[WP-34S] Cable and flashing options for Mac users

[John Galt]

(01-20-2015 09:55 PM)Marcus von Cube Wrote:  Can you use it within a virtual machine running Windows? My development system is a Mac but I've never tried to flash a 30b from OS-X, always with MySamba on XP under Parallels. The latter reliably assigns my USB devices to the virtual machine.

Thank you Marcus, I really appreciate your words of wisdom. I watched the video of your presentation and realize you used XP and a VM for development on a Mac. I do not use Windows but I have no doubt what you describe would work with the Prolific chip.

When someone refers to a "serial port" as implemented in the HP-30b, I did not fully appreciate the fact that the communication protocol is such a "mess" (the word I chose to characterize it earlier). Yes it's serial, but I made the assumption it would conform to a common protocol – similar to the 48GX, for example. My mistake.

At a subliminal level I knew the lack of a crystal in the 30b would require some programming contortions, but its implications are now quite clear.