Port and Device Names

A port name for a serial device is an uninformative combination of letters and digits provided by macOS, such as usbserial-A6043VCY. The port name is formed by macOS using the serial number provided by the USB-serial adapter chip, A6043VCY in the example. Some chip manufacturers do not supply a serial number, in that case macOS creates one based on the location of the adapter in the USB Device Tree. As a consequence, the port name for a serial device may change when plugged into a different place in the tree or when macOS restarts.

Some radios present two serial port names on the same computer USB port. Normally you can use either port name in SkookumLogger, with the exception of ICOM radios, where the second port may not support CI-V. Generally, use the port name with the smaller last digit in the name for this case.

SkookumLogger remembers the port name associated with each enabled device, so that it can re-enable the device when starting up. This scheme will fail when the saved port name is not available because the port name changed. You will need to determine the new port name and choose that in the Port Chooser before re-enabling the device.

To determine the association between an external device and the port name for the device, watch the Status Messages window while you unplug and replug the USB cable to the device. You should see a message like “Serial port usbserial-83420 became active”.

You can, optionally, define a device name that will appear instead of the port name in port choosers, using the Device Name Editor .