ff-shell.tcl will not work correctly in macos

[Bernard Mentink]

Hi, love the FlashForth, just what I needed for the Atmega328p.

However, struggling to get code onto this device as the python ff-shell3.py will not work and the preferred ff-shell.tcl hangs when trying to connect to the port. (If I put in a non existant port, at least I can get into the tcl application, but soon as I try to enter a valid port, it hangs and I have to kill the process ..
I tried with sudo, but it won't run at all. Should not need it, as my user can access the port with screen fine ..

The port for me is /dev/tty.usbmodem144301.
I can interract with the board with the 'screen' program just fine.

Appreciate some help

[Bernard Mentink]

Never mind, found it worked if I connect to /dev/cu.usbmodem144301, not sure what the difference is between the two versions of the same port..

Works really slow at loading code though even with 1ms delay.

[Bernard Mentink]

Is there any chance of operating at higher baud rates? Or is it just not faster enough to interpret ..

[Mikael Nordman]

I don't think the baudrate is the problem. The TCL shell waits for 100 ms for each line.
You can fix it by editing the sendLine procedure.

diff --git a/shell/ff-shell.tcl b/shell/ff-shell.tcl
index 8937504..04ea7be 100755
--- a/shell/ff-shell.tcl
+++ b/shell/ff-shell.tcl
@@ -365,11 +365,11 @@ namespace eval smartSend {
             resetFlags
             return -code error "sendLine failed on entry: Timeout waiting for CR."
         }
-        set retries 20
+        set retries 2000
         while {$waitingForCR && ($retries > 0)} {
             # puts "sendLine waiting for CR, retries remaining: $retries"
             update
-            after 100
+            after 1
             incr retries -1
         }
         if {$waitingForCR} {
@@ -380,7 +380,7 @@ namespace eval smartSend {
         # Send all characters with pauses between and a CR at end.
         foreach character [split $line {}] {
             serialPort::send $character
-            after $pauseBetweenChar; # pause after each character
+            #after $pauseBetweenChar; # pause after each character
         }
         serialPort::send "\r"
         set waitingForCR true

[Bernard Mentink]

Thanks Mikael, that was perfect, much faster ..
Now all I need is a way to send all files in a folder/directory, and maybe
skip comments .... :)

[Mikael Nordman]

The pyserial library exists also for OSX. Why does the ff-shell3.py not work on OSX ? What are the error messages ?

[Bernard Mentink]

I installed pyserial with pip, but still get this:

    import serial
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'serial'