its a signature problem. Just use the commands i described above and change the filename of the.kext to the filename you need. This helped me very often to get things going.
Apple should really overthink it signature policy. It’s just annoying ?. Charlie. Hi Doug, If you have the Plugable adapter, the latest driver for OS X is properly signed and there is no need to turn off SIP in order to install it. If you are having problems getting it installed, please contact us at and we can help. However, reading your previous comment, it looks like SIP isn’t the problem, since SIP will prevent the installation if there is a problem with the driver.
More likely there is some configuration issue or connection problem with the Dell switch. A good place to start is to make sure you have the right cable (Null modem or straight) and the correct port settings. If Dell provides a cable, it is usually best to use that one. Doug Lewis.