MacOS Tips¶

• Table of contents
• MacOS Tips
• CHIRP Beginners Guide
• Mac USB Drivers
  • FTDI cables
  • Prolific cables
  • RTSystems cables
  • Silicon Labs CP210x
  • WinChipHead CH340 series chipset
• Tips
• Troubleshooting

CHIRP Beginners Guide¶

The Beginners Guide has general help. Click here for the Beginners Guide
If you need Mac-specific help, you are at the right page.

Join the Mailing list & search the archives for similar problem reports & how they were resolved, and/or ask the group. Please include enough info about the problem and situation so the community will be able to help you.

Mac USB Drivers¶

USB to serial cables are not merely wire, they contain small computer circuits at one end of the cable that respond as a USB device and convert the data to serial. These cables are not all the same, so the computer needs a software "driver" so it can recognize the cable and speak to it correctly. You will need to install one of these 5 below.

FTDI cables¶

All modern MacOS versions have built-in support for FTDI-based cables. No additional drivers are needed nor should be installed.

Prolific cables¶

All modern MacOS versions have built-in support for Prolific-based cables. No additional drivers for modern cables are needed nor should be installed. If you have one of the phased-out PL-2303-based cables (or one of the huge number of counterfeit ones based on that chipset) you might need to install drivers.

RTSystems cables¶

Many RTSystems cables will work fine on MacOS. Older generations used bespoke vendor/product IDs which prevented this. See this very old page RTSystemsCablesAndMavericks for details.

Silicon Labs CP210x¶

All modern MacOS versions have built-in support for SiliconLabs-based cables. No additional drivers are needed nor should be installed.

WinChipHead CH340 series chipset¶

All modern MacOS versions have built-in support for WCH-based cables. No additional drivers are needed nor should be installed.

Tips¶

• In many cases you need to connect the cable to the radio first, then power the radio on. The exact procedure varies by radio.
• Some radios need to be put into a "clone" mode to transfer to PC, some radios may need to be configured to use the mic/speaker jacks for PC transfer instead of for the speaker/mic. The exact procedure varies by radio.
• You will need to download from the radio to CHIRP first, before uploading anything to the radio. CHIRP creates a template from the radio download so it knows how to talk to the radio.
• If you want to download from one radio and upload those settings to another radio, first download from each radio to a separate “tab” of CHIRP. Then copy/paste from one tab to the other & upload back to the same radio that produced that tab. Do not try to upload to a radio directly from a tab that was not downloaded from that same radio.
• Many USB to serial cables include a counterfeit Prolific chip. This can cause connection problems because the official Prolific driver will ignore the counterfeit chip. Some people have reported success by using an older version of the Prolific driver, or a 3rd party driver.
• If you are using multiple USB cables, each will create a different “virtual port”, meaning that you will need to select the correct virtual port for your radio when connecting to your radio. CHIRP will give you this opportunity each time you download from the radio.
• If your radio is not "Supported", you can try downloading the newest Daily Build to see if support was recently added.

Troubleshooting¶

You can verify that the drivers are installed & working by connecting the USB cable to your Mac, then running “System Profiler”, or “System Information” (found in /Applications/Utilities ). When the USB cable is connected and drivers correctly installed, the cable will show up in the USB section of the System Profiler.

Another way to see that the driver is correctly installed is to open Terminal and type:

ls /dev/cu*

It will return a list of virtual serial ports including something similar to:

/dev/cu.usbserial-A501XQ5I     (suffix will vary)

You may also type:

kextstat

That will return a long list of kexts, including something similar to this at the bottom (most recently installed are listed last):

142    0 0xffffff7f81fc8000 0x8000      0x8000     com.FTDI.driver.FTDIUSBSerialDriver (2.2.18) <112 32 5 4 3 1>

Look at the CHIRP log for clues.

~/.chirp/debug.log

Join the Mailing list & search the archives for similar problem reports & how they were resolved, and/or ask the group. Please include enough info about the problem and situation so the community will be able to help you.