Mac, Calibre don't see Sage

[PlatinumWarlock]

Originally Posted by Cosmos

I've been thinking about ordering a sage or a scribe to test.

FWIW… I got a brand new Sage yesterday, my first Kobo, and I spent half of today trying to get Calibre to see it, and the other half trying to get it to play nicely with my Mac (I plug in, get the “Connect or cancel” window, and I can’t go any further… neither button responds and I have to unplug it). So while I think it’s lovely and that I would enjoy using it, at the moment it’s just a paperweight.

(My PW5, however, pops right up and I transferred 500 books to it in less than a minute. So there’s that. Maybe I need a Scribe instead, although I don’t like the price tag.)

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by PlatinumWarlock

FWIW… I got a brand new Sage yesterday, my first Kobo, and I spent half of today trying to get Calibre to see it, and the other half trying to get it to play nicely with my Mac (I plug in, get the “Connect or cancel” window, and I can’t go any further… neither button responds and I have to unplug it). So while I think it’s lovely and that I would enjoy using it, at the moment it’s just a paperweight.

What version of calibre? What flavour of MacOS? Are you plugging directly to a port on the Mac or through a dongle/hub? Did you install the latest firmware when using WiFi setup? Since you are saying neither the connect or cancel buttons do anything, does the touch screen respond at other times? Or is it completely dead?

I find it rather humourous that you spent half the day trying to get calibre to see it and the other half trying to get it to play nicely with your Mac seeing as getting it to connect to your Mac is a necessity before calibre will be able to see it.

If you look through the calibre forums, the first question asked when connecting a device to USB and then complaining that calibre doesn't see it is "does the device show as a mounted drive on your Windows, Mac or Linux PC?".

[meeera]

Originally Posted by PlatinumWarlock

FWIW… I got a brand new Sage yesterday, my first Kobo, and I spent half of today trying to get Calibre to see it, and the other half trying to get it to play nicely with my Mac (I plug in, get the “Connect or cancel” window, and I can’t go any further… neither button responds and I have to unplug it). So while I think it’s lovely and that I would enjoy using it, at the moment it’s just a paperweight.

Suggestions:

Make sure you've got your Finder settings set to show external disks so you can see if the Kobo is mounting
Make sure Calibre's up to date
Make sure you're waiting a while after tapping Connect. Sometimes things take a little while to communicate, it's not instant
Obviously reboot both device and computer, I expect you've already done that (full shutdown/restart, not sleep/wake)
Plug into different port (try a hub)
Try a different cable, though the one you got new with your device should work

If you want to get reading immediately while troubleshooting, grab a book using Calibre Content Server

[chrisridd]

If you don't see the "KOBOreader" disk mounted, then nothing's going to work and you need to solve that first.

Recent versions of macOS will prompt you to confirm that you want to connect a specific USB device, so you want to make sure that - if you get that prompt - you say OK.

[PlatinumWarlock]

Originally Posted by DNSB

What version of calibre? What flavour of MacOS? Are you plugging directly to a port on the Mac or through a dongle/hub? Did you install the latest firmware when using WiFi setup? Since you are saying neither the connect or cancel buttons do anything, does the touch screen respond at other times? Or is it completely dead?

Latest, latest, directly (with the cable that came with the Sage, as well as two others to test), of course, and yes it responds perfectly except when it’s plugged into the Mac.

I find it rather humourous that you spent half the day trying to get calibre to see it and the other half trying to get it to play nicely with your Mac seeing as getting it to connect to your Mac is a necessity before calibre will be able to see it.

Glad to offer you some amusement. Frustration is really amusing for me too. Let’s everybody enjoy some!

If you look through the calibre forums, the first question asked when connecting a device to USB and then complaining that calibre doesn't see it is "does the device show as a mounted drive on your Windows, Mac or Linux PC?".

Yep, got that. Spent lots and lots of time on the forums. And at one point in the day it DID show as a mounted drive - but Calibre didn’t see it. So then it was lots of trying to figure out which was the problem.

BTW, thanks for the tips and advice. Really appreciate that. Super kind of you.

[PlatinumWarlock]

Originally Posted by meeera

Suggestions:

Make sure you've got your Finder settings set to show external disks so you can see if the Kobo is mounting
Make sure Calibre's up to date
Make sure you're waiting a while after tapping Connect. Sometimes things take a little while to communicate, it's not instant
Obviously reboot both device and computer, I expect you've already done that (full shutdown/restart, not sleep/wake)
Plug into different port (try a hub)
Try a different cable, though the one you got new with your device should work

If you want to get reading immediately while troubleshooting, grab a book using Calibre Content Server

Yep, did almost all of those (thanks for the tips!) except didn’t try a hub - figured direct connection was better. Why might a hub be preferable? And I’ll give tapping Connect longer… maybe I rushed it.

[PlatinumWarlock]

Originally Posted by chrisridd

Recent versions of macOS will prompt you to confirm that you want to connect a specific USB device, so you want to make sure that - if you get that prompt - you say OK.

Good point… never saw that. I’ll poke around with that issue. Thank you. 🙂

[anesthezea]

This might sound dumb, but bear with me. Are you using the right USB cable? I have so many similar cables, I have often plugged my Kobo into my Mac using the wrong one - the kind that is charge-only & doesn't transfer data - so my Mac & Calibre doesn't recognize it. Once I change the cable, it connects without a problem.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by PlatinumWarlock

Yep, did almost all of those (thanks for the tips!) except didn’t try a hub - figured direct connection was better. Why might a hub be preferable? And I’ll give tapping Connect longer… maybe I rushed it.

(You shouldn't need to actually tap longer than a standard tap, just wait for a goodly while after tapping.)

Try the hub. I don't know the techie details of why it sometimes works, but it does. And another reboot of both beforehand for good luck

[Ghostcat]

Just checking. Are you saying the the Kobo never moves from the Computer Detected screen?

If so, you may have a faulty Reader. Even if I use something that my computer considers a "bad cable", the Kobo still displays the <b>Connected and Charging </b> screen, even though the OS doesn't actually connect to the Reader.

Is it possible to test it on another computer. You don't necessary need Calibre or to be a Mac. We are just interested in checking that the OS recognises the device.

[PlatinumWarlock]

Originally Posted by anesthezea

This might sound dumb, but bear with me. Are you using the right USB cable? I have so many similar cables, I have often plugged my Kobo into my Mac using the wrong one - the kind that is charge-only & doesn't transfer data - so my Mac & Calibre doesn't recognize it. Once I change the cable, it connects without a problem.

Fair question - I made sure to use the one that came with the Sage, and I tried two others, just for good measure, and none of them did the trick.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by PlatinumWarlock

Glad to offer you some amusement. Frustration is really amusing for me too. Let’s everybody enjoy some!

You're welcome. Seriously, after decades in IT, I've learned that I can laugh or I can cry. Generally, I find laughing works better for me.

Seriously though, if you've tried your Sage with multiple computers, ports and cables and the touch screen works when not plugged into a USB port, I would try turning developer mode on (enter devmodeon in the search box and search). After this, you should find an extra entry under Settings => Device Information called Developer options. On the last page of Developer options, you will see a Factory reset your eReader. This will reset back to factory firmware and out of the box settings. In contrast, the Device information's factory reset which does not wipe back to factory firmware and simply removes the user setup.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by PlatinumWarlock

Yep, did almost all of those (thanks for the tips!) except didn’t try a hub - figured direct connection was better. Why might a hub be preferable? And I’ll give tapping Connect longer… maybe I rushed it.

There were some erratic issues where connecting directly to a Mac does not work but using a USB hub does. This was mostly seen with earlier Kindle and Kobo ereaders which were not happy with connecting to a USB C port.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DNSB

There were some erratic issues where connecting directly to a Mac does not work but using a USB hub does. This was mostly seen with earlier Kindle and Kobo ereaders which were not happy with connecting to a USB C port.

Yes. I had to buy a hub for the Libra H2O (which used micro-USB) to connect it to a USB-C port on my computer. It would not connect otherwise. Both my Sage and Libra 2 connect fine using an USB-C/USB-C cable bought from Amazon. I don't use the cables that came with them.

[PlatinumWarlock]

Originally Posted by Ghostcat

Just checking. Are you saying the the Kobo never moves from the Computer Detected screen?

If so, you may have a faulty Reader. Even if I use something that my computer considers a "bad cable", the Kobo still displays the <b>Connected and Charging </b> screen, even though the OS doesn't actually connect to the Reader.

Is it possible to test it on another computer. You don't necessary need Calibre or to be a Mac. We are just interested in checking that the OS recognises the device.

Correct, when it's plugged into the Mac - it basically freezes up and I have to unplug it from the Mac in order to interact with it at all. Same behavior with my Mac laptop. BUT - it was fine with my Windows 10 machine, and it's perfect on its own (no computer). So it seems to likely be the MacOS.