The DCC Decoder Programmer

Installing SPROG II on Mac OS-X or macOS

Install USB drivers

USB drivers for SPROG II need to be installed to use them on your Mac.
The driver is provided on the CD, Flash or download in disk image (.dmg) format.
Click on the link below to open the installer for your OS version.

Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan requires signed drivers for USB adapters.
If you've upgraded from an earlier version, your previous drivers may not work. That will cause JMRI to throw errors when it doesn't find communications links.

For MacOS 10.4 to 10.8, you will use FTDIUSBSerialDriver_v2_2_18.dmg; see JMRI.org for more information about running JMRI on older Macs.

For MacOS 10.9 and later, use FTDIUSBSerialDriver_v2_4_2.dmg which is signed by Apple;

(Note: older versions of MacOS are no longer supported with the newer versions of JMRI. You can still use older versions of JMRI, but may have limited features.)

In the Apple Safari browser, you will be navigated to the files, and you need to double-click on the highlighted ".dmg" file to open it.

Using Firefox, the ".dmg" file will be opened for you

Run the installer by double clicking on the FTDIUSBSerialDriver.pkg icon.

A screen will appear to guide you through the process.



Click Continue to proceed with the installation and follow the instructions on screen.

When the installation is complete, you must reboot the computer, and then return to this page of the installation.

Connect Sprog II and complete the Driver setup

When the computer has rebooted, plug in the power to the SPROG, and the USB cable from the SPROG to the computer.
The red power LED should illuminate. The USB LED only illuminates (flashes) during message transfer.
MacOSX 10.5 and later automatically enables newly installed port drivers, and your driver should be ready to go.
In Preferences in DecoderPro it will be named "cu.usbserial-feedcode".

if this was successful, move down to Start DecoderPro


In case of any problem, the procedure below will allow you to check, and to identify the new SPROG driver correctly.
The easiest way to do this is to run the System Report and select USB (Apple Menu > About this Mac), then select "System Report ...".
The USB items should show the presence of SPROG DECODER PROGRAMMER.
The new port for your SPROG will typically be named "usbserial-feedcode" (where "feedcode" is a default name which is either the device's serial number or, for unserialized devices, a location string that depends on which USB port your device is connected to).

For those more comfortable with the system internals, to check that the device is installed properly you can see entries in the /dev directory:
/dev/cu.usbserial-xxxxxxxx
/dev/tty.usbserial-xxxxxxxx
where xxxxxxxx is either the device's serial number or a location string - like "feedcode" that depends on which USB port your device is connected to.
/dev can be accessed through the Terminal application. The Terminal application can be launched by selecting Applications > Utilities > Terminal.
Type the following lines in the Terminal window to produce the file list:
cd /dev
ls -l

Start DecoderPro

The next step is to start DecoderPro, and set preferences for this connection.

Next an introduction to DecoderPro.