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Troubleshooting-third party tablet erratic pressure input

Short version-I can't get my graphics tablet to read pen pressure input properly in Mac OS X. Hardware works fine in Windows- must be driver/system/extension/software issue. See troubleshooting steps attempted below.


Long Version-So I recently picked up one of Monoprice 22 in pen tablets. I know that it is no wacom, but I can't afford that at the moment. When i received it the tablet worked fine for about a week. Even though their drivers aren't great i got reasonable results in sketchbook pro. This was with ONLY my Nvidia t120 graphics card installed, i really need my other display, so after digging out my older ATI radeon2600xt and installing it i had about 4 or 5 days of flawless functionality with both graphics cards. Then i went to sketch one day and the pressure sensitivity was all over the place with blobs at the beginning and end of every stroke. After spending quite literally 15 or more hours of troubleshooting I cannot find the cause of this conflict. If anyone would be willing to help me out i am in great need!


Already Tried these steps:

1) I have removed every 3rd party .kext that could potentially cause a problem with the display driver -No Change

2) I've tried to remove Ink pref pane. (accidentally turned on handwriting recognition, thought this could be culprit) -No Change

3) I have uninstalled each graphics card separately and tried to setup monitor with each one separately -No Change.

4) I used kext wizard to make sure no other Tablet drivers were installed alongside. -No Change

5) Removed every pref file, plist, launchdeamon, startup item etc. that is 3rd party -No Change

6) Installed on the Windows partition, Pressure works flawless as expected with full detection. NOT the Hardware- Must be software or driver issue.

7) Uninstalled every piece of software that had been installed between then and now. -No Change


What i have been trying to figure out is how i can see what is happening as far as pen input events via console or terminal or wherever, but my knowledge stops when it comes to these things. I tried IORegistry explorer to try to see what i could learn but I couldn't figure out what kernel extension was controlling the tablet. From what i have tried to understand there is a generic .kext called IOUSBHIDDeviceController.kext or something that is the default for tablet type devices along with IOUSBComposite-what exactly those pieces of information mean i do not know, but thought it may be useful.


(Apologies if this is not in the proper forum, i tried to find a good place but wasn't sure, mods feel free to move it.)

Mac Pro (Early 2008), OS X Yosemite (10.10.2), nVidia gt120, Radeon hd2600xt, 14gb

Posted on Mar 3, 2015 9:39 PM

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3 replies

Mar 3, 2015 10:04 PM in response to msuper69

Any suggestion on what might be a better forum to try??


I have contacted the manufacturer, and their only response has been that it is a faulty tablet, but it isn't. This is the second tablet they have sent me, both work fine in Windows, then fail in Mac- it worked before, so it should work again-(in theory!)


I thought the developer forum might be a good place in case someone has had to write a driver in the past or could show me how to follow input events as they occur so i can dig deeper into the issue.

Mar 3, 2015 10:08 PM in response to macmanjpd

I said you should post in one of the OS X forums, depending on which version of OS X you are running.

It's highly unlikely that a non-manufacturer developer could write a driver for a piece of hardware without having detailed specs from the manufacturer.

Since it works in Windows but not in OS X, the problem must be in the driver for OS X.

It may have worked before but since it fails now, there must be something different in your OS X environment that has caused it break.


You could try installing a fresh copy of OS X on another partition, install the driver there and test.

Do not install anything other than what is included in the OS X install.

Troubleshooting-third party tablet erratic pressure input

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