As some people here might be using PScan on a Mac (probably a MacBook/Pro), here’s a word of warning for those, who think of upgrading to High Sierra (MacOS 10.13) on an officially unsupported machine.

My Macbook is a Late-2008 Aluminium body Macbook, reasonably pimped to 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive, so well up to the task of running High Sierra, using the popular “dosdude-1” install patch. This will trick the High Sierra installer into installing the latest OS on a legacy machine. I went for it, and everything works without issues, especially the XQuartz environment, which PScan uses on the Mac.

But now for the tricky bit: To ensure compatibility, the patch does something to the way USB lines are addressed. Unfortunately, this affects the communication between the computer and the interface. In the meantime, there has been a patch update addressing the issue, so there must have been more problems with USB devices. Yet this doesn’t help when it comes to PScan, the software simply wont’t talk to the interface anymore, dying with the comment “Interface failed:01”. This is a permanent error, and as of now this can’t be solved.

So if you own a Mac which can run High Sierra but is not officially supported by Apple, steer clear of the patch and the update, if you need to run PScan on that device.

In the end I bit the bullet and bought a Windows 8 (shudders!) Tablet off eBay, which does the Job nicely. On the up side, that tablet is just 10 inches, weighs 600 gms and is quite convenient to use in an automotive environment.

Michael,

is there any possibility that you can try something out on your dosdude-1 Macbook?

Could you buy a generic USB to RS232 cable? Buy one that has a genuine FTDI FT232R chip inside it; this is the chip that pscan uses.

Then see if it works as an RS232 cable. For example if you short pins 2 and 3 on the 9 pin RS232 end and run a terminal emulator then everything that you type in should be echo'ed back.

If this doesn't work then escalate it with the dosdude guys.

Mid 2009 MacBook Pro, upgraded to MacOS HS. Confirmed - it doesn't work.

Now to get the PScan unregistered/uninstalled on the Mac, and installed on my laptop running Linux.

Just try it on the Linux laptop. If it needs to deregister the Mac it will ask.

It won't do anything without you confirming it.

I had a bit of a play with the Macbook pro 17 that I rescued from a skip (blown GPU and cracked glass) a year or so ago.
I believe that it's what is known as an 8,3.
It was running Sierra fine: pscan worked.
Upgraded to High Sierra: pscan worked.
Erased hard disk and clean install of High Sierra: pscan worked.

Then I shrunk down the OSX partition and installed Debian Linux on it.

It was a bit of a battle but I got there in the end.

pscan worked.

Also, it used the same registration in Linux as if did in OSX, so you can boot into OSX or into Linux and it only counts as 1 of your 2 registrations.

So if you have one of these old Macs that has to be hacked to run High Sierra I would say that you have some other options with pscan. Linux certainly works (Ubuntu seems to be the most widely supported), and I am pretty sure that if you booted Windows using bootcamp then that will also work.

Edit: by the way I only made it work with the integrated Intel graphics. It seems quite hard to get the Radeon GPU to work with Linux, but I don't need it so I'm not bothered. Also I notice that the keyboard doesn't illuminate either.

If thats a late 2011 17" Macbook Pro, they still bring good money, as they are the last of the 17" Macbooks. I loved mine until it blew the graphics, uprated to 16GB ram and a SSD it was as quick as lightening.
It would go from off cold to fully booted up and ready to go in less than 8 seconds.
As far as reliabity is concerned, the AMD Raydeon graphics are the weak point, typical AMD they run too bloody hot.

If you still have it I am pretty sure that Linux would run without the Radeon.
When mine was playing up it would start to boot OSX and then hang I think when OSX started the Radeon chip.
When I put Linux on it was fine until I tried to start the X server, but since then I have figured out how to run Linux with the Radeon chip totally disabled.
Also it was about £200 I think to have a brand new Radeon chip soldered on which was a cheap way to get a Macbook Pro.

Anyway this isn't my point.

My point is that if you want to hack an older Macbook to run High Sierra and then find that it screws up pscan then you don't need to go and buy a whole other laptop or tablet.

Instead you could dual boot Linux, or probably Windows with bootcamp. I bet you could even boot the older unhacked version of OSX from an external drive and just plug it in and boot with the option key when you need it.