[Elecraft] Your thoughts on running SDR on a Mac

[Charles Johnson]

Another idea:

I am a registered Apple developer and was a beta tester for Parallels 8. If you are NOT running Windows 8, then Parallels 7 is the virtual platform of choice. It is still available from retailers at substantial discounts to version 8. Almost all of the changes incorporated into Parallels 8 were because of Windows 8 compatibility. Version 7 of Parallels is much more stable, and runs Win XP, Vista & 7 very nicely on most any Mac.

73, Charlie, K4ZRJ

 
On Nov 29, 2012, at 8:34 AM, Bayard Coolidge <n1ho at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I know nothing about SDR, and I own a K3, not a KX3.
> 
> But I do have a 27 inch iMac running Mountain Lion, with Parallels 8 and
> Windows 7 64bit Home Premium installed.
> 
> It was working beautifully with RMS Express, HRD, and the Elecraft utilities, etc.
> ...until yesterday (or late Tuesday), when I swallowed the latest update to Parallels
> (build 8.0.18345), which has a bug in it that prevents Windows 7 from being able
> to "see" the USB/Serial FTDI-based cables/chips properly and messes up the drivers.
> The issue has been raised to Parallels support and a fix is in the works, I think. Someone
> just posted a workaround on their user forum indicating that installing the FTDI driver
> on Mac OS X and creating a serial port on the VM will work, but it's limited to two of them.
> 
> So, basically, I can't control the K3 using its serial port, nor can I use my Signalink USB,
> for the time being. Yes, I need to spend a few hours pawing through my Time Machine
> backups to find the most recent working .pvm file, etc., but it's time I don't have right now.
> 
> I allocate one CPU core and 4GB of memory to the Parallels virtual machine, and that's
> given me very good performance (when it works!). One criterion for me is the time it
> takes HRD to switch modes between, say, PSK31 and RTTY-45 - there is a pregnant pause
> of several seconds on my Acer netbook (32 bit Atom processor at 1.66GHz, 2GB memory),
> but barely a blink on the iMac. Startup times for HRD and RMS Express are also impressive.
> 
> Personally, I would recommend you stick with a Windows 7-based solution for your SDR
> work until Windows 8 has been shaken out a bit - when you start adding layers of complexity
> like this, it becomes difficult to troubleshoot as there are likely multiple problems/interactions.
> 
> HTH,
> Brandy, N1HO
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