Discussions

(Original 4/20/12; Edited 3/16/13 to reflect a working configuration)

tl;dr -

1. Running Mission Planner via a Windows VM on Mac VMWare may report verification failures when loading firmware.
2. The comments on this discussion were helpful.
3. About a year later, all versions involved are new, it's working, and I've posted my successful setup.

I'm sharing this story to help others. 

 Setup that did NOT work: April 20, 2012:

• Mission Planner 1.71 (also tried 1.50)
• • Mac OSX 10.6.8 Snow Leopard (both MacBook Pro and Mac Mini tested)
  • Windows 7 32-bit VM on VMWare Fusion 3.1.3 and 4.1.2 (also tried a fresh install Win7 VM, and a fresh XP VM)
  • FTDI driver verified in Device Manager on both Win 7 and XP
• Brand new APM2.0
• • No telemetry, servos, or receiver attached
  • Powered via USB and also tried with external 5V supply on output side
  • Verified problem with and without GPS lock
  • Firmware involved: Factory firmware and attempts to load ArduPlane 2.33 (or any firmware, really)
• Did not test: Uploading sketches directly from Arduino

Symptoms

• Upon attempting to load any firmware, after the "Verify APM" stage, I received an alert that "Upload succeeded, but verify failed: exp ### got ### at ###", where ### is different each time.
• When connecting over USB via other means (clean Boot Camp install), the CLI would usually spit out junk until I pressed enter 3 times.

I read many helpful threads here that suggested fuse/bootloader problems. This comment from Kevin re: VMWare was helpful even though I was NOT receiving the original poster's error, "Can't detect apm version. Check your cabling".

Ultimately Chris' common sense advice of "try different computers and cables" led to the most probably cause: Running in a VM seems to interfere with the 115200 baud serial communication, even though I've never had a problem with other USB devices through VMWare.

I was able to load and verify firmware with ease on a non-VM Windows 7 PC. I then went and tested a bunch of combinations of VMs and Macs (listed above) to provide data to help others. I also eventually got a reliable setup around the same time with similar versions by using Boot Camp instead. Since this wasn't easily googlable, hopefully this post will have the right keywords to save someone else some facepalm. :)

Setup that is currently working in a Fusion VM: March 16, 2013

• Mission Planner 1.2.33
• • Mac OSX 10.8.2 Snow Leopard (2012 MacBook Pro 15"R)
  • Windows 7 32-bit VM on VMWare Fusion 4.1.4
  • FTDI driver verified in Device Manager
• Brand new APM2.5
• • Firmware involved: Factory firmware, attempting to load ArduPlane 2.70

The helpful commenters below suggested:

• Setting the COM port settings to 115200/N/8/1/X in Device Manager
• Running Mission Planner in WinXP SP3 compatibility mode
• Installing MonoMac, which is painful. I'm a dev but I feel that project's docs are fairly poor. When I finally got the 3 prereqs and sorted through the shoddy install docs, MP on Mono can't handle my Retina display properly.

Ultimately, none of the above suggestions worked for me at the time, and furthermore I have success loading firmware and connecting with my current VMWare setup with or without the COM port and XP compatibility mode settings.