Using an Apple Mac to run a Laser Script

[RebeccaCowley]

Iv'e just bought an LS3020 and have got it to work with a borrowed PC but would ideally like to run it off my Mac. I've tried using VMware virtual machine to run windows and have managed to install Newly Draw but am not able to install the driver.

Does anyone know of a way round this?

Thanks,
Rebecca

[Spooky]

Hi Rebecca,

The prolem will be the driver software, TDMA in windows is totally different to a MAC, (Windows doesn't actually multitask, it splits resources between functions and switches back and forth very quickly)
VMware is great for running games and other windows programs but not for running hardware drivers on external devices.

If at all possible I'd recomend getting a cheap as chips windows PC (Tesco have a base unit in for a little over £100) for your laser needs.

Best wishes

Dave

[Trevor Wootton]

You could also try running VirtualBox. Its a platform emulator like VMWare, but also support USB pass-through.
They have a binary for Intel based Macs

I use the open source edition (which does not have the USB pass through) and have not tried the binary version, but it might be worth a try

Paul (On behalf of Trev)

[Minihack]

I realise this is an old thread, but thought I'd post anyway as it might help someone.
I had been using a Windows 7 laptop for my laser but as I was changing my Mac around for a different model and had room to try the latest version of Parallels desktop 11 (to run Windows 7 virtually on the Mac) I thought I'd give it a go at running my LS6840.
Actually, it was surprisingly easy as I was able to take a copy of my working PC (using Parallels Transporter) and put it straight into Parallels desktop as an intact virtual machine. It, after taking a while to install a little extra software that it loaded automatically, recognised the USB dongle and I was able to tell it to remember to use it always in Win 7, and then lasercut without issue was able to communicate directly with the LS6840 (again it is set automatically to know that this is a Win 7 USB connection.
So, happy days, I can now use the same MacBook Pro to do everything and can mothball the PC as an emergency backup.
Very likely all of this happened so easily because I was able to take advantage of the ability to clone my already working PC - which in itself took just a couple of hours using an ethernet cable to directly connect them together.