Update: Fantom drivers and Mac OSX Lion support

[tcwan]

Hi,
I thought I'd just update everyone on the issue of accessing the NXT brick on Mac OSX Lion.

I've finally got hold of a Mac with Lion installed, and found out that Fantom works just fine with Mac OSX Lion booted up with the 64-bit kernel.
There is a difference between applications vs. kernel modes. Basically it is possible to run either 32-bit apps on 64-bit kernels or vice-versa (64-bit apps on 32-bit kernel) for Mac OS X (AFAIK this is not the case for Windows which must have both applications and kernel in 64-bit mode). The only issue arises if Kernel Drivers (Kernel Extensions or .kext) are required but are not available in 64-bit versions for Lion. In such cases, the kernel would need to be booted up in 32-bit mode.

Fortunately, this is not the case with regards to NXT support, the 32-bit Fantom Framework (v1.03) which is installed by the legodriver.pkg is a purely user-space library which (I presume) talks to the relevant Apple supplied 64-bit USB and Bluetooth Kernel Drivers just fine. I have tested Next Tool using both USB and Bluetooth to access the NXT to play musical notes via the virtual keyboard, and both types of connection work fine under Lion with the 64-bit kernel.

So the bottom line: as long as the applications have 32-bit support (due to the Fantom Framework limitation), it should work with the NXT just fine with the default Lion startup (64-bit kernel mode), there is no need to boot up in 32-bit kernel mode to use it.

I haven't tested the NXT-G software under Lion, it is not something that I use normally, though from what I've read so far, it appears that there are issues.