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mbrethen · (This post was last modified: 09-05-2019 02:49 AM by mbrethen.)

The USB programmer for the Clonix/NoV modules uses a Prolific IC for the USB<>COM conversion. I installed Wine on my MacBook and the OS X drivers for the Prolific IC. Wine can't connect directly to hardware ports or devices on my MacBook. A workaround is to manually map a device entry from the native OS to a symlink in .wine/dosdevices, i.e. ln -s /dev/cu.usbserial com3. ClonixConfig.exe runs in wine. Unfortunately, it didn't find the programmer. Has anyone been able to make this work on a Mac?

Sylvain Cote · 09-05-2019, 02:57 AM

(09-05-2019 12:44 AM)mbrethen Wrote: Has anyone been able to make this work on a Mac?

USB serial & JTAG like devices are not supported by neither Wine nor CrossOver for macOS. With symlink you can for farther but at some point it always failed, at least in my case.
For Windows utilities like Diego's ClonixConfig, Meindert's MLDL2K, Christoph's ILPer/ILVideo/etc and other like these I use either Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion with Windows 7 32/64.

Sylvain

mbrethen · 09-05-2019, 03:27 AM

(09-05-2019 02:57 AM)Sylvain Cote Wrote: Christoph's ILPer/ILVideo/etc and other like these I use either Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion with Windows 7 32/64.

Sylvain

I run ILPer in wine. See Make PIL-Box ILPer program run on OS X

Never had any issues following this method. I wonder if the prolific driver is incompatible?

Code:

kextstat | grep prolific

  171    0 0xffffff7f85bba000 0x6000     0x6000     com.prolific.driver.PL2303 (1.6.2) 6F5078E2-86F6-351B-B572-99C287F87ECD <138 52 5 4 3>

Code:

ioreg -c IOSerialBSDClient | grep usb

      | |                 "IOTTYBaseName" = "usbserial"

      | |                 "IOCalloutDevice" = "/dev/cu.usbserial"

      | |                 "IODialinDevice" = "/dev/tty.usbserial"

      | |                 "IOTTYDevice" = "usbserial"

Jurgen Keller · 09-05-2019, 05:28 PM

(09-05-2019 03:27 AM)mbrethen Wrote:
(09-05-2019 02:57 AM)Sylvain Cote Wrote: Christoph's ILPer/ILVideo/etc and other like these I use either Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion with Windows 7 32/64.

Sylvain

I run ILPer in wine. See Make PIL-Box ILPer program run on OS X

Good to hear that somebody else used this approach successfully.

Currently, I don't use this method anymore. For CLONIX I now have a (VirtualBox) VM, and so it was just natural to run ILPer in the VM, too.

mbrethen · 09-05-2019, 07:37 PM

(09-05-2019 05:28 PM)Jurgen Keller Wrote: For CLONIX I now have a (VirtualBox) VM, and so it was just natural to run ILPer in the VM, too.

Are you referring to Oracle VM VirtualBox? I see it's now open source.

Jurgen Keller · 09-06-2019, 08:32 AM

(09-05-2019 07:37 PM)mbrethen Wrote:
(09-05-2019 05:28 PM)Jurgen Keller Wrote: For CLONIX I now have a (VirtualBox) VM, and so it was just natural to run ILPer in the VM, too.

Are you referring to Oracle VM VirtualBox? I see it's now open source.

Exactly. It's free. Besides a MacBook I had an old laptop with a valid Windows 8.1 license. As I only used it occasionally for my hobby, I've transferred the license to the VM on my MacBook and put the PC to storage.

If you don't have (or don't want to buy) a Windows license, there are free Windows VMs available from Microsoft, see here. However, the Windows 10 VM only runs for three month or so, then you have to recreate it. Anyway, if you have all the files on the host in a folder shared with the VM, that might be acceptable. Otherwise, it's at least useful for giving it a try and see if that meets your needs.

mbrethen · 09-06-2019, 04:43 PM

A retail copy of Windows 7 Professional 32/64 can be had for as little as $50. I loaded the 90 day trial to play around with until my own copy arrives.

ijabbott · 09-07-2019, 08:40 AM

(09-06-2019 04:43 PM)mbrethen Wrote: A retail copy of Windows 7 Professional 32/64 can be had for as little as $50. I loaded the 90 day trial to play around with until my own copy arrives.

Yes, but Microsoft ends support for it in January 2020.

Jurgen Keller · 09-07-2019, 08:47 AM

(09-07-2019 08:40 AM)ijabbott Wrote:
(09-06-2019 04:43 PM)mbrethen Wrote: A retail copy of Windows 7 Professional 32/64 can be had for as little as $50. I loaded the 90 day trial to play around with until my own copy arrives.

Yes, but Microsoft ends support for it in January 2020.

I've heard rumors that it's still possible to update Win7/8 to Win10 for free (of course if you have a valid license on your Win7/8 system). Yesterday I tried it on my Win8 system and it worked seamlessly.

**rprosperi** · 09-07-2019, 12:25 PM

(09-07-2019 08:47 AM)Jurgen Keller Wrote:
(09-07-2019 08:40 AM)ijabbott Wrote: Yes, but Microsoft ends support for it in January 2020.

I've heard rumors that it's still possible to update Win7/8 to Win10 for free (of course if you have a valid license on your Win7/8 system). Yesterday I tried it on my Win8 system and it worked seamlessly.

Yes, it still works, and is still legal, etc. It has never stopped working, MS simply stopped promoting it. Many, many people have purchased Win-10 licenses to upgrade win7/win8 machines that were not necessary. Which is why MS stopped promoting it.

Just download the Win-10 Updater (from here) and run it. If the machine meets the qualifications and is healthy, the upgrade only takes about an hour.

mbrethen · 09-07-2019, 04:06 PM

I do not have a windows machine, I purchased 7 to run on VirtualBox. Should I upgrade to 10?

BTW, I downloaded the binary installer of VirtualBox 6 and installed it on my MacBook air yesterday. Then imported the IE11-win7 VM. After many cycles of windows updates I downloaded ILPer and Clonix software. I also set up USB device filters for FTDI and Prolific. Windows installed drivers for each when first plugged in the PILbox and Clonix Programmer. So far, so good.

ILPer does not run. I think it needs the VC++ runtime installed. Is VC 6.0 compatible with Win7?

I was able to connect to the clonix programmer and read the contents of my NoVRAM module.

**rprosperi** · 09-07-2019, 05:02 PM

(09-07-2019 04:06 PM)mbrethen Wrote: ILPer does not run. I think it needs the VC++ runtime installed. Is VC 6.0 compatible with Win7?

Yes, the runtime is required. Here is a link to the version Christoph recommends (from his site): https://hp.giesselink.com/Runtime/vcredist2005_x86.exe

As for upgrading to Win-10, probably no reason to if you're only using Windows for accessing Calc-related tools. But if you will be casually browsing internet and similar usage, then I would upgrade, as once Win-7 support ends, there will certainly by more malware released which targets Win-7, since it is clear that MS will not patch it thereafter.