thanks for the great release I have been able to install the RC driver correctly on 10.4.6 with Synaps on my Toshiba M200 Tablet... 2 finger scroll works as well as tap clicking works... thanks for the great effort

Hi.

First of all I would like to thank all of the people in this tread especially the genius behind the actual drivers. By reading the tread I managed to get the driver installed. The most recent one posted (0.1 RC1) is what I used.

I'm just having one final problem with it on my Dell Inspiron 8500 notebook. The side scrolling works however sometimes it will scroll even though my finger is not even close to the right edge of the pad. Also the pad sometimes seem to stop "reacting". I'm moving the mouse and even though my finger keeps moving along the pad the cursor just stops. If I lift my finger and try again it will work fine. I gues one could say the touchpad behaves highly irratic.

I gues what it comes down to is calibration? Am I correct in this assumption or am I doing something wrong? I read earlier on that the calibration tool in ffscroll doesn't work and you are supposed to manually edit a config file. Could someone shead some light on how I go about this? Where is the file located? And what do all the numbers and options stand for?

Thanks in advance.

lotusje

PS I did notice a "learning" curve. The touchpad seems to be less irratic after I use it for a while however it never becomes fully "normal". And after about 5 minutes it seems to stop " learning" as the problem doesn't become notably less.

Hi guys. Just wanted to pop by and say that I won't be doing any more development on this driver. The source is available on hackint0sh for someone to take over.

Has anyone with a synaptics touchpad managed to adjust it's hyperness?
I noticed in one of the posts that there's supposed to be a sensitivity key in the plist, but I can't find it.

Sky

PS has development popped up again elsewhere?

I know I'm digging up an old thread, but the version posted at http://www.nada.kth.se/~jobjo/ffscroll_ps2_20060207.tar.gz seems to be MIA; this copy worked better for one of my installs than the RC1. Anyone with an archive lying around? if so could you e-mail me a copy? nyquildriver at gmail.

many thanks.

For someone who does not know almost nothing at all in navigating on apple OS's, I also have no idea as to how install the driver. I am lost at the first step of extracting to the root /. I'd greatly appreciate it if someone could furnish us newbies as to how to go about an installation.
Thanks.

Also digging up an old thread...
Just wanted to let you know, i have got it working perfectly on a Toshiba Satellite a110-225 under OS X 10.4.8, and ofcourse share my method of installing it and getting it to work.
First of all, i suck at terminal commands, but hey, it works

Download the RC1 version and extract it to the desktop

Download Onyx if you haven't done already, and make hidden files and folders visible

Open up the folder extracted on the desktop, inside you'll find three folders: Library, System, usr.

Open up Library, inside again three folders.
PreferencePanes, the content inside this folder goes to: OS partition/Library/PreferencePanes/
Preferences, the content inside this folder goes to: OS partition/Library/Preferences/
StartupItems, the content inside this folder goes to: OS partition/Library/StartupItems/

Go to: OS partition/System/Library/Extensions/, and copy ApplePS2Controller.kext to the desktop.
Right click on ApplePS2Controller.kext and show package contents, open Contents/Plugins/
Now replace the ApplePS2Trackpad.kext inside the plugins folder, with the one from the downloaded /System/Library/Extensions/ApplePS2Controller/Contents/Plugins/ApplePS2Trackpad.kext

Copy the ApplePS2Controller.kext from the desktop back to: OS partition/System/Library/Extensions/ and overwrite.
Open up Terminal and enter following codes, one line at a time, and not what's between ( and ):

Sudo -s (Will ask for password)
chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions/ApplePS2Controller.kext
find /System/Library/Extensions/ApplePS2Controller.kext -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find /System/Library/Extensions/ApplePS2Controller.kext -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
diskutil repairpermissions /
exit
(close terminal)

Now go to the extracted folder again, open up usr/local/bin/ and copy the content to: OS partition/usr/local/bin

To be sure everything works on the second reboot, just repair diskpermissions again with diskutil.

I suck at writing tutorials, but hope this helps, and if someone knows a better way to explain all of this, go ahead.

Have fun.

Ps: phb, Thank you

Does anyone know ho to set the sensitivity to even lower value than minimum in Sys. prefs -> Mouse?
Problems with random jumping when you put the finger on touchpad are little bit anoying..
phb, thanks a lot for this one-man project, I would be pleased to look at the source codes, and tweak some things.. can you give me a source?

ffscrolldaemon!!

hi

i was playing long around to bring my synaptic trackpad working. i just get the hyper sensitiv curser and a strange scrolling behaviour.

i read in this tread that the changes must be aplied to the infoplist and then apply ffscrolldaemon and this work...

Default values work fine for me after execute ffscrolldaemon. i made the installation like deamobile describe. the only matter is that i have to apply this on every boot.

i would like if somebody could tell how to autoload this file in an hidden proccess. i do the dummy way: copy a ffscolldaemon to anywhere u like (not hidden files) and make it in the account settings to a startup proccess. works fine but i alway have to close the terminal window.

thx phb for this nice work.

Just installed the driver for my Toshiba M70 Alps trackpad. The trackpad became super sensitive. Anything more than very light pressure makes the pointer stop, become twitchy and unpredictable.

I would rather have regular right and bottom side scrolling than this twitchy 2 finger scrolling and hypersensitive touchpad. Would be nice if your driver had an option to turn this off and just have normal right and bottom side scrolling and tone way down it's hypersensitivity. Or maybe have two separate drivers. People over the linux camp seem to have Alps trackpads working right so I think it's dooable for OSx86. Here's how they do it:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Synaptics_Touchpad
http://www.debuntu.org/2006/06/18/67-how-t...-complete-guide

BTW, is there any way I can uninstall the driver in the meantime?

bump

Seriouly this driver is getting on my tits. Can someone explain how to tone down the sensitivity?

same for me im desperated and remove it

yeah this was really cool but i was not able to use it because i could not edit the pref. and the mouse was to twitchy but its deff a good start. that being said for anyone looking for something similar i found a program that allows you to scroll with the trackpad as a virtual scroll wheel or as a clickwheel. it only works for cocoa apps though, which is fine for me since i only want to scroll in safari. it also has some really cool gesture recog stuff. if ur interested


http://www.cocoasuite.com/

Alright I downloaded these files in hope that maybe it would work. Well it didn't and I must say that I am a little dissapointed. Anyways I have a Gateway CX2724 tablet laptop and I know its a synaptic touchpad but I get nothing I cant even load the FFSCROLL in prefrence panel. I was hoping maybe someone had an idea why.

For the sensitivity. under Keyboard & Mouse, there's now a tab called Trackpad, there you can adjust the speed.

Actually, I have a Synaptics touchpas with the side scroll option and I'd love to have
a working driver for it.
It's been a while since this post so I was wondering if you ever got around to doing one?


-Maj

any news??

Synaptics..... Yeah!!.

Anybody know how to disable the trackpad tap-to-click? De-selecting it from the system prefs doesn't do anything. I'm using a sony VAIO TXN15 if that's any help

i'm sorry, but i can't seem to get the terminal stuff right. i have the file unstuffed on my desktop, but what do i do from there in the terminal? i am a new mac user, and i am clueless as far as the commands go. could someone please step it out for me? i need my touchpad working right! thanks!

no luck for me (Vaio VGN-SZ140)

I installed this driver on a Dell Latitude c640 with a synaptics trackpad under 10.4.9. Initially the trackpad speed was so fast that it was almost unusable and the two-finger touch was so sensitive that I had to barely brush my finger across the trackpad surface in order to get the cursor to move without "locking up".

I figured that the settings in the FFScroll preference pane might be able to solve my problem. I fiddled with the settings under the two-finger touch tab. I was able to get the mouse down to a usable speed by lowering the tracking speed in the "normal" mouse and keyboard pane.

No matter now I fiddled with the settings in the FFScroll pane was I able to get the cursor to track a comfortable pace or get the two finger scroll to work. Finally I decided to check out the preference file to see if I could edit anymore options manually. (I got this from a post earlier in this thread)

The file is located at /Users/{username}/Library/Preferences/com.apple.driver.ApplePS2Trackpad.plist

When I double clicked the file it opened in Property List Editor. Here are the settings I changed and the values I changed them to to get my trackpad to work properly and to get two-finger scrolling to work.

Property: speedScale
Value: 1600
The higher the value this is set to the "slower" the cursor moves. I suspect it just changes how osX interprets the trackpad resolution. At a value of 1600 I was able the set the tracking speed in the "normal" mouse and keyboard pane back to the halfway point.

Property: tapTolerence
Value: 1000
I'm not really sure what this property does, but it eliminated some of the problems I was having with tap clicking

Property: horizontalScrollingRate/verticalScrollingRate
Value: 70
I set both of these properties to 70 to eliminate some of the "jumping" is was seeing when lifting my fingers after two finger scrolling. The higher you set the values the slower a window will scroll when using two finger scrolling.

Property: horizontalScrollingThreshold/verticalScrollingThreshold
Value: 9
I found 9 to be a nice compromise between responsiveness and eliminating false positives. Lower values improved the responsiveness when two finger scrolling but tended to increase the false positives when I was only using one finger on the trackpad.

Property: zAcceptThreshold
Value: 130
Sometimes the trackpad would misinterpret single finger usage as two finger scrolling. This made the cursor seem to lock up. The higher you set this property the harder you have to press on the trackpad to initiate two finger scrolling. I found values lower than 130 to sometimes cause my single finger usage to start scrolling. I also found that values above 130 made it so I had to press really hard with my fingers in order for my two fingers to register as a scrolling attempt.

All other values I left at their default levels. If you need to return everything to default just delete the above file and reboot and the file will get recreated with default values.

Whenever you make any changes to the ffscroll preferences you need to restart the ffscroll daemon in order for the changes to take effect. This can be accomplished by rebooting or running the following commands in the terminal.

> sudo killall -9 FFScrollDaemon
> sudo /usr/local/bin/FFScrollDaemon

The values I am using worked very well for my laptop and were found through trial and error. Others may find that different values work better. Hopefully this guide will help others find the values that work best for them.

The only issue I am still experiencing is double tap clicking and tap dragging. I believe that the doubleTapTolerence property will help that but I still need to experiment. I will post my results to this thread once I find out.

Thanks for the guide, duplicity! It really helped me with setting up two finger scrolling!
One thing: My file was located at /Library/Preferences/com.apple.driver... instead of /Users/xony/...

Have you gotten tap-dragging to work, yet?

Is there any way to increase the polling/tracking speed of a Synaptics trackpad in OS X, because the jerky pointer movement is horrible

Anyone know how to uninstall Alps. the sensitivity is way too much. Going to wait on different version

thanks in advance

Works great here on a Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook 6210D.

Synaptics please!!!

will it work for an insprion 5160 notebook with a 5.9 synaptics trackpad on leopard??

I know this is the wrong subforum, but I was wondering if anyone got this working on Leopard. It seems like the beta was fairly functional and just needed different defaults, but I can't even try it as the link on page 4 is down. Could someone PM me with a copy? I would be most grateful as I use some manner of an ALPS Glidepad on my Tosh Tecra M7.

I haven't had much time to look into getting tap dragging working correctly with this driver and a synaptics trackpad. However this site has info on what all the different items in the preference file mean.

http://www.koders.com/cpp/fidA9C3A7B418903...2546C4DFD8.aspx

If I manage to get tap dragging working on my laptop I will post the settings I used here.

i know this kext is for tiger, but has anyone tried it on leopard,
also is this for any ALPS touchpad?

Works fine with Leopard.

Which kexts did you use? Could you repost the links? Thanks a lot!

It works on my Toshiba Satellite notebook, but my settings vary from the suggestions outlined in this thread. It jumps a little, but once you get used to it you can avoid it and overall it works wonderfully. I believe I have an ALPS trackpad so if anyone wants the settings I used let me know.

Oh, and I'm using 10.5.1

i got this driver working on my hp pavillion dv2637tx with alps trackpad, running 10.5.2, install went fine, but my pointer was extremely slow, even with the setting on 100% in keyboard and mouse settings.

I spent 4 hours or so playing with the kext settings, then discovered that the synaptics settings in the kext actually control my alps trackpad, and not the alps settings. I definetely have an alps pad, as i downgraded to xp, and had to go hunting for the drivers, including the alps pad, which is listed on the hp site.

So i reduced the speedscale setting to 250, and its working very well. I also changed the zacceptstheshhold to 70, which allows me to two-finger scroll in all directions, and also with one finger after i trigger scrolling with two fingers, so its sensitive, but not clumsy.

Anyways, i thought this info may help some people.

Great post, worked well. I have a Syn trackpad and even after changing the ''speedScale'' to the 1600 mentioned, it was still crazy. So right now I am at a whooping 5000 and it finally seems to be normal at the very lowest slider in preferences. All I can say is keep raising and raising that setting until you get it to where you like.

BTW-I am running Leopard 10.5.5, so yes it works on it

Wow, this works for my HP dv2423la Synaptic Touchpad! Now every major 'glitch' from osx86 is gone

Now to test it out and see if it stands the Linux test.

so i got this to work after some trial an error. my ffscroll prefs was not loading so i found this terminal comand

sudo /Library/StartupItems/FFScroll/FFScroll

restart that restart ffscroll and now i can adjust the settings from there. but when i restart the settings are not the same. basically until i run that terminal command it does not work is there a way i can make it so the settings will load after a restart? also can some1 tell me how to revert my settings back to default using the textedit manual way. i changed the settings in there when i couldnt get the ffscroll daemon to work but since i can now i would like to revert the plist back to default.

Could you give me a link to the post? I can't find it.

my first reply after 2 months watching ...
work great on my F8sg