Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Problem with USB on OSX?

[Michael Dickens]

Playing catch up ... some quick observations:

* You say a G5 iMac on (I assume 10.)4.4, but the script says that  
it's using SSE.  These are contradictory.  Could it possibly be an  
Intel iMac?  This probably won't make a difference, but you never know.

* You're using a Flex 400 board, and trying to receive at 102 MHz -  
which won't work.  Try using a frequency in the range of the board.   
I think that's what the USRP's message is trying to convey.  Could  
someone with a '400' board try out receiving 102 FM & see what it does?

* The "pipe is stalled", in case you're wondering, is normal for most  
desktop Macs, but not as much so for laptop Macs.  Desktops Macs have  
multiple hardware devices between the OS and USB, which invariably  
results in both odd errors and slower throughput.  Laptops Macs use  
less and different hardware than desktops, which makes the USB  
throughput faster overall.  Interestingly (from Apple's USB list),  
PPC Macs have the USB hardware do most of the work while Intel Macs  
force the OS to do most of the work ... lesson: use bigger requests  
on Intel and smaller on PPC.

* for anything not requiring the wx GUI, you can just run the script  
as usual ("./usrp_wfm_rcv.py --freq=102M") assuming that it's  
executable and has the correct #! notation.  IIRC "pythonw" is needed  
for GUI stuff only.  I'll add this comment to my install guide one of  
these days.

Everything else looks correct, and sounds reasonable.  Let the list  
know if you have any success. - MLD

Begin forwarded message:
From: "Sam Ross" <address@hidden>
Date: July 24, 2006 7:03:45 PM EDT
To: address@hidden
Subject: [Discuss-gnuradio] Problem with USB on OSX?

Hi, this is my first time using software radio, and I'm having some
problems.  When I try to run one of the programs in
/.../gnuradio-examples/python/usrp, here is what happens:

% pythonw ./usrp_wfm_rcv.py --freq=102M
usb_control_msg failed: usb_control_msg(DeviceRequestTO): pipe is  
stalled
Using RX d'board A: Flex 400 Rx
> > > gr_fir_ccf: using SSE
> > > gr_fir_fff: using SSE
FYI: No Powermate or Contour Knob found
usrp_basic_rx: failed to start end point streaming

The gui opens, but is blank, and just hangs there
I'm using OS X, version 4.4 on a G5 iMac, and installed gnuradio by
the light of M. Dickens' guide at
http://www.nd.edu/~mdickens/GNURadio/ 
GNURadio_Install_using_DarwinPorts_on_10.4.X.txt
Some more pieces (irrelevant?) of information:  The led seems to be
blinking once per second.  When I do "% usrper led1 on", it turns it
on, but I get the message "usrper: found unconfigured usrp; needs
firmware."  The contents of my /usr/local/share/usrp/rev4 folder are:
multi_2rxhb_2tx.rbf     std_2rxhb_2tx.rbf std.ihx  std_4rx_0tx.rbf
Thanks for your time
Sam