Of Wacom tablets, terminals, serial ports, and adapters

I have a USB-to-serial adapter on one of the USB ports connected to a serial
port Wacom tablet. The Wacom is controlled via TabletMagic (opensource
project) preference pane. The pane initiates a daemon when required (the user
can enable & disable the daemon from within the pane).

All was well until I tried installing a Wacom driver (there are no modern
drivers for serial port tablets, but where's the fun in not experimenting?).

Once I determined that the Wacom s/w didn't work I uninstalled everything I
could find (a few files in Extensions and Application Support folders) that
had names related to Wacom or Tablet. (There is nothing other than the pref
pane associated with TabletMagic so there is no danger of getting too
delete-happy...)

The tablet now doesn't work as it used to -- sometimes it is not recognized
by the pref pane, sometimes it is but no data transfer takes place.

I plugged a loop-back adapter to the USB-serial adapter and launched
QuickTerm. (QT settings: 9600, 8/1/none & no handshaking.) The resulting text
on the screen is good from between 160-250 characters. Then lock-up. Or
outright crash.

Any suggestion as to my next step would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Dave

Mac Intel Mini 1.83 GHz / 2 GB / 230 GB
OS X 10.5.8
TabletMagic 2.0b17d2
Prolific-based PL2303 USB-serial adapter
Source Forge PL2303 drivers 0.3.1

 

I have 2 of the USB-serial adapters. Swapping the adapters doesn't change the
symptoms.

Thanks,
Dave

 

Permissions repair and PRAM reset, no joy.

Dave

 

Try another USB port? Spit on the connectors? Complete backup restore?
Maybe not worth it......

Anything serial port is ancient, and Wacoms aren't that expensive unless
you're into the commercial sized ones.

 

I have a USB-to-serial adapter

Problem solved.

The solution proved to be much simpler than I thought: the Wacom (or the
USB-serial adapter) doesn't like being plugged into a USB hub. Once plugged
into one of the Mac Mini's ports, all is good.

You might drag out that adapter from the closet. The drivers from Source
Forge really are light years better than the ones by the chip manufacturer:

<http://sourceforge.net/projects/osx-pl2303/>

Thanks to all,
Dave

 

If I ever find the time, there is actually one case where I'd like to

The Keyspan has it's own drivers that -- according to Google ;-) -- seem to
do just fine.

Re. a comm utility, I found that CoolTerm does the best of the ones I've
tried. Available at all the usual places.

Dave