Re: Programming on a Mac
 

Sorry, there's no Mac-native compiler that will work for our purposes. So far as I can tell, only the MicroChip C18 compiler/linker can make use of the binary library file that contains the routines for running a FIRST robot.

Re: Programming on a Mac
 

I am assuming that you have a PPC mac.

I have not tried Q, but it requires a legal copy of windows in order to work. Q also has had limited hardware support.

I can tell you that MPlab & the compiler runs in crossover (which is a commercial wine implantation), but that runs only on x86 macs. There is a PPC version of wine called Darwine that might be able to run it. So if you are adventurous you can try it out.

Re: Programming on a Mac
 

The compiler (MCC18) is well-known to work under wine. See the above posts.

IFI_Loader is not required. There is also Loader Reloaded, picloader, and my own pycloader. (the last needs testing.)

Re: Programming on a Mac
 

I just use parallels on my macbook and everything works flawlessly with it. One annoying thing is that when you connect a device to the computer like a usb to serial converter, you have to click on the devices menu in parallels mac menu bar and select the device before the virtual machine can see it.

One problem i have is that loading the code through my radio shack usb to serial converter is so slow. Does anyone have a way to speed this up, or is it just the price of the emulation that the converter has to do?

Re: Programming on a Mac
 

It took about 5 minutes to load our code last year through my radio shack USB to serial converter on windows (compared to about 2 minutes for a straight serial connection). Our results were probably longer then typical since we were using 60% of the available program memory, but the converters will be slower. The emulation might not be slowing things down at all.

Re: Programming on a Mac
 

Has anybody been able to get EasyC to work on a PowerPC based system with Virtual PC & Win XP?

The installer get most of the way through the install, and a tiny window pops up
that says "Starting Error."

Ray
Team 1138

Re: Programming on a Mac
 

Are you running the beta of Parallels or are you running the current stable version? The beta has support for USB 2.0 and might help speed up the transfer. I would test it out but I currently don't have a robot that I can download code to.
-Nick

Re: Programming on a Mac
 

I have set it up using wine on a Intel mac (sorry PPC people, not going to work).

Long directions here: http://www.chsrobotics.com/?page_id=7

Short:
Install XCode and X11
Download wine source and compile + install
Install mcc18 (in X11 xterm) using wine
Grab our Makefile (see link above)
Go!

We have not figured out how to flash the microcontroller yet though (it will hang), but we have not spent much time on figuring out where things are going wrong.

Re: Programming on a Mac
 

I'm using Build 3120, released on January 10, and it doesn't even support my very common Sandisk flash drive at USB 2.0 speeds.

Re: Programming on a Mac
 

You mean downloading to the controller?

Can you be more specific? Are you running IFI_LOADER under wine? IFI Reloaded? pycloader?

Re: Programming on a Mac
 

We were using ifi picloader. One problem appears that there are some options being set in the termios that are not in the headers on a macintosh, but that still does not fix the problem.

I tried your pyctools, but it dies on a syntax error on line 177 in intelhex.py. I am not a python programmer, so I do not know how to fix it.

Any time you can put into figureing this out would be really awesome!

Re: Programming on a Mac
 

If you're new at programing I recommend downloading Unix and then running Cygwin to type the C program. Vi is ok, but it's tough to use for first timers. What all do you need to program in? That could change everything. In fact, it does change everything!!! OH NO!

Re: Programming on a Mac
 

We had this problem, we had to install the driver, so Ken actually had to dig int he trash for our disk *He didnt think there was one*. Then we had to find which port it was in. So many probelms for such little things.

Re: Programming on a Mac
 

For the intel guys it seems that the best way to program is to use bootcamp. I sent Parallels an e-mail about slow USB but not responce yet. USB-to-Serial is pretty fast in XP/Bootcamp. I hope Paralles does get USB sped up because rebooting all day is a pain.