Today was going to be about so much else, but instead I found myself mêléeing with Apple’s build system.
I have a script I’ve been using very successfully for some years that automates the build process for my CLI apps. It builds a universal binary containing both ARM64 and x86-64 code, wraps it into a macOS installer package and submits the result to Apple’s notarisation service. One command in Terminal and it’s all done, or occasionally you get an error message.
Continue readingRecent work connecting old mobile devices — the Psion Series 3a and the Amstrad NC100 — to my Mac caused me to run into an issue with the script I use to determine the Unix device path of the USB-to-serial adaptor I use to talk to these gadgets. Long story short: I ended up converting a Z Shell function into a Swift CLI tool — and adding Linux support into the bargain.
Recap I have acquired a UK-made Psion Series 3a palmtop. I’ve connected it to my Mac. I’ve connected it to my headless Pi server over serial. My next goal: connect the 3a to the Internet.
I never had any great expectations for getting the 3a online. To summarise the problem: the 3a shipped without integrated Internet support. And while it later received it, via the PsiMail email package, Internet access was predicated on a dial-up connection using a modem and an analogue phone line. It is possible to bridge this ancient approach to the modern world of always on broadband and WiFi, but yes, it’s a bit of PIA. Anyway, this is what you do.
Continue readingI have a soft spot for the technology of my younger days. In the mid-1990s, for example, I was in my late twenties and one of the machines I used for a time — all my MacWorld Boston 1994 coverage was written on one — was the Psion Series 3a. Pitched as a portable personal organiser, it was a palmtop PC running a 16-bit OS, SIBO aka EPOC 16, on an x86 CPU.
Running, I might add off a couple of AA batteries (with a coin cell to maintain RAM disk contents when the main pair were replaced) that could last for at least a month. No backlight on the monochrome LCD, though, which makes the device’s use in dim lighting tricky. Strong, over-the-shoulder lighting is essential.
Continue readingMy open source images-to-PDF utility, pdfmaker, makes use of Apple’s PDFKit. While this partnership works as it should, just one aspect bothered me: PDFKit warnings and errors don’t bubble up to the calling code, but are piped via STDERR. The upshot: anyone running pdfmaker may see messages that it hasn’t issued. pdfmaker is a CLI tool, but I can’t just redirect the output to /dev/null — you’d lose everything, not just PDFKit’s grumbles. Instead I had to figure out how to sink PDFKit’s output even though it wasn’t coming via pdfmaker. Here’s how I did the pipework.
macOS 13.0.0 Ventura introduced an irritating problem for all us Mac-based Raspberry Pi Pico programmers: Finder no longer allows you to copy .uf2 files to a mounted Pico. It’s not a forbidden operation, but it does trigger an error that prevents the copy from taking place. This is undoubtedly the ‘new normal’, so here are some ways to circumvent the error. I’ll save the best one until last.
This post was originally going to be about building a tool to access I²C devices on a Mac, reaching them via USB and an Excamera Labs I2CMini adaptor board. But then I accidentally snapped the pins and board traces off my I2CMini, so I had to go back to the drawing board. Now it’s about accessing I²C devices on a Mac using a Raspberry Pi Pico, or any other RP2040-based board, as the adaptor.
I connect to my Mac many USB devices that communicate over a serial (UART) bus to send debug information to the host or to receive data and code. You know, Raspberry Pi Picos, Adafruit Feathers, FTDI cables — that kind of thing. Often I have more than one connected. Is there an easy way to see what’s connected without listing /dev every time and to remember connected devices’ paths?
Over the last few years I’ve released a number of command line utilities for macOS. I’ve always included online help within them, triggered with the --help switch, but I recently wondered how I might provide Unix Manual pages too. It would allow users to call up help with the CLI command man as well as a command switch. Belts and braces, perhaps, but I’m a completist and, more to the point, didn’t know how it was done and wanted to learn.
My last post detailed how you set up DNS over HTTPS (DoH) for a client Raspberry Pi. I mentioned that I tried this out first on a Mac, and so I’ve been asked to show how running DoH on macOS works. Here goes.
smittytone messes with micros 