DirectIn Response boxes on Mac OS 10.5/10.6

[susa]

Thanks for your last comment.

You recommended to re-install the USB interface drivers. However, I do not know how to do this on a Mac. I never intentionally installed any driver for using the DirectIN Responseboxes (?).

However, I can provide some further information that might help in isolating the problem:

- The DirectIN Responseboxes do not work reliably under Mac OS 10.4 either (the same problems appear as with 10.5 and Snow Leopard).

- The boxes are not detected on a PC under Windows 2000.

- Occasionally, the boxes are not detected on a PC under Windows XP. In this case, a diaolgue box appears telling you that the device is unknown to the system. However, the automatic search for a driver regularly fails.

- We also have some old Empirisoft responseboxes. They appear in the System Profiler on a Mac as "Empirisoft BB-10". We never had the described problems with these old boxes!? Plug and play always works. (Unfortunately, the life cycle of these boxes does not seem to be long: several of them have broken down - suddenly. Therefore, we are really in need of the new boxes.)
I assume that the two types of devices (DirectIN Responseboxes vs. Empirisoft BB-10) contain different microchips? Does this information help in constraining troubleshooting?

[ejhiris]

I just received my DirectIn Response boxes. When I plug them in, the Mac immediately asks about this new keyboard that it cannot identify (seems to be going through the system preferences "Keyboard & Mouse" item). When you continue on, it asks you to press the key immediately to the right of the left shift key (which you of course can't do). Two choices now:
1) If you ignore what is happening, the response box does produce 1-9 as appropriate in all software - except where I need it most - using Psychophysics Toolbox's "KbName" command within Matlab.
2) If you continue on with the "Keyboard & Mouse" item, then you can choose a Japanese, U.S., or European - none result in behavior different than #1 above.

Any help?

[JEC]

What happens if you press the 'Z' key on your regular keyboard during the initialization process?

[ejhiris]

If I press the 'z' key on the regular keyboard, it tells me to press that I have pressed the 'z' key on the regular keyboard and to please press the z key on the "external keyboard."

Eric

[ejhiris]

If I type KbName in Matlab, pressing the DirectIn Response box causes 1-9 to appear in the Matlab window, but has no effect on the KbName function in Psychophysics toolbox (pressing a key on the regular keyboard immediately causes KbName to return with the correct information). This of course makes DirectIn Response box useless for doing experiments with Psychophysics Toolbox!

I suspect the problem occurs because the system software doesn't officially recognize the keyboard, so KbName can't use it. I have posted to the Psychophysics Toolbox forum as well to see if anyone has dealt with this.

[ejhiris]

Just a quick note that changing my code from KbCheck (which checks the primary keyboard) to KbCheck(-1) (which checks all keyboards) was the rather obvious answer to the problem.

This isn't necessary on a Windows machine when using Psychophysics toolbox (according to my colleague down the hall). Probably necessary with Mac OS X because the system software does not recognize the DirectIN box as a keyboard - everything works fine though!

Eric

[JEC]

We've just released v2010 firmware for the DirectIN boxes and keyboards. It appears that this firmware is compatible with all modern operating systems (specifically XP, Windows 7, Mac OX 10.6, etc).

This firmware includes a 'field update' utility, which allows us to email new firmware for the keyboards and boxes, if ever required. The update takes place over the existing USB interface, no screwdrivers required.

Contact us for details.