Greetings.

I'm planning on teaching an intermediate robotics course in three or four months, and am contemplating using RobotC. The only problem is that I, and several of my students, am using a Mac. From my searching here, I gather there are no plans to release a RobotC variant for OS X in the near future. As such, does anyone have any advice for running RobotC on a Mac?

Certainly, I could use Windows in a virtual machine, but I'd rather not purchase a VM and an XP license just for that, and I imagine my students would be less inclined to do so. There is Darwine, and, while I haven't tried (the installer didn't run under it), I imagine there would be problems with communicating with the NXT, either over USB or Bluetooth (and the debugging is a huge feature of RobotC in my mind).

Has anyone tried running RobotC under OS X, and has anyone had any luck doing so?

This is a good question here! Yes, I am an newb on this site.. But I'm also pretty interested in RobotC

I'm not saying go open source, ( karma would reward you if you did) just release it on a *nix
platform..

I'd pay for that..

Ren

Developing for a new OS would be extremely time consuming (and expensive). I think your best bet for now would be to use Parallels or something else to that effect. I believe there are several solutions for running Windows on a Mac.

Regards,
Xander

I agree -- developing for a new OS would be expensive (and, even if you had a Mac version, that hardly helps users of other Unices). Parallels is a possibility, but, each computer would need Parallels and a Windows licenses (and when multiplied by several computers, or, worse, a lab full of computers, it is expensive!), and, on top of that, even though the purveyors of virtual machines have done an excellent job, non-technical users are readily confused by them.

Programs can be uploaded to the Vex robot from *nix and Cygwin using the vexctl command, part of the roboctl project. Besides being a multi-platform program, vexctl also has the advantage of being much faster than the Windows IFI loader. Default firmware uploads typically take about 5 seconds (2280 bytes/sec) vs. the 20-30 seconds I've experienced with the Windows IFI loader.
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I am awaiting a Mac version of RobotC, I attempted to install my current RobotC Version 1.4 on my MacBook but no joy. Looks like I will need a Windows XP laptop for this.
Regards,
Sam

Sam,

I'm afraid you will be waiting for quite some time. Why not run it in a a Virtual Box environment? It's free and you can download it here: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

- Xander

I tried to run RobotC on my windows 7 parallels desktop environment and had to go thorugh about 50 error messages (from robotC) just to open the program, and then when I tried to activate a trial license, it wouldn't show up no matter what I did. Any ideas?

Well, it would probably help us f we knew what the errors were. You're not really giving us a lot to work with here. Did you install the NXT driver before installing ROBOTC?

- Xander

Just to let the mods know (if they don't know already), this same question has been posted under Mindstorms as well as general discussions.

Xander, I'll give more detailed info in the next couple of days when I can use the computer again, but I'm not quite sure which driver you're talking about here. Do you mean the driver for talking to the NXT? because no, I haven't even plugged into the computer yet with my NXT because without a trial license I can't compile so I figured there was no point.

Magicode, I posted this in the mindstorms section as it's own thread because I thought that was the best way to ask for help, but then I saw Xander here suggesting that people use Parallels so I thought it could be relevant to pose my question here as well. No need to tattle just yet.

Oh, I'm not saying that you did anything wrong. It's just that if a thread is in one place, all the information gained from it is in that one place, and it helps things stay organised. So more of this doesn't happen: http://xkcd.com/979/

Cross posting is frowned upon but I'm very tired so I'll let you get away with it, this time

ROBOTC requires you install a driver for the NXT if that's what you intend to program for. I have no idea what happens if you fail to install it and try to do anything with it. Most likely it doesn't work and you end up with issues like you're having now

- Xander

I am running robotC in virtual box, but I am having trouble compiling/downloading as the cortex isn't being recognized through virtual box. I am not sure if I have the USB settings correct in Virtual Box. I searched around, but I couldn't find anything specific to VB itself. Can anyone provide tips/pointers?

You did install the VEX drivers, did you? I've never used a Mac but I have used Virtual Box in the past. I've found VMWare Workstation to be a lot more reliable. VMWare also make a program for OSX, called Fusion. You might want to give that a try. You can try it out for 30 days, I think. http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/overview.html . If you do decide to buy it, it'll set you back $50, which isn't terrible. It sure beats not being able to use ROBOTC.

Regards,
Xander