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Access the BeagleBone Black via the USB interface
Sometimes it may be more comfortable the access the BeagleBone Black via the USB interface of your host system. The configuration depends on the type of your operating system (either Linux, Windows or Mac OS X) and sometimes of the version of the used operating system. Lets have a look at the common systems. I start with with Mac OS X, because I am using it.
Mac OS X access to the Beaglebone Black
If your Mac OS X version is higher 10.13 (e.g. Mac os X Catalina), there is no possibility to access the BeagleBone Black via usb. In that case, you can downgrade to Mac OS X version is 10.13 (High Sierra) or you can install a virtual machine with High Sierra. Steps to run High Sierra on Virtual Box from Oracle are described here. Afterwards come back and proceed with the installation.
If your Mac OS X version is 10.13 (High Sierra) or lower, accessing the BeagleBone Black will be easy:
Just download and install the network driver and the serial driver from beagleoard.org.
The network driver offers Ethernet over the USB access and the serial driver offers USB to UART conversion.
After you have installed these two drivers reboot your computer and open the Network Panel of the System Preferences app. Now, connect your BeagleBone Black to the USB plug of your Macintosh.
Boot the BeagleBone Black with the Bootkey passed. Release the Bootkey. After a schort time, you will see 2 additional interfaces called BeagleBone Black in the Network Panel (see fig. 1).
MS Windows 10 access to the Beaglebone Black
To get access to the Beaglebone Black via the USB interface, you need to install a driver. Two versions of the driver exist, a version for 32Bit and 64Bit systems. So first, determined the Windows version, that you are using. Afterwards download either the 32Bit-version or the 64Bit-version.
After launching the installer, the window shown in Fig. 2 should open.
Fig. 2: MS Windows USB network driver (32bit version)
Start the installation by clicking the “next” button. During the installation, you have to answer some question about aborting or continuing the installation as shown in Fig. 3.
Fig. 2: MS Windows USB network driver (32bit version)
Do not hesitate and continue the installation anyway until it is finished.
