Downloading and Installing tk545
on MacOS X Systems

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This is experimental software and probably contains defects. It remains under development. When available, newer versions of tk545 will be made available for download at this web site.

Downloading and Installing tk545 for MacOS X

1. Install the latest binary snapshot of MacOS X TCL/TK on your machine. You can get this from http://tcl.sourceforge.net/.

   Unfortunately the TCL interpreter built as part of the snapshot did not include support for serial devices. You'll need to pull source code to tcl from sourceforge via cvs and recompile it with project builder to add serial device support. Note that this will require you to install the OSX developer cdrom.

   The file you need to hack to fix the problem is configure. To really fix the problem you need autoconf, etc. which is a hassle, so these instructions just tell you how to hardcode the right value. The real fix will be done by the tcl team.

2. Edit tcl/unix/configure and find the snippet:

   if { (eval echo configure:2214: \"$ac_link\") 1>&5; (eval $ac_link) 2>&5; } && test -s conftest${ac_exeext} && (./conftest; exit) 2>/dev/null
   then
     tk_ok=termios
   else
     echo "configure: failed program was:" >&5
     cat conftest.$ac_ext >&5
     rm -fr conftest*
     tk_ok=no
   fi
   

   add immediately after the 'fi':

   tk_ok=termios
   

3. Build the osx project for tcl in tcl/macosx/Tcl.pbproj
4. After the build completes, copy the file:

   tcl/macosx/build/Tcl.framework/Versions/8.4/Tcl
   

   to:

   /Library/Frameworks/Tcl.framework/Versions/Current/Tcl
   

   You now have a tcl interpreter with serial I/O support.

5. Remove the old .tk545rc configuration file if it exists from a previous installation.
6. Download the gzipped Linux version of tk545, tk545-1.2.tar.gz .
7. Unzip and untar the file.
8. To run the application, start a new terminal and run tk545 like so:

   setenv tk545 /whereever/you/put/tk545
   

   or, if you're using a non-csh shell,

   export tk545=/whereever/you/put/tk545
   

   and then:

   /Applications/Wish\ Shell.app/Contents/MacOS/Wish\ Shell $tk545/tk545.tcl
   

   
   
9. Start tk545
10. When prompted, enter the name of your your serial device, e.g.,

    /dev/tty.KeyUSA28X>1.1
    

Notes

1. See the Release notes.
2. tk545 presumes the wish windowing shell is in your PATH.
3. Power your NRD-545 receiver on before starting tk545 or else the program will freeze.