Subject:
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Lego Mindstorms on Mac using Virtual PC?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Tue, 29 Dec 1998 21:31:53 GMT
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Original-From:
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Scott Cressler <longdogz@mindspring./stopspammers/com>
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Viewed:
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1167 times
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I'm new to this list, so forgive me if this has been discussed before.
Has anyone managed to get the Lego Mindstorms software/hardware to work
on a Mac using Virtual PC? It seems this should be possible, but the
cables I currently have to convert from the 8-pin din connector (needed
to connect to the Mac's serial port) to the 9-pin serial connector
(needed by the Mindstorms cable to the IR tower) don't work. One of the
cables was included with the Palm Pilot cradle and the other was an
Apple Printer cable I got at Fry's (MII-9808). I've gotten the software
to run (slowly) and have even (with the Palm Pilot cable) gotten a green
light to appear on the IR tower. With the Apple cable, I don't even get
the green light. In both cases, it gets to the point in Setup 2 where
it wants to download the firmware to the brick and shifts to a
"Troubleshooter" page because it says it can't find the IR transmitter.
I've also used the Mindstorms on someone else's Win 95 machine, and it
works fine.
It seems doing this on the Mac using Virtual PC should be possible, as
long as the Virtual PC software is transferring through the Mac's serial
port from the Mindstorms software correctly (which it may be doing as of
version 2.0 which had a "non-modem device" choice on the config of the
COM1 and 2 ports) and as long as I have a cable correctly converting
from the 8-pin to the 9-pin. The latter part is where I'm stuck now.
If I was going to build my own cable, I don't know what pins to connect
to what pins. I'm trying to get the info on the serial connection
through Virtual PC from the Connectix people.
I have a catalog from Pitsco/Dacta showing a $25 item which is the IR
tower and "PC and Mac cables". Do you think this cable would work? The
RCX brick pictured to work with this "Amusement Park" kit seems to be
the same as the one in the Mindstorms kit.
I'm really interested in getting this to work, rather than buying a PC!
;-(
Thanks for any pointers or help,
Happy New Year,
Scott Cressler
longdogz@pobox.com
--
Did you check the web site first?: http://www.crynwr.com/lego-robotics
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Lego Mindstorms on Mac using Virtual PC?
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| It won't work - even with a perfect cable. Mindstorms uses the RTS/CTS handshaking in an unorthodox manner. The fact that the Mac is RS-422 (not RS-232) means that the serial port emulation cannot be complete. While VPC works for most cases, it will (...) (26 years ago, 30-Dec-98, to lugnet.robotics)
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