jpilot

[Adam Dershowitz Ph.D., P.E.]

On Jan 16, 2014, at 9:52 AM, Lenore Horner <LenoreHorner at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

>> 
>> For obvious reasons, Palm has not been keeping its drivers up-to-date;
>> http://kb.hpwebos.com/wps/portal/kb/common/article/33529_en.html#mac is still
>> downloadable but I would be very very surprised if it worked on 10.9.  I did
>> find this: http://pccallup.sourceforge.net which may be a working replacement.
>> (I don’t have one to test with, sorry.)
> 
> The Palm software hasn’t worked since 10.7.  That’s why I switched to Missing Sync.  However it (and other companies) used iSync which Apple has removed from 10.9.  
> 
> I tried the pccallup and the site still exists but there are no files available. 
> 
> Can I copy a /dev/pilot air /dev/ttyUSB1 from a backup under an old operating system or are there going to be other pieces that go along with that that I’ll also be missing?
> 
> Thanks,
> Lenore


As was stated earlier, these aren’t files, so they can’t just be copied.  These are essentially the inputs and output of device drivers.  So, when the right drivers are installed, copying /dev/pilot will cause the driver to read data from the Palm, and output the results to another file.  The device driver is code that reads (or writes) data from a piece of hardware and then outputs that data to /dev/pilot (or whatever).  So, that another program can read from that as though it is a file.  So /dev/pilot is really a virtual file, not a real file, and trying to copy it would not cause the driver to be copied, but instead would cause the device driver to try to read some data.  

—Adam