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Viewport in 2018. . . { a bit long in the preamble; my apologies } — Parallax Forums

Viewport in 2018. . . { a bit long in the preamble; my apologies }

GHBoard2020GHBoard2020 Posts: 3
in General Discussion
Well, I'm new to the Propeller scene. So, I noodling around them inner-net tubes as I get familiar with all things Propeller. I come across reference to a real kick-Smile piece of software for Propeller application development called, Viewport. Woo-hoo! methinks, a veritable swiss army knife project development! Hmmmm. . ., first off it is an exe file, on a Mac that' a no-no. Sorta'. There are potential solutions, Virtual Machine environments; VMWare, Parallels, and Virtual Box come to mind. Gee-golly gosh, I would need a licensed copy Windows, don't have that. The Bootcamp option in the macOS garden is the same constraint. Okay, what else; oh I know! Codeweaver.org has a slick tool called Crossover, no licensed copy of Windows required. Now that seemed promising. Downloaded the free trial. Proceeded to install viewport490.exe into a "bottle"{their term}. After some false starts, I was looking at the 'code' window of Viewport.

I loaded hello.spin. clicked 'Run'. Oops, what went wrong?!? I was immediately greeted a "Unable to Connect" "Device not found" window. That was a bit rude. Attempted to set the com port in Viewport is a bust as no ports are detected with Automatically search Ports check box selected in Viewport Port Manager.

Yeah, I know this Viewport is 'pretty long in the tooth' and postings seemed end about 5 years ago. However, if anybody was successful in getting this application to function with a Propeller Board of Education, I like to hear the latest most update scuttle butt on this.

Thank You for indulging a rookie.
Viewport Port Manager.png
1066 x 782 - 45K

Comments

  • dgatelydgately Posts: 1,630
    Crossover is based on the wine open source project... There are articles that detail the use of USB Serial within Wine on macOS and Linux CPUs.

    Here's one that might help getting the ports to show up in Viewport:

    https://downtowndougbrown.com/2013/03/getting-x-ctu-in-wine-to-detect-your-serial-ports/


    dgately
  • MicksterMickster Posts: 2,693
    I use ViewPort and really like it for PropBasic.

    I don't believe this is related to your current issue but at least with PropBasic, there is a bug in 490. I had to revert to a previous version..just FYI.
  • GHBoard2020GHBoard2020 Posts: 3
    @dgately:

    Well, I successfully followed through most of the workaround as was discussed in the Doug Brown article. Thank you for that much progress. Now, my next challenge is finding out where in the macOS file system is anything resembling '~/.wine/dosdevices' for the COM ports added, well good luck with that. If I should find the macOS equivalent to ~/.wine/dosdevices I might then find the usefulness of Viewport. By the way I do not expect to spend a lot of time, I'll give this effort a few days at most then it'll be time to move along.

    Thank you for the link.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Save the few days and move on already. Viewport is unsupported closed source software that is only designed for one platform. There is no future in it.
  • Clock LoopClock Loop Posts: 2,069
    edited 2018-11-14 02:45
    Heater. wrote: »
    Save the few days and move on already. Viewport is unsupported closed source software that is only designed for one platform. There is no future in it.

    Take this to heart, its abandonware, I have a developer copy, and no way to get help, files, key recovery... i can't use it cause i can't find my key, and the maker is MIA. $$$ goodbye.
    I figured it would be supported longer than it was, so i paid the most to help support it and it never went anywhere, no plugins, no dev tools etc...
    Meh..

    My only complaint with people who do this is that they should simply opensource the stuff so someone like me can still move ahead with it.
    COUGH*propscope*COUGH

    I once supported payware, now I don't, as much as possible. Too much wasted potential otherwise.
    Once bitten, twice bitten, get an open source bandaid, and don't look back... and donate to open sources.
  • msrobotsmsrobots Posts: 3,709
    Yeah, like @"Clock Loop" I do have lost my key to ViewPort and no way to recover it. And I also have a PropScope wayting for a working version of the software for it. Witch is quite sad because I liked ViewPort and used it a lot in the beginning.

    Not sure what happened to @Hanno.
  • dgatelydgately Posts: 1,630
    GHBoard2020 wrote: »
    @dgately:
    Now, my next challenge is finding out where in the macOS file system is anything resembling '~/.wine/dosdevices' for the COM ports added, well good luck with that. If I should find the macOS equivalent to ~/.wine/dosdevices I might then find the usefulness of Viewport.
    The "~/.wine/dosdevices" directory exists on macOS after Wine is installed. That IS the correct path!

    Crossover most likely creates a similar directory somewhere within the user's file hierarchy. But, I don't know that path. I don't use Crossover and prefer to just use a standard Wine installation. To install Wine, check out: https://wiki.winehq.org/MacOS



    dgately

  • GHBoard2020GHBoard2020 Posts: 3
    I'm now in the same camp as Clock Loop. I have spent a reasonable amount of time fiddling around with Regedit, diddling with /dev/dosdevices mapping. Never did Viewport find a single port ever. Time to move on. Thank you everyone for you considerations and advice.
  • MicksterMickster Posts: 2,693
    Password: I also thought I'd lost mine but then I remembered that it was emailed to me...and there it was.
  • Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL)Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL) Posts: 1,720
    @msrobots

    re:Not sure what happened to @Hanno.

    Has anyone tried his support page?

    http://onerobot.org/#Contact
  • Clock LoopClock Loop Posts: 2,069
    edited 2018-11-30 01:18
    Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL) wrote: »
    @msrobots

    re:Not sure what happened to @Hanno.

    Has anyone tried his support page?

    http://onerobot.org/#Contact

    About 3 times, actually.

    Its ok, he played his part and is onto different things.
    Godspeed hanno.


    But this does point out the biggest problem the internet has.

    Abandonded houses(websites) that still have a drop box for money and a tv is still on inside, making it look like someone is monitoring the transactions and keeping the house from collecting bandits(malware)

    The domain provider can be forced to take the site down, if they don't respond to proper inquiry. via the EAMIL.
    (each domain owner MUST have a vaild email and be contactable or the domain can be removed)

    https://who.is/whois/onerobot.org

    https://who.is/dns/onerobot.org

    So who makes sure this reporting of abandoned sites gets done? YOU. (the public)
  • macrobeakmacrobeak Posts: 354
    Yup what has happened to Hanno.
    He was a nice guy, very bright and productive, but he seems to have gone dark and abandoned his fans.
  • KeithEKeithE Posts: 957
    I believe that he's working on this https://robotmagic.org/
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