Installing Isaac on macOS 10.15.4 and up

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ted.kelly
Posts: 27
Joined: Fri Apr 19, 2019 12:40 pm

Installing Isaac on macOS 10.15.4 and up

Post by ted.kelly »

I recently installed Isaac 5.1 on my mac laptop, and found that the recommended procedure would not work for my situation.
I was only able to install the required "drivers" by using a work around that involves terminal commands and booting in recovery mode.
I am posting this information here for the potential benefit of anybody else who might encounter similar difficulties.

My computer is a "MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)" and has an "Apple T1 Security Chip".
I was using macOS Catalina 10.15.4 when I started trying to install Isaac 5.1. By the time I succeeded I was using version 10.15.5
I had never installed any version of Isaac, any National Instruments (aka NI) "drivers", or the Silicon Labs (SiLabs) driver on that computer prior to attempting to follow Velocomp's instructions for installing Isaac 5.1

When I tried to follow Velocomp's instructions, I did not see "System Extension Blocked" dialog boxes alerting me to blocked extensions, although I looked for them. Nor, though I looked constantly, did I see system software blocked from loading indications and "allow" buttons in the Security & Privacy System Preferences control panel. This was of course at odds with what Velocomp's instructions say will happen. When I attempted to install the SiLabs USB driver the installer reported the error:
unexpected reply from installKextFromBundle kOSKextReturnAuthentication (-603946995) at /Users/host/jenkins2/workspace/Host_Software_MacOS_Build_VCP_Driver_5.x_Pipeline/driver/silabser/osx/installer2/Install CP210x VCP Driver/Install CP210x VCP Driver/AppDelegate.m:1122
This is also inconsistent with what Velocomp's instructions indicate.
Despite repeated attempts to follow Velocomp's instructions exactly, including at least one final attempt at Velocomp's direction after asking for help, I can only describe my attempt to install Isaac 5.1 by following the Velocomp instructions as an abject failure.

By doing some digging on the internet, I learned that successful installation of kernel extensions (the "drivers" required by Isaac are kernel extensions) may be prevented by Apple's System Integrity Protection (SIP) security technology. Furthermore, it is possible to disable SIP. With some trepidation I elected to attempt to install the extensions Isaac 5.1 requires by disabling SIP, and was successful.

If you find you are unable to get Isaac 5.1 working on a mac by following Velocomp's directions, you might want to educate yourself regarding SIP.

https://howtomacos.com/2019/11/01/disab ... -catalina/
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