Howto: Installing ASIX’s USB Gigabit Ethernet Driver on Mac OS X Lion 10.7

Posted on 27. Jul, 2011 by in USB2-E1000

If you plug one of our Plugable USB2-E1000 USB 2.0 to Gigabit Ethernet Adapters or others based on the ASIX 88178 chipset into an Mac Lion system, Apple will match it with the Apple Gigabit Ethernet driver that’s included in Lion.

Unfortunately, Apple limits compatibility to Apple brand adapters (even though they use the same ASIX chipset). And it fails on non-Apple adapters in a confusing way: it will show as “Connected” in the Network control panel, but connections out won’t work — you’ll notice it has a self-assigned IP address (169.*), no router, and no DNS server. It looks something like this:

Fortunately, ASIX has an updated driver which works on Lion (and older versions). Note that if you had done this before upgrading to Lion, your old driver may be 32-bit. Lion moves all systems to a 64-bit kernel, so in the case of a Lion upgrade, you may have to uninstall the old driver (uninstaller included in the driver package), and follow the steps below to get ASIX’s latest driver.

Download the Plugable USB2-E1000 (ASIX 88178 chipset) driver.

If you’re downlading with Safari, look for the Download folder the Lion has in your Dock by default. Click on that to bring up recent downloads, which looks like this:

Open that folder, then click on the “.dmg” to open the ASIX driver installer disk image.

The image then shows up on the left side of the window, below your other drives, called “DISK IMAGE”. Click on this to open the image, then click on the installer (the icon with the package opening).

You’re finally out of Lion’s folders and into the installer proper.

The ASIX 88178 driver isn’t big (254K)

You will be prompted to let the driver install.

A reboot is required for the newly installed driver to be active.

After the reboot, if you open the Network control panel, you should now see “Connected”, but now also with a properly assigned IP address, DNS, etc.

If that’s not the case (or something goes awry later), it’s common on Mac OS X to need a fresh interface for the adapter, which you can create via the network control panel (this creates a new, clean configuration for an adapter). See the ASIX Mac installation guide for details.

And once you have that automatically assigned IP address, you should be done – open Safari and enjoy!

And if you have a Plugable adapter and have any problems at all, we’re here to help. Visit support.plugable.com or email support@plugable.com anytime. Thanks!

Where to Buy

Plugable USB 2.0 to 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet LAN Network Adapter (ASIX AX88178 Chipset) Product Details $26.95

Installing a USB Serial Adapter on Mac OS X

Posted on 12. Jul, 2011 by in Tips

The easiest way to go about installing our Plugable USB to Serial adapter is by starting with the device.

  • If you want to verify that the adapter and the driver were installed properly click here

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 http://plugable.com/drivers/prolific/ 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 md_PL23-3_MacOSX10

Now double click on the PL2303_1.4.0.dmg to mount the image

Now double click on the PL2303_1.4.0 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 plugable.com/products/pl2303-db9/support/ to see existing FAQs for Plugable’s USB Serial adapter.

Where to Buy

Plugable USB to RS-232 DB9 Serial Adapter (Prolific PL2303HX Chipset) Product Details $11.95

New DisplayLink Driver Released for Mac OS X Lion (10.7)

Posted on 06. Jun, 2011 by in USB-VGA-165

[Update July 2011: Lion is now out! And DisplayLink has an updated beta 3 driver available at the same location as below. The final version of Lion unfortunately has introduced several significant issues with USB graphics. For the most up to date information, see our support forum at http://support.plugable.com/plugable/topics/osx_lion_and_usb_2_0_display_adapter]

DisplayLink has released an updated Mac driver (1.7 beta 1) with support for Mac OX 10.7 “Lion” (both 32 and 64 bit kernels).

The driver is available for download now at http://displaylink.com/support/mac_downloads.php and is compatible with all Plugable USB graphics adapters and docking stations, such as the Plugable UGA-2K-A.

DisplayLink’s release coincided with Apple’s announcement today at WWDC that the Lion update will be available for purchase next month for $29. Driver updates from DisplayLink are free.

This new line of DisplayLink drivers (1.7 and later) is critical for all DisplayLink Mac users looking to upgrade to Lion, as the new OS release breaks all older USB graphics drivers.

The new DisplayLink driver release includes other fixes, but retains the same high-level characteristics and limitations of prior Mac driver versions (displays up to 2048×1152 on high-end USB adapters; limit of 4 additional displays via 4 USB adapters; no Quartz Extreme/OpenGL support).

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