Catalina drivers for USB interfaces now available

[ooons]

UltraLite mk3 Hybrid (connected with Apple TB2 > FW adapter) working ok for now. On the second day while running Ableton (using the Hybrid as sound in/out) plugging in a USB MIDI device made Cuemix crash and the Hybrid disappear as a sound interface. This while Ableton was working fine (just lost the audio in/out, of course.) Relaunching cuemix and re-inserting the TB2 > FW adapter fixed the situation. That only happened once in two weeks of use.

Edit: this is in latest Catalina.

[rockwoofstone]

I've just installed the Calalina drivers on MacOS 10.15.2, running with an UltraLite mk3 Hybrid, and whilst it operates fine, when I either disconnect the Hybrid from USB, or power it down, it locks up MacOS completely. Everytime. Reboots, reinstallation etc, all have no effect. Running firmware v1.07.

Anyone else seem anything similar?

I should probably have clarified, I’m connecting over USB.

[arvidtp]

I've just installed the Calalina drivers on MacOS 10.15.2, running with an UltraLite mk3 Hybrid, and whilst it operates fine, when I either disconnect the Hybrid from USB, or power it down, it locks up MacOS completely. Everytime. Reboots, reinstallation etc, all have no effect. Running firmware v1.07.

Anyone else seem anything similar?

I should probably have clarified, I’m connecting over USB.

I think this happened to me once with mine - connecting over USB through one of those USB-C adapters that also has HDMI, SD card, power delivery, etc (a QGeeM brand one from amazon), in case that makes any difference. I'll report back when I have more experiences with the mk3 hybrid over USB with Catalina and these drivers.

[rockwoofstone]

I've just installed the Calalina drivers on MacOS 10.15.2, running with an UltraLite mk3 Hybrid, and whilst it operates fine, when I either disconnect the Hybrid from USB, or power it down, it locks up MacOS completely. Everytime. Reboots, reinstallation etc, all have no effect. Running firmware v1.07.

Anyone else seem anything similar?

I should probably have clarified, I’m connecting over USB.

I think this happened to me once with mine - connecting over USB through one of those USB-C adapters that also has HDMI, SD card, power delivery, etc (a QGeeM brand one from amazon), in case that makes any difference. I'll report back when I have more experiences with the mk3 hybrid over USB with Catalina and these drivers.

Direct connection for me - Mk3 via USB direct to the Mac.

[arvidtp]

I've gotten back to doing some testing and curiously for me, with my Catalina Macbook Pro 16" and Ultralite mk3 Hybrid, the driver seems to be fine going to sleep with a USB connection, but panics immediately on sleep with the firewire connection. Even when it is the only peripheral connected to the Macbook.

Granted I am going through two adapters to get firewire on this Macbook Pro, but my Ultralite mk1 has been working like a champ via the same firewire adapter setup with the same machine - no panics, and almost always comes back just fine after sleep. I guess the firewire implementation on the two interfaces is significantly different.

[mattward]

I have a 2012 MBP and connect my UltraLite Mk3 via firewire (on Catalina) and yes it locks up my MAC when i shut the lid (whilst the interface is switched on). If i switch the interface off and shut the lid its OK. On USB it was worse. If i switched it off it would just lock up the computer.

I would avoid Catalina for a while longer. I've raised a ticket with Motu about it. Hopefully they have been able to recreate the issue in the lab. I don't really want to rebuild my MAC from Scratch to test this out exclusively... Although i do have a spare HD i could use... HMMM maybe i will... I've been updating the MAC Since LION and it's changed physical device once as well. To be honest im sure its the way that the driver and the hibernation commands are working. Worth a go right?

[sensorium]

So, deciding due diligence is required on my part, I looked at the MOTU site for details and found this...

NOTE: These firmware updates are only applicable to MIDI Express XT units that have a serial number starting with ‘MXT’. Units that have a serial number starting with ‘MEXT’ or ‘MXXTU’ cannot be updated.

In all honesty I totally understand if MOTU cannot support this device any longer. I mean seriously, a 20 year old peice of hardware? It may be time for me to upgrade. I got a lot of good years out of it. Well worth the price.

Sooooo, an update. The new drivers work, and I'm not as smart as I thought I was Turns out, if you're installing the new Catalina drivers and you have an old XT, check both installer types even though you're not installing for an Express 128. I did that, and after a reboot, my ancient Express XT sprung to life. I assumed I didn't need to check that box on install. All's well that ends well I guess

Damn! I got really excited after reading this because I just moved everything I had over to a new Mac Pro running Catalina. After performing the driver update, all of my "legacy" XT units were grayed out in MIDI setup and clockworks couldn't find the devices.

After reading the above, I breathed a sign of relief, downloaded BOTH installer types, rebooted, and....no change

So this solution did not seem to work for me. Any other ideas here? They obviously DO work, so that gives me a little hope.

NOTE: I did check system preferences to make sure I unblocked the driver install. Also, the system report on the USB section does properly display all 4 of my XTs properly as MIDI EXPRESS XT.

[sensorium]

After some time on the phone with MOTU tech support who basically said I’m screwed and they no longer support the legacy units, I ended up solving the issue on my own.

For my Legacy USB MIDI Express XT install into Catalina:

I searched for MOTU using the spotlight and deleted every application, text file, configuration file, and extension with MOTU in it.

I noticed that an extension file remained in the “staged extensions” folder and those are not able to be deleted. Since the original extension was deleted, I purged the staged extension by opening terminal and running the command:
sudo kextcache -prune-staging
This deleted that final file.
I then rebooted and installed the current driver. Everything works now.
I have no idea which file that I deleted helped push the update through, I only know that deleting EVERYTHING solved the problem.