Re: parallel port finally obsolete?

@Steve et al

> Interesting. Seems like a kludge, but nonetheless one that works OK.

Kludge - no, not really - I use virtualbox, it's free and allows you to have just a floating window, so it becomes part of the normal OS (although it's a windoze window :-)) ...

https://www.virtualbox.org/

> What sort of machines do you drive that way?

My CNC router (it's a Step-Four machine, Basic 540 - used to be on DOS).
BTW, DeskCNC also has CAM built-in which makes it very attractive - sort of a one-stop shop. I just use an el cheapo USB serial adaptor to connect to the DeskCNC board (which is IMHO very cheap).

>
> Some years ago, when EMC was first moving mainstream, I pointed out on this forum that a Mac running OSX was equally able to run Linux, and the absence of a parallel port appeared to be the only serious obstacle to EMC-on-Mac. The answer came back that that was all true, and in fact the only real obstacle was sufficient volunteers motivated to write the needed code. My guess is that is still true.

Perhaps -if it was all moved to open source, that problem would dissolve - an awful lot of folks on the 'maker' side of things use OSX now. I tried emc2 on the mac using the virtualbox with the linux/ubuntu braindead install - worked well (except that it couldn't find a parallel port strangely :-)) It also worked well on an old pc with the same bd install running from a cd - drove the step four perfectly.

>
> Also around that time there was a developer in Scotland who had a basic Mac motion control app running; Apple bought him out and after some further investment abandoned the project.

That would be me - LOL, if only Apple did "buy me out", I'd be a happy and rich man :-)) What actually happened was that I gave my application (sCAM) to the Uni of Tasmania (Oz) around 2000/2001 - those guys had a grant from Apple Uni Aus - they also had a lot of support from some of the other guys in the technical part of the Mac community (Claes Lundstrom comes to mind). They took a lot of the code (at least one of the students did) and rebuilt the whole idea into an app called iMill. I still have all their original source code and also the permission to put it into open source - it's in RealBasic (or realstudio as they call it now). Whether anyone wants to do anything with it is another matter of course :-) They use(d) it at the uni to drive their cnc router which was pc driven. It's essentially a cam application - it was intended to be used to actually control a machine as well, but that was never taken any further than the control interface.

I can imagine that GRBL would be a fine contender for a project using iMill.

Cheers

Neil