Mac version of SX-Key

David L

I what to know if there is a way to run SX-key on my Apple computer?
I have vertual PC 4.0 but it has bugs connecting though the USB keyspan serial port.

Dave Paton

I'd love to see this too, especially in light of the newer USB enabled Stamp products. The results of the poll posted a week or two ago weren't encouraging however, as most of the folks seemed very adament about keeping their serial port keys, I'm not sure what the odds of a USB SXKey are. I sincerely hope that the nice people at Parallax will humor us sooner than later, since I will have a pressing need for an SX development system in the next few months, and my old-n-busted Thinkpad may or may not be up to the challenge. Plus, the wait for a MacOS compatible Stamp programming system was just too long for me

As for VPC, I never found it to be reliable enough. V4 is so old that I'm not suprised it's unreliable. Have you tried the FTDI adapter? For the cost at the Parallax store, it's a cheap thing to investigate, and I've found it to be a lot more reliable than the Keyspan models.

-dave

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This is not a sig. This is a duck. Quack.

David L

Will the FTDI adapter work on an apple computer?
If it does that is what I will do

thanks

Ken Gracey

David,

Yes, FTDI has drivers for the Mac. You'd have to use VPC.

I think the big question is the portability of the SX-Key software to be compiled for a Mac platform. Peter would have to comment on this subject. You'd probably not be happy using Virtual PC with the SX-Key.

And about the poll. . . we just may need to make a USB SX-Key anyway and it would not have to obsolete the serial version. It's an easy project for us, but the real issue will likely lie with the software's [noparse][[/noparse]in]ability to compile for Macs. Peter. . . hey Peter!! Peter manages our SX-Key software and created it using Delphi tools.

Ken Gracey

alxx

How about a commandline version to start with ?

Or publish the api so people can make software for mac and linux ?

For linux you guys could use kylix, may be as simple as a recompile depending
on how many windows api calls have been used.

Maybe your delphi code will compile with free pascal
see http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/ probably not.

PJMonty

I don't know how I missed this thread before. Sorry for replying so late.

The software for the IDE is written in Delphi, hence porting to the Mac would be problematic at best. SASM is written in C, so porting it would likely require only a modest amount of work.

A port to Linux via Kylix is do-able (unless there are some hidden "gotchas"), but I'm really not sure how big a market there would be for that. I leave that sort of thing up to Ken and Parallax.

As for a command line version, the first question is, on what platform? Are we still talking Mac, or are we talking PC? If Mac, then the same caveat about porting Delphi code to the Mac platform still applies whether it's GUI or command line. The second question is what would a command line version be expected to do? Sending it a source file and telling to it to compile would be striaghtforward. Telling it to program an SX would also be straightforward. However, trying to get a command line version to debug would be a massive task.

The IDE polls the SX-Key constantly during debugging, and try to get get this data out in some sort of usable form via a command line app is hardly a straightforward proposition. Basically, it would either require someone to write their own GUI to interpret the data coming out of the command line version as well as to control it, or it would require grafting on somt sort of text based front end. Neither one is a walk in the park, and the external GUI version just replicates the current IDE, hence making it redundant.

Thanks, PeterM