many thanks phb.

i'm a little late getting into the osx86 game but just to confirm...this works on a gateway mx7118.

thanks again

Tak is absolutely right, you need to cool your heels there Urby3, phb is doing the community (and my pc) a great service!

A quick tip to everyone having a tough time, I had an interesting experience a short while ago.

Try using just your thumb, or more of your finger, to do the two-finger scrolling. I tried it with just one finger and it worked! kind of crazy, yet kind of cool (Y)

woah everyone, i wans't aware my posts sounded that way... rly sorry!
the caps and stuff is me trying to be excited and happy...i was going for cheering on phb cuz of his great driver, nothing else....

sorry phb if it seems any other way...

Just tried your driver and it works pretty nice for me. Finally I'm able to scroll normally. Two finger scrolling works pretty good when you get used to it. Neat!
Being beta software, there are a few things not working as they should.
I'll try to give it a good test today and i'll post my findings here, along with my system configuration.


-- hehe, my first post on the osx86 forum! So far, I like mac osx!

o, btw, being a newbie in the mac osx arena just a quick question: is there a quick way to re-initialize the ffscroll deamon? so i can play around with some settings?

scrap that last remark (can't I edit posts ?) -duh- just restarting the deamon works fine

The FFScroll preference pane shows up in System prefs.

Accuracy:

Update: no idea (seems like nothing happens)
Calibrate: freezes up System prefs. I was able to kill it though.
Reset: no idea (see update)

Pointing:
Settings are displayed correctly.
Physical button setting doesn't seem to do anything.

Hotspots:
seems like both do nothing...

Two-finger scrolling:
Vertical:
Enable works (!)
Invert doesn't work
Sensitivity works
Speed works

Horizontal:
enable works
invert doesn't
sensitivity works
speed works

weaker axis selection box works (great!)

Circular:
haven't tried.
Wasn't actually able to fin out what it's for. Maybe it's my lack of osx experience?

Filtering:
I was able to set 'accept threshold' to anything under 60 but that was way too sensitive for my pad. Had to edit it directly with plist editor. Gave me a 'boink' when trying to set it in the prefs panel. Maybe you'd better limit it at ~150 or so.
'accept begin' goes up to 8 (which is good enough for me)
had no probs with the declines though. standard settings work for me.

Advanced:
although I don't understand the last two options, they don't seem to work


My system:
Dell Inspiron 6000 with that dreaded ati mobility x300, alps touchpad, 1g ram, osx86 10.4.3 with all the usual patches. I set accept threshold to 95, accepts to begin to 5

Lovely report matjans! Love getting that kind of feedback!
I'm hoping to get back in the osx86 loop soon, been having tons of exams and stuff lately

Cheers guys, please bare with me being a bit slow!

Works with 10.4.5 (native) too, I've just updated. Had to reinstall the driver though.

Neat. I still havn't updated to 10.4.5, doing that today tho :=D

I have a Sony Vaio S150 with an Alps touchpad and I'm having trouble with OS X detecting it. Oddly, the install CD that I used (10.4.5) worked fine and I could use both my keyboard and mouse on it.. but the OS itself after installed fails to support the mouse and the keyboard, unless I reload the keyboard's kext. The mouse continues to not work. :\

Eric

Edit: Actually, I just tried the installer again and it DIDN'T work this time. That is weird. I'm not sure what I did before that helped it load.

Which leaves me a bit confused.

I figured my problem was relating to not being able to find the proper Device ID, but that doesn't seem to be the case if the installer worked once. Something ... isn't happy.. and I can't figure it out :\

I just tried the FFS patched driver on my ALPS Glidepad.
The result is satisfactory. But I notice that something could be improved, just in case if it could be done easily, we should give it a try.

What I noticed is that the 2 finger scrolling work mostly in vertical scrolling, and the driver work best if you put two finger on the same vertical position on the pad. In other words, the failing rate is quite high when you have one finger put higher or lower than the other one. As most of the human hands with middle finger (sorry, I am not native English speaker) longer, it is most likely that, for the right-handed people, the right side touch point should be at higher position.

Could we adjust it by ourselves or it requiers heavy modification on the code?


thanks for your notice.

Just noticed one more problem. The driver not working properly after system wake up from sleep mode.
The signle tap not working while the double click works. In old driver without FFS, it can be reset by disabling and reenable the Clicking features in System Preference, but now it simply won't work.

hey guys,
just installed the driver on 10.4.5

after installing both my mouse and keyboardstopped working
so i plugged in an external usb mouse and restarted.

tapping is working fine now, but I don't see any options for two finger scrolling
how did you guys do that?

by the way, i use an inspiron 6000 which i think has the ALPS touchpad


UPDATE:

oh, it works

i just didnt know to click left mouse button first

but it scrolls down directly to the end, is there a way to slow it down a bit

it seems that there is no option for it at the touchpad section...

installed driver in 10.4.5 with synaptics touch pad on HP zd8000, works pretty well. Had to turn 2 fingered scrolling sensitivity to lowest and speed to 4 notches, and also for some reason i have to keep a light touch on the pad to keep the mouse cursor from stopping randomly with this driver (i will be moving across screen and mouse will suddenly cease movement until i remove and replace my hand, only happens when using a normal amount of finger, no problems with a light touch. Also the driver enabled my ACPI button to turn the trackpad on and off. Pretty sweet all in all. Good work.

I know I really should write a guide for this. (Anyone up for it, please do!)

The settings for the driver is mostly NOT configurable from the Preferences pane.

You have to change the settings by editing your configuration file ~/Library/Preferences/*ffscroll* (IIIRC). Someone care to write up a guide how to fix common issues, like, mouse stopping if you press too hard?

/Johan

PHB i'm not having any luck with this driver. Its installed but tapping or scrolling don't appear to work. will you be on irc later to chat?

Okay, so I'm super glad to see this driver! Thanks a tonne for your work.

I installed the driver and it seems to be working well for me. I had tapping before, so that's okay. I really just wanted two-finger scrolling. I'm happy to say that it works. I had to turn down the sensitivity (it's at the 5th tab right now) for it to be useful (too jumpy otherwise).

Getting the driver to recognize two-fingers and enter scroll mode is sort of funny. As some one mentioned before, a thumb does the trick. I have long fingers so I may be lucky here but: I can also do it with either two fingers if I put the entire "pad" of one fingertip down (the entire area of my finger print), and just the tip of another; or the entire pad of both fingers, but it's more comfortable the other way; or best of all (for me) with just one finger if I first place the tip of my finger on the touchpad, and then roll it down so that the entire finger pad is touching. At that point it enters scrolling mode. Once I've gotten used to this it should be fairly easy to do without much problem.

One of the issues is letting go (exiting from scroll mode). When I remove my finger(s) to stop scrolling it often jumps to a different position, placing me somewhere I don't want to be in the document (or whatever I'm looking at). I think I may be able to fix this in the plist and editing the "Filtering for two-finger detection" but I haven't tried yet.

The other big (biggest maybe) problem is just the overall sensitivity of the touchpad. It's really sensitive now which makes doing things like highlighting text very difficult.

Anyway, I've got lots and lots of homework to do, so I can't go in to the other stuff with the driver right now, but here is what I can say succinctly:

-I have a synaptics touchpad.
-Vert and Horiz scroll seem to work.
-Hotspots don't.
-The GUI for sensitivity works, but for "filtering for two-finger detection" does not.
-The touchpad seems more sensitive (I brought the speed down in the regular apple touchpad GUI, but it still seems just a bit more "jumpy").
-It has turned on the Draglock option ("tap to drag, tap to undrag" thing), and I don't know how to get it off (unchecking it in the apple GUI doesn't work, I'll take a look at the plist for this).
-"Recalibrate Pad" locked the gui, but I was able to force quit with not big problems.

So, overall, rather successful I think! So thanks again!

--- edit ---

After playing with sensitivity again, I'm not sure it is working in the GUI. It may have just been GUI-placebo for me before... The jumpyness that was happening before on high sensitivity doesn't happen anymore... SO!... Take that info with a grain of salt.

I'm on Dell D600 with ALPS Glidepoint 4.34 or so loading native in 10.4.5, working just fine, but no scrolling etc. after I installed this driver, mouse stopped working.. tried deleting the files that were installed, but the mouse didn't came on until I replaced the ApplePS2Controller.kext from a backup made on 10.4.3.. anyway, before and after install it was still detecting ALPS 4.34, the difference was that the mouse didn't work but i got the missing options in mouse preferences.. tell me what to do to help you with debugging, I have to say I didn't try the debugging kext yet, should I?

Hi, thanks for your great work!
only one small things dont work on my touchpad, scrolling
i can now clik lock and drag but not scroll

i edited info.plist un the kext like some tutorials say that is usefull but it didient worked, any idea whats wrong? (all checkbox are on)

*EDIT: ok, got it to work, but its 3-4 time too fast, how to down the speed?

Hope someone is working for Synaptics touchpad at the same time....

Synaptics is supported.

go to control panel;mouse;trackpad; activate all option

Thanks a LOT for your amazing work!!

I read someone here had a problem with the System Preferences pane for FFScroll. Like, it shows up but nothing happens when you click on it. I had a similar problem and on further introspection (to make sure I had everything right) I found out that I had mistakenly extracted the tar.gz file into my own account (i.e. /Users/MyAccount/) instead of /

Here's what I did (redundant but might help someone)

sudo -s
(enter password)
cd /
tar -xzvf /Users/YourUsername/Desktop/FFScrollPS2-0.1.RC1.tar.gz
reboot

That's it. Rebooted, and things are good now! The finger scroll works (vertical and horizontal... weird stuff when I check the circular scrolling box). Calibration fairly hangs the System Preferences (had to "Force Quit").

Again, thanks a lot! I have an ALPS trackpad, by the way...

Top Requests?

Trying to figure what the top requests for this driver is. So I can get some motivation to work more on it

Seems most of it relates to having a working controlpanel, with all the "crap" options removed. Thinking about stripping the non-working options atleast, and then you guys will have to request features missing..
Sounds good?

/Johan

How about **FINAL** version with normal packaged installer?

Well, after installed on my T40 in native 10.4.5, the track pointer
and touch pad were both out of functions. Although ApplePS2Controller,
ApplePS2Trackpad were loaded, there just was no any response.
Is there a way out?

Bruce

I've googled for months to find some sort of windows equivalent to do this, and no luck. Has anyone ever heard of a an xp driver or app that allows 2 finger scrolling? I mean I can't even find forums with people talking about how there's not one... what's up with that?

Hey, thanks againf or your work. I'm glad you haven't lost all interest in this project. Here is how I vote:

I can't get the sensitivity to work the way the regular OS X driver does (if I put my finger on the track pad it doesn't jump a hand full of pixels in any direction making tap clicking a pain in the ass). I've played with the config file to try and get that under control, but no luck. If this IS fixable with the config file I vote for a working control panel so it's a bit easier to get it set up. If this is something that cannot be fixed with config, I vote for some sort of sensitivity control...

Thanks!

you have to change a number in info.plist in the kext folder
take it from windows in sys info, its after psn or somethig like that



this driver dont have 2 finger scrolling, i think its almost impossible to do this with our touchpad

what do you mean it doesn't have 2 finger scrolling? this thread is filled with posts from people who have 2 finger scrolling thanks to this driver... and what touchpad are you talking about? I have a synaptics touchpad, it should work as well as anyone else's...

btw, to get back on topic of this thread... I'm running a compaq presario 2404us (that's a turion 64 series) ... when i install my trackpad works as usual, 'ffscroll' shows up in my system prefs, but when i click on it, it stays at 'loading' forever. Actually sounds the same as urby... something i'm doing wrong? Synaptics touchpad, dxdiag tells me it's device number 0002 but that doesn't sound quite right to me so i'm not sure...

--EDIT: kay I thought it seems suspiciously like it's still using my old ps2 kext so i looked through the install instructions again and he says to log in as root so i thought i'd try giving it a 'cd /' so as to be in the root directory, and then i decompressed the thing... anyway that completely fried my install, now it hangs very early on in the boot sequence... I've got an up to date partition backup so no biggy, but what am i supposed to do to install this correctly? Synaptics touchpad by the way...

Okay, after restoring my backup partition i tried installing this again, the way phb said to this time (in the / directory) the first time. Now the preferences panel loads up for me just fine, but my trackpad seems to behave the way it always did. No scrolling, no choppiness either. I notice on the tab where it has the grayed out system settings that "use two fingers to scroll" under 'gestures' is unchecked, but when i navigate to the real pane in 'keyboard and mouse' that setting isn't even listed under 'gestures'... or anywhere else. any insights?

It didnt work for me on 10.4.5? Maybe an update please?

works just fine hear in 4.5

Has anyone tried this driver with 10.4.6?

Ezhoon: I installed on 10.4.5 and upgraded to 10.4.6 and it works fine for me. Give it a shot!

Just wondering if there any successful IBM Thinkpad user? Last time, I ended up re-installing everything because both the track pointer and touchpad were out of functions after the driver applied. Although after adding PNPID in Info.plist, the touchpad worked normally (still no Scrolling) but the track pointer remained dead.

I will, thanks

how do you install this thing?

I don´t understand how to install it either :S

Thanks a whole bunch! Tapping works great, and I just need to try and get scrolling working for my Inspiron 6000.

hi!
the driver works for me, but i can't modify the sensibility (is very sensitive) and jump when try to click whith precision.

i have a Synaptic Touchpad, run 10.4.5

eso.

So could someone Please write a how to...Not everyone is smart

uhm, sorry to say this, but the configuration interface for the driver is really lousy, and therefor I'm reluctant to make an "Easy to install" .pkg

sorry about that, but atleast *I'm* not planning on providing an easy guide. If someone else want to, feel free!

PHB,

Do you have a paypal account setup? You have made an awesome driver for those with ALPS trackpad problems. Could you be induced into adding VAIO touchpad compatibility to your driver, because I would be willing to donate to any paypal account for your work, as I'm sure other VAIO notebook users would also. If you are too busy at this time, I understand, however I hope you consider adding VAIO notebook support to your already wonderful driver.

I installed the driver and it loads fine on a Thinkpad R51. However Neither the touchpad or the trackpoint respond. Earlier someone mentioned for a thinkpad you must change a value in an info.plist. My question is simply which info.plist, I am assuming the one in ApplePS2Trackpad.kext, and how do I find the value appropriate for my touchpad.

any more news to report?

first of all, nice driver...
no to the problems
got a synaptics trackpad and after installing the driver it's like having a trackpad on drugs...
for some reason i cant access the ffscroll prefpane (i could before, now i cant) and i cant reduce it's sesitivity...

any idea on how to turn down sesitivity without it ?

it work, what kind of news do you want!

News in regards to the continuation of the development of this driver, it seems to be exactly what us laptop users need. the only problem is that this is still in beta stages of development and there are many issues yet to be resolved, as can be seen by the ratio of working users/not working fully users. I would not normally ask but it seems to have been a small while without any updates. This is a truly worth while project and i hope it continues untill there is a driver that all of us ALPS users can use, without errors and bugs.

phb congrats, the driver works good there are little things but im sure we can live with them, I spent the whole night setting up my dell inspiron 9200 and im happy to say that I got everything working, alps glidepoint touchpad, mobility 9700 at 1440x900, and well rightr now im just downloading some apps needed but its working great, thanks for all ur efforts they are greatly apreciated...

I managed to install the driver, but it unfortunately did not work on my VAIO S360's Alps widescreen trackpad. I may have to try again though because I am not sure whether I did it correctly. The FF option appeared in the system preferences but I was unable to load it. When i finish my next install, i'll try it again.