Potentially incompatible weather station hardware for use with Macintoshes

There are two known sources of incompatible interface hardware when connecting a Davis weather station to a Macintosh.

Use of PC based USB Data Logger or Serial Data Logger on a Mac system For a trouble free "Out of the Box" solution to connecting your VP2 to your Mac, it is always best to purchase the OSX version of the USB Data Logger that comes with a copy of Weatherlink for OSX. If you are migrating your station operations over from a previous Windows based system and are attempting to use a PC configured USB Data Logger or a Serial Logger with a Serial to USB adapter, reliable performance on a Mac system can be difficult and often times impossible to achieve.

Although some Mac/WeatherCat users have been successful in running a Serial Data Logger using a Serial to USB converter, results are generally mixed. If you continue to have problems maintaining a reliable connection between your VP2 and your Mac, it is probably time to replace your Serial Data Logger with the official OSX USB Data Logger package.

There is a procedure to convert a PC version of the USB Data logger to a Mac-compatible version. However, this procedure is risky and anyone who chooses to attempt assumes all risk associated with the attempt. A description of this procedure can be found on the MacWeather.net forum under: Reprogramming the PID "Product ID" of Your PC Formatted USB Data Logger Once more, the author of this wiki entry and Trixology accept no responsibility for any damage caused to your Data Logger as a result of a failed programming attempt.

Note: This document was originally published on the Lightsoft Weather Center LWC Forum in 2010.