virtualbox.org

Mac Hardware: MacBookPro11,3 aka late-2013 rMBP 15" with NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M dGPU, 16gb RAM, 2.6ghz Haswell processor.
Mac Software: 10.9.1/13B3116
VBox Version: 4.3.6 r91406 + 4.3.6 Extension Pack successfully installed

Guest system: Windows XP SP3 32-bit config'd with PIIX3 chipset, 4gb RAM, no extended checkboxes, 1 CPU, all Acceleration checked, 128mb VRAM…

Issue:
Basically, I realized I've got plenty of horsepower to actually run Richard Burns Rally on the laptop and hook it up to the big screen TV in the living room. Got RBR running no problem, BUT I cannot get the Driving Force Pro GT wheel to connect. It recognizes the wheel correctly, shows all the correct (and same info) as in OS X System Profiler, but hovering over it in the Device list shows the Current State: Unavailable no matter what I do.

Fixes attempted so far:
Tried connecting the wheel before I start VBox.
Tried connecting the wheel only after guest OS is fully loaded.
Tried installing the old 10.6 Logitech driver from 10.6, following an iRacing lead…
Tried added USB Filter for wheel / running it with no filter.
Tried with USB 2.0 enabled/disabled.
Tried reinstalling VBox extension pack multiple times.

At this point, I'm pretty well stumped and looking for any clues or troubleshooting techniques others can recommend. Can't see any specific mention (by name anyway) of the wheel when it is connected in the guest OS logs. I see a lot of Linux people blacklisting various devices in order to bypass the host OS tinkering with them, but I have no clue if such a thing is possible with OS X?

Thanks in advance!

heavyboots wrote:late-2013 rMBP 15"

Your computer has only USB 3.0 ports. Those are not supported yet by VirtualBox.

EDIT: Well the USB ports are functional though. I have a mouse attached and a USB 2 stick. The wheel is definitely not a USB 3 device, so I don't understand how USB 3 would play into it.

(You are correct that my USB 3 stick seems to malfunction though…)

Although my post was short, I think you might have misunderstood. I talked about ports, not devices. No matter what you connect to a USB3 port (even a USB1.1 device), VirtualBox talks to the port, not the device. And VirtualBox does NOT talk (yet) to USB3 devices in your Mac. At this time you have 3 options:

1. patience (until they implement it),
2. money (to pay a developer to do it) or
3. programming expertise (so that you can contribute the necessary code yourself).

So it definitely has nothing to do with USB3. I stoked the boilers in my old 2009 MBP, which is definitely all USB2, and I'm getting exactly the same results in a device chain that is USB2 end-to-end.

I have discovered a subtlety that escaped me before at least (in part because the 2009 MBP is damn slow). Before you add a USB filter for the wheel, you get nothing out of VirtualBox. After you add a USB Filter, you hear Windows XP "mount" the damn thing for the count of 2 and then eject it again. I can literally get the Logitech control center to recognize that a wheel exists if I whack Retry at just the right time after plugging it in, but by the time it's ready to configure, the wheel is already gone again.

Turns out there is a guy at work who knows a bit about VirtualBox USB troubleshooting, so I will bug him again in the morning. Suffice it to say that some of his suggestions have already failed though—dmesg shows no new content after the wheel is mounted, which makes it hard to guess if there's a KEXT to unload. (One suggestion was to detect which KEXT it was using and call a kextunload on that driver.)

I think the next thing he was talking about was possibly writing a generic driver for it? o_O

At any rate, if this triggers any new brainstorms from the world at large, feel free to write up a post!