OS X: Flyswatter, JTAG & RS232

Since I lent my RS232/USB adapter to a friend it was nice opportunity to experiment with Flyswatter on-board RS232 port. OS X does not support FTDI devices out of the box, but it's not a problem for OpenOCD, which uses generic interface to communicate JTAG board. Things get a little bit more complicated when you're trying to get on-board RS232 port working.

I started with installing stock drivers from FTDI site. Current version supports Snow Leopard. With these drivers installed system started to detect two COM ports but JTAG part stopped to work as OpenOCD failed to claim USB device.

Long story short: you'll need to edit kext content to prevent first usb device from being recognized as a virtual COM port. Nothing fancy, simple text editor would do the trick for all you need to edit is plain XML file. Find line <key>FT2232C_A</key> and delete it along with following <dict> element. Reload kext using kextunload/kextload and voila - JTAG works, "cu -s 115200 -l cu.usbserial-FS000000B" works.

OS X 10.6.2

MBP started overheating after this update. PRAM resetting, as google suggested, helped. No other significant damages detected.

Tasting Cocoa

The best way to learn new technology is to use it. Here is a small project I've put together while learning Mac OS X/Cocoa development: AudioBookBinder, may be someone will find it useful. This utility takes collection of mp3 files (or any other audio format recognizable by OS X) and binds it to one audiobook(m4b file) suitable for listening on iPod. The initial idea was to make it a GUI app, but I've been spoiled with command line power for too long.