Board won't show on one of my computers

Question

I have the same problem with these two boards: Ruggeduino (Uno compatible) and DFRobot Romeo 1 (Duemilanove compatible). On one of my Macs (a Macbook Pro running 10.11.4), I can see a new port /dev/cu.usbmodem641 or /dev/a4005g3t depending on the board. On the other computer (a Mac Mini late 2014), they just won't show. Same cable, same boards, and no hub. I don't know where to look to see an indication of a failure of some sort.

These two ones use a type-b USB socket (printer style)

Also on the Mac Mini that won't see any of those boards, I can connect an EtherMega2560 (Arduino Mega 2560) which happens to use a micro USB socket. I don't know if that is related to the problem.

Both computers run the same OS (OS X 10.11.4) and the latest version of Arduino.

Here is a difference (found in /var/log/system.log):

On the working computer:

Mar 3 22:20:42 pc101 kernel[0]: AppleUSBFTDI: fInBufPool,kMaxInBufPool 8,64 
Mar 3 22:20:42 pc101 kernel[0]: AppleUSBFTDI: Version number - 5.0.0, Input buffers 8, Output buffers 16

On the non working one:

cfprefsd[114]: BUG in libdispatch: 15E49a - 1718 - 0x0

..

• Avamander: If OS X has something like dmesg and lsusb (list USB devices) please post the output.

Answer 1

My Ruggeduino stopped showing up as a serial device under El Capitan (10.11.6). I was able to fix this by installing/updating the VCP drivers for Silicon Labs USB devices available here:

https://www.silabs.com/products/mcu/Pages/USBtoUARTBridgeVCPDrivers.aspx

After installing the Mac driver the Ruggeduino shows up as SLAB_USBtoUART and works fine with the Arduino GUI.

• Chris Stratton: That would only help for a board with a silicon labs chip, but the documentation for the Ruggeduino seems to say it uses at ATmega16u for that role. It's pretty easy to look at a board and read what is on the chip, if it doesn't say SiLabs, this will not help.