9 replies to this topic

[Nevyn]

Every few years I upgrade my laptop and that time has come around.  Current considerations are Surface Pro 3 or Mac Book Pro (with Parallels).  I'm thinking about the Mac option as I have a Mini for iOS development.

 

Is anyone successfully using a Mac Book Pro with Parallels to program a Netduino?  How's it working out, any issues?

 

Regards,

Mark

[Stanislav Husár]

Hi,

 

I can tell you, that I can successfully program my Netduino on my iMac, but I am using Boot Camp, instead of Parallels.

[Nevyn]

Boot Camp - does that run Windows or Mac OS exclusively?

 

The reason I'm looking at Parallels is that it appears to allow Windows app and Mac OS apps to run at the same time.  I'd like to recover some of the costs by selling the Mac Mini and still be able to develop iOS apps using Xamarin.  This means I need Windows and Mac OS running at the same time.

 

Regards,

Mark

[Stanislav Husár]

Boot Camp allows you to install Windows to your Mac, and to boot it. So it is not running at one time with OS X, you switch between them by rebooting Mac (like dual boot). On the other hand, OS X and Windows under Boot Camp never share CPU, RAM, etc., like when using Parallels(or similar).

[Nevyn]

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

 

Been digging around and it looks like I can force the Netduino to always connect to the Parallels VM.

 

Back to analysing the software I use and machine costs.

 

Thanks again,

Mark

[Dan Vanderboom]

Hi Mark,

 

I'm in the same situation as you. Wondering if you were successful in getting Parallels to recognize it and attach to Windows VM?

 

Thanks,

Dan

[Nevyn]

I have the Mac and Windows installed with Parallels and a Windows VM with VS 2015 RC on it.  Next few days will see me have a go with the Netduino.  I have plugged USB devices into the machine and Parallels has given me the option of selecting the machine to connect it to, Mac or PC, just not got around to trying it with the Netduino yet.

 

One thing I will say is that I had a look at the Surface and the Surface Pro at a recent Microsoft event.  A couple of developers were using them and I must say the screen resolution on the Macbook Pro makes it a lot more desirable than the Surface machines.

 

Regards,

Mark

[Roy Salisbury]

Basically all of my computer hardware is a Mac of one form or another (iMac, Mac Mini, MacBook Pro).  Well .. I do have a server that Runs Hyper-V for SQL and IIS .. but desktop use is all Mac OSX.

 

I have been running Parallels on them for a long time and for the most part I have not had any issues.  The only issue I had with my Micro Devices (Netduino, GHI, ect) is that when you need to flash them they boot into a different "device" type and sometimes the connect/disconnect confuses Parallels and you have to get the timing right to get them flashed.  I have also had some issues debugging the Netduino devices where Visual Studio seems to not want to "see" the device in debug mode.  Usually I just need to reboot the Netduino a few times and Visual Studio will finally attach to it.

 

If you want the "best of both worlds" you can use BootCamp to install Windows 7/8/10 into so you have a "bare metal" OS.  Then boot back into OSX and let parallels create a virtual instance from the bootcamp partition.  Then 95% of the time you are using the virtual instance along with OSX running.  And if you need to you can boot natively into Windows.

 

Roy

 

 

[MosziNet]

Guys,

 

I can confirm that I'm using Windows 8 from Parallels, and it works flawlessly with Netduino

 

Moszi

[Nevyn]

I did have Windows 8.1 installed and that worked fine.  I've now moved on to a Windows 10 VM on Yosemite and that's working fine as well.

 

Regards,

Mark