Welcome to LinuxCNC.org

Hello Andypugh,
what is Vmware Fusion ?
Thierry

ThLDQ wrote:www.vmware.com/products/fusion/overview.html

I use the free virtualbox.org VM software on a Macbook pro and run linuxcnc in it, mostly the 10.04 version with the RTAI kernel, but I dont use it to drive any hardware.

It does compile and run rt and sim versions, although I use mostly the sim version for development, and for the areas I'm working on sim is actually easier to debug since all HAL modules are in userland, not kernel space.

I wouldnt know which hardware to connect to the Mac anyway. Also, for me it wouldnt make sense to do development using some Mac OSX shim and then move it to linux to run it. Also, I havent even looked at latency issues running virtualbox/OSX.

- Michael

I've had Ubuntu installed on a Mac, via VirtutalBox for a long time. However trying to run the normal version of LinuxCNC would cause a very hard rash. At least in the past it did. So I have to ask are you running the emulator version or the normal version?

mhaberler wrote:Is this a recent result? I ask because I had hard crashes so bad a hard reboot was required. This is not something that happens to a Mac under normal operation. It has been a long time since iVe tested this though.There are many good reasons to want to run on the Mac. For one it is a laptop, thus I do not have any intention of actually running a machine on the VM. It would be a good place to do demos, programming and other things while away from stationary equipment.

The Latency test on my Mac under VMware Fusion (v2.8, and now they are on 4.1) gives 20,000nS with the latest LiveCD.
Which, if it is true, is rather astonishing.

wizard69 wrote:
I cant remember, but running the rt version gets me a kernel oops. running the simulator version is fine, but thats all I need for development. I compile from source.

- MIchael

If I sum up this discussion :
- either a linux partition on my iMac, and I run a cnc machine with EMC2
- or nothing.

Thierry

I'd say you should be able to run RTAI with a base thread from a linux partition, and possibly a servo based RTAI system from vmware - provided you can hook it up to the mac somehow, I dont think the USB connections will help a lot here

- Michael

ThLDQ wrote:A partition or an externally bootable drive, would get LinuxCNC (EMC) running on your Mac. Note that the external drive doesn't have to be magnetic, in theory you could install Linux to a USB SSD dongle of sufficirpent capacity. In either case running a swap file over USB is probably less than ideal.

As to the or nothing, I don't think any thing is impossible in this regard, but LinuxCNC running natively on Mac OS / BSD would be a massive project. The basic issue being the need to fab a realtime extension and followed by library ports. Controlling a machine from a VM appears to be totally out of the question. So I guess it is a bootable Linux or nothing at this point.

One thing I've been wondering about is Apple & Intels new Thunderbolt port. This looks like it will have huge potential for the CNC community as it avoids all of USBs issues with realtime hardware & software. The unfortunate thing is that hardware development seems to be tied up with Intel being cute. However the thought of a plug in FPGA board has to be rather interesting to many.

www.ecklersoft.com/

Seems to offer a real time solution with a USB dongle and the rt-stepper software, it includes the TKMini.app.
The setup and configuration seem straightforward too.
From what I gather the solution to the hardware needing a constant feed of data is handled by the USB dongle that buffers the needed info and doles it to the CNC controller in real time.
So, in this way the OS needn't have a RTAi kernel extension, just the data flow needs to be real time.
This is very interesting to me as a person that prefers to use Mac OS X platform.