FaderPort Classic which was released nearly 10 years ago was never designed to work with Universal Control 2.8 (and newer) that we have in place today, in order to make it part of the UC family, all previous firmware versions (1.2, 1.35 and 1.38) all appear in Universal Control 2.8 (and higher) as version 1.00.
If your unit shows up as 1.00, you have a good working unit, no update is necessary unless you have Pro Tools. A minor change was made in FaderPort Classic firmware which brings that current version to 1.45. If you are using Logic, Cubase, Performer or another app that supports HUI, 1.00 firmware is all you need.
In order to make the FaderPort Classic work with Logic / Logic Pro (Cubase and Digital Performer) have a separate installer (aside from Universal Control) for the files needed for FaderPort Classic to work with these programs. It is not readily visible on the download page.
To get the FaderPort Control Installer go to this page:
https://www.presonus.com/products/FaderPort-Classic/downloads
Then select where it says "Show / Hide all versions of software downloads for ....."
Scroll to the bottom of the page where you'll see:
Run the pkg file to install the supporting software, then launch Logic and it will see it immediately and you can start to use it. I tested this before writing this article on a late model 2014 27" iMac 5K with 10.13.6 with 4x USB 3.0 ports and Logic Pro X 10.4.4 with success.
For others reading this that are Pro Tools users, or if you just want to have 1.45 firmware on your unit, you'll need to connect your FaderPort to a Windows or Mac system with a USB 2.0 port (black port, not blue) as the firmware updater inside the FaderPort Classic was designed before USB 3.0 was created, the Firmware Update will fail with any USB 3.x chipset (Mac or PC).
Updating on a USB 2.0 capable system (Mac or PC) will let the update complete successfully.
In case anyone is wondering, the single channel FaderPort released in 2018, FaderPort 8 and FaderPort 16 do not have the USB 3.0 firmware update issue.
