[NTLK] [OT] One for the old mac lovers

Hi there guys and gals.

A plea for help.

Here's one for the old mac lovers, those who have had their hardware
"Steved". In this particular case, not even by the almighty Mr Jobs,
but by a third party, which is to say, Wacom, inc. Yep, Wacom
tablets, and, in particular, the ADB variety. See, I have a wacom
tablet, an A5 model, with ADB connection, and it's been sitting idle
for some considerable time due to - well, being "Steved". Wacom do
not provide drivers for these tablets under OSX. This has bothered me
for some time, until I finally got round to doing something about it.

More on this, here : http://blog.tufty.ath.cx/articles/2008/04/21/wacom-hackom

I now have a more-or-less working 10.2.8 driver for my particular ADB
tablet, using both the stylus and the puck. It's far from perfect; I
wouldn't even consider it to be alpha code, and as such I'm not going
to release it just yet. It almost certainly won't support anything
but model UD-0608-A at the moment, which is good for me, but not
necessarily for anyone else. Enabling ink crashes my powerbook. Not
good, but I'm working on that bit. And tthis is where you, gentle
reader, come in. In order for this to become releasable code (and it
will be released, as part of the TabletMagic project), I need some
information. No, you are not a number, you are a free man (or
woman). But it's numbers that I need.

If you have an ADB capable machine, which can also run OS9 or earlier,
and an ADB based wacom tablet, you can help. Fire that machine up,
booted into classic, connect that tablet, install the latest (or,
indeed, any) drivers from Wacom. Install "ADB Parser" from here : ftp://ftp.apple.com/developer/Tool_Chest/Devices_-_Hardware/Apple_Desktop_Bus/ADB_Parser_5.0.7.sit.hqx
  and run it.

You'll get a screen with a list of adb devices in the middle, some
information on the right, and some other stuff on the left. Wave the
stylus over the tablet, and the little apple sign to the left of the
list will move to the device that's active - i.e. the tablet. Click
on the list, and get the details of the device in the pane on the right.

For that device, I need to know the "original handler" and "current
hander".

Then, go to the left-hand pane, set the address to the address of the
device, set the register to "1", click on the "talk" radiobutton and
then click "send command"

You'll get 16 characters returned in the "data received" box.

It might be useful to have the register one contents *without* the
Wacom driver running as well, if you can stand a reboot.

Mail all this to me offlist, along with the model number of your
tablet, and we'll see if we can't get it working under OSX.

Thanks in advance for anyone who still has dusty old hardware lying
about.

Simon

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Received on Mon Apr 28 02:24:55 2008