HC and Mac

[ON28]

I was a Windows guy until June, when I bought my first Mac laptop. Now I'm RailPro, and looking for a workaround instead of having to use someone else's PC. I successfully downloaded the RPA using Winebottler, but the Mac won't recognize the HC. Before I buy the CI, will it work from a Mac to program a module using the HC simulator? Thanks!

[KPack]

Sorry I didn't get back to this earlier.  I read it and meant to respond but have been traveling. 

Railpro programs will not work on the Mac OS.  You CAN get them to work on a Mac computer by running Parallels or Boot Camp.  The Railpro programs are at this time only designed for Windows (which is true for many, many programs).  Because of that Apple has wisely made ways for people to be able to run Windows-only programs.  Those ways aren't fool-proof and they don't work for everything.  But we've had a few members successfully run RPA using either Parallels or Boot Camp.

Once you get that working you should absolutely buy a CI-1.  They are well worth the $40 and will save you lots of hassle when uploading sounds to locomotives and updating programs.

-Kevin

[G8B4Life]

I completely missed seeing this one.

As Kevin has already said, no, Ring's software will not work natively on a Mac. Apart from Parallels or Boot Camp, which I believe you have to pay for the other option is setting up a virtual PC on your Mac using VirtualBox or VM Ware. This option is  free* and should work (I haven't tried it when a Mac is the host, only with another PC as the host).

* While VirtualBox and VM Ware player are free, Windows is not and in the interests of appearing to do the correct thing you should have a valid license for the copy of Windows you'd install. There are free evaluation copies of Windows that can be used but they expire after 30 days. There is also a free clone of Windows however the last time I looked, which was quite some time ago now USB support was lacking a lot and the HC / CI-1 were not detected.

- Tim