setup on a MacBook Air - documentation needed?

[connochaetes]

Hi. A colleague of mine wanted to use his micro:bit with his MacBook Air. He followed the instructions on: http://microblocks.fun/download#setup But he wasn 't successfull by then. In addition, he had to put the (newest) file “vm.ino.BBCmicrobit.hex” on his micro:bit by using a file manager. All went well. He 's quite happy with microblocks and lets me thank you.

I guess, additional documentation (or a bug fix?) might be helpful.

Please, keep in mind, that additional information on this might take a while for it 's not my MacBook Air.

Best regards.

[Bernat Romagosa]

Is your colleague using Catalina? Things have changed in that version of MacOS and we may need to update these instructions indeed.

I am not a Mac user, but maybe @John Maloney can help here…

[John Maloney]

This sounds like a Catalina issue. Firmware install doesn’t work on Catalina, nor does opening projects from MicroBlocks file menu. (You can open them by dragging and dropping them onto the MicroBlocks window. Apple changed some major things about the file system in a recent Catalina update. I only recently found out how many things were broken. I’ll work on a fix but it may take a while…

[connochaetes]

I asked him. He is using Catalina.

[John Maloney]

Good to know. The work-around is to install the MicroBlocks firmware manually by dropping vm.ino.BBCmicrobit.hex onto the Microbit USB drive, just as you friend did.

[connochaetes]

OK. Thank you. Best regards.

[John Maloney]

Micro:bit firmware install now works from the IDE in MacOS Catalina