Hi friends and followers. I know you’ve all been waiting patiently for Part 3 of the ‘Unexpected Journey’ but I’ve been away for a break in beautiful Alcudia in Majorca to recharge my personal batteries.
Part 3 is coming shortly but in the meantime I finally got my hands on a Mac thanks to my good friend David Jamieson and have been able to get the Librarian working on OSX El Capitan Version 10.11.4. It should work with OSX 10.9 or above.
If you don’t already have it installed, you will need to install the Java Runtime Environment (JRE), Version 8 or above. To install this go to the Oracle website here and choose the Mac OS X version. I chose the .dmg one and the latest version “Java SE Runtime Environment 8u92” and it installed without any problems.
You will need to download and install the CH340 driver as this is required to be able to connect via USB to the Blue Nebula and I found that the version on this website worked fine. Once you have downloaded the driver zip file double-click on “CH34x_Install.pkg” to install the driver. You may find that your Mac won’t allow the installer to run as ‘Gatekeeper’ requires apps to be signed so if your Mac won’t install it then do the following:
Go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General and click on the padlock at the bottom of the dialog box to enable changes. Under Allow apps downloaded from choose the “Anywhere” option. Close the dialog and the CH340 driver should now install when you double-click the “CH34x_Install.pkg” file. Important: Restart your Mac to activate the new driver.
Run the BN Librarian app by double-clicking it and, if you have a Blue Nebula connected to a USB port on your Mac, when you click on the Serial Port dropdown you should see an entry similar to what I’ve shown in the screenshot above: /dev/cu.wchusbserial* where * will be a number (1440 in the illustration) but this may differ on your computer.
NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD.It was developed by NeXT Computer in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its range of proprietary workstation computers such as the NeXTcube. Needy Nebula is an arcade planet building sim with space shooter bits and lots of alien collecting and resource management. Needy Nebula Windows, Mac, Linux game.
That’s the serial port where your Blue Nebula is connected so click on it to get the Mac and Blue Nebula to start talking to each other. The Blue Nebula resets as usual and after a few seconds it will be ready to communicate with the Librarian running on the Mac.
The Mac OS X and Windows versions of the Blue Nebula Librarian can be downloaded from ‘Latest Updates Here’ on the menu bar above.