windows vs mac

[mcgoo]

I started my shopbot career with windows on the router(not attached to the internet).I recently switched my personal computer to mac.Can I download from SB - software updates,projects,etc.- to my mac with a thumbdrive and later transfer to my router which is still windows run?

[Roy Harding]

Yes. The .SBP files are nothing more than plain text files. The updates and so on will also transfer just fine using your proposed method.

I also use a Mac, attached to a LAN. The ShopBot is, of course, on a windows machine - which is also on the network (but does not have internet access.) All my toolpath files go to a drive on the network which is accessible to both. If there's an update, I save them to the same drive so the ShopBot computer can access them.

I run VCarve Pro on the Mac, under Parallels Desktop - I highly recommend it.

[Steve Wonser]

You can also use Boot Camp to run Windows on a Mac. That saves you from having to buy Parallels or other virtual machine software. It also runs Windows at full speed. The down side is that you need to boot your computer into either Mac OS X or Windows. You hold the Option key while booting and then pick which OS to boot.

I'm using Boot Camp on an iMac for my design work with VCarve Pro. My ShopBot is connected to a PC computer. I transfer files using a USB stick because I don't have the PC connected to a network.

Here is a link to a description of Boot Camp at Apple:
http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201258

[Roy Harding]

Bootcamp is also a good choice for running Windows on your Mac. I prefer Parallels because I can use both OSs concurrently.

[tlempicke]

I also use bootcamp to run windows on my mac. Here is a cool trick. The mac will happily write to and record to a disk drive that is formatted FAT32. So I created a disk, on a partition, and formatted it FAT32. It is titled WIN_STO for Windows Storage.

I can access the disk with both the Mac and Windows, so when I want to pass something back and forth I just put it there and pick it up from the other system.

[davidp]

I started my shopbot career with windows on the router(not attached to the internet).I recently switched my personal computer to mac.Can I download from SB - software updates,projects,etc.- to my mac with a thumbdrive and later transfer to my router which is still windows run?

Hi Pat,

We have a mixed network and I use both mac and windows. We have two separate networks with one mac connected to both networks, one via wireless to our server and the other computers in our factory and the other network is purely for the bot and is ethernet. The bot network is not connected to the internet unless I physically enable it.

I use VMware as I found less problems with it than parallels. I run ArtCam, VCarve, TurboCad, Sketchup as well as SB3 on the mac quite happily. I have even connected the Mac to the bot and have run the bot in an emergency when the Win Box died. We transfer files directly from the Macs to the Win Box via the network.

I have been running this system for over 10 years and never a problem.

Regards,
David
Sydney

[Ernie Balch]

We also have a network with both mac and pc computers. Each computer syncs to DropBox allowing easy transfer of files between systems. This approach also provides automatic cloud storage in case of a hard drive problem.