Fingerworks Touchstream on Mac OSX 10.7.4

Woohoo! "New" Fingerworks Touchstream keyboard arrived today. This is my first Touchstream. It's from before Fingerworks was bought by apple and shuttered, circa 2005.

It works out of the box, but for the full experience requires running the configuration software to change the chord/multitouch bindings. Getting this running on modern hardware is challenging.

• the company website is down.
• The installer is for powerpc only (no longer supported by apple).
• the application itself is a java app that requires an old version of java (no longer supported by apple).
• the java app uses opensource jusb, which has been mostly abandoned.

The awesome people at the fingerfans message board have done a lot to keep these beloved pieces of future-tech up and running. They have a copy of the original website, the original help forums, original software, third party software, manuals, pds, and instructions for repair. I've seen posts on replacing the fpga, which is just NUTS-slash-Awesomesauce.

My steps:

• install 1.5.3 software.
  Download this custom installer for linux and ran it on my mac: 1.5.3 software
wget http://fingerfans.dreamhosters.com/download/setupfw153_noJava.bin
sh setupfw153_noJava.bin
• update jusb
  download a patched jusb from github, build and install into /Applications/FingerWorks/
git clone https://github.com/DanThiffault/jusb.git
cd jusb
make
cp -r libjusbMacOSX.jnilib* /Applications/FingerWorks/lib/jusb/
cp jusb.jar /Applications/FingerWorks/lib/jusb/
• install an alternative run script mtu_run.sh into /Applications/Fingerworks
wget -O /Applications/Fingerworks/mtu_run.sh https://raw.github.com/gist/1096642/9004f21e6697fa080bb1ddde95f8a2a9d2bccae5/mtu_run.sh
chmod a+rx /Applications/Fingerworks/mtu_run.sh

Now launch from the command line:
/Applications/Fingerworks/mtu_run.sh

Success!

The multitouch tool aka fingerworks.firmup.UtilityLauncher launched and detected my "TouchStream ST/LP ver 1.6". [RUN Diagnostics...] reported:

All sensor array tests PASSED!
Loaded 1243 Key/Gesture Mappings SUCCESFULLY
    Keymatrix#: 34
Testing Complete.

Not so fast: Can't write to device

Doh. Seems I can run the diagnostics, but I can't push a new configuration onto the device. That's a major bummer. I'll have to look into the java errors and see what can be done.

Starting transfer...
        Writing MTS_config Binary to:  /Users/andrew/Documents/MyGestures/custom4f0040stealth34.byt
        Sending configuration to Gesture Processor...
          (Sending DeleteMsg w/ minfirmver 326, minsurfver 7, keymatrixver 34
          (Sending user options)
          (Sending 16 macro definitions)
          (Sending 100 tapareas)
          (Sending 0 switches)
          (sending -1 hand)
          (sending 1 hand)
          (sending 2 hand)
          (sending 0 hand)
          (Sent 642 total events!)
...finished merging /Users/andrew/Documents/MyGestures/custom4f0040stealth34.byt
S8 Terminated with FLASH image CRC32: 0x6f1f72da
new  idDevice: 0x160, idProduct: 0x90b,  idVendor: 0xe97
USB DFU suffix appended to: /Users/andrew/Documents/MyGestures/custom4f0040stealth34.U.byt
        MTS_config Binary /Users/andrew/Documents/MyGestures/custom4f0040stealth34.U.byt ready for transfer! 
        existing  idDevice: 0x160        idProduct: 0x90b        idVendor: 0xe97
Java computed firmware image CRC32 0x6f1f72da on 32870 bytes
Exception in thread "Thread-8" java.lang.IllegalAccessError: tried to access class usb.linux.DeviceImpl from class fingerworks.firmup.USBupgrader
        at fingerworks.firmup.USBupgrader.a(Unknown Source)
        at fingerworks.firmup.USBupgrader.downloadFirmwareFile(Unknown Source)
        at fingerworks.firmup.USBupgrader.send2GestureProcessor(Unknown Source)
        at fingerworks.firmup.a.run(Unknown Source)
        at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:680)
Nov 19 16:57:06 femto.corp.dm.local java[59263] : CGContextGetCTM: invalid context 0x0
Nov 19 16:57:06 femto.corp.dm.local java[59263] : CGContextSetBaseCTM: invalid context 0x0
Nov 19 16:57:06 femto.corp.dm.local java[59263] : CGContextGetCTM: invalid context 0x0
Nov 19 16:57:06 femto.corp.dm.local java[59263] : CGContextSetBaseCTM: invalid context 0x0

References

• Blogpost at 119labs
• Running Multitouch utilities in Lion, which included Gist 1096642 with mtu_run.sh and referenced his branch of jusb at github.
• branch of jsub on github, which may still be a work in progress. My checkout is rev "a5220720c".