6700 on a Mac?

Keith Bainbridge

I'm thinking of coming back to Flex ( I had the 2nd 1000 in Australia and a 3000 ), but these days all my computing is exclusively on macs. I can run win7 under parallels but prefer not to if poss. So how long do I have to wait to experience a 6700 on my Mac ? The cash is sitting there waiting Cheers Keith

Alan - KA4B

Good luck, Keith. There are more of us who feel the same way. It sounds like Flex plans to wait for someone like Stu (K6TU) to come along a do it for them. Things always work better if you stick with one operating system and for me that is going to be OS X.

Tim - W4TME

Keith - There is not a native OS X application for the FLEX-6000, however you can run SmartSDR for Windows under Parallels today. There are may people doing it and there are several posts on the community describing the best CPU and memory configuration for it to run optimally since it is graphics intensive. Alan - we do not comment or speculate on future products before they are ready for alpha / beta testing. We specifically engineered the FLEX-6000 to be client operating system agnostic so that we and others could easily write client software for other operating systems. Good things are coming. It is just going to take a little time as writing a new radio hardware "operating system" from scratch is not an easy or trivial thing to do, but the long term benefits of doing it will pay dividends in spades.

Charles - K5UA

Although you could run win7 under Parallels, I run Win 7 under Bootcamp on my Mac Mini. It boots directly into Win 7, you really don't know you're not on a Windows machine. Bootcamp requires you to download Windows drivers, but after that you have a near-native Win 7 environment. I've Windows-specific hardware since 1982, but the form factor, weight, and features of the mac-mini hardware, and the ability for it to run Windows in a near-native mode was irresistable to me. Very high recommendation. I run XP pro under Parallels on a Macbook Pro with not a hiccup, although I'm sure there would be a performance penalty for running the Flex with it. The mac-mini (i7 processor and 16GB ram) with Win 7 running under Bootcamp runs two monitors and two panadapters on the 6500 very well. The graphics chip on the new mac-minis is not highly rated for 3D graphics, but the 2D graphics performance required for the 6500 seems to be adequate. I'm sure other mac-mini owners will weigh-in on this recommendation. I feel confident there will be positive comments on this hardware/software solution.

Luke Evans

SmartSDR runs flawlessly under Parallels for me. Of course, I'd also love Flex to produce a Mac client, and who knows maybe one day that will be possible - perhaps using the Mono platform at least. In the meantime, running under Parallels is quite satisfactory.

Ed baker

Flex Will run Flawless on Boot camp with XP / 7 whatever,. Everything PC I use , runs on Boot camp , using XP or 7 . All I changed was the 2 finger mouse sign on the mouse pad. Or I use my wireless Anywhere MX mouse . ALL Is good. Until they make Native OS apps

Alan - KA4B

Tim, I was wondering about the client software for OS X. If someone were to do that would they be trying to hit a moving target because of the continual changes being made? Or is that part transparent and the interface stays constant? I can see that if things are changing all the time it might be a high maintenance situation for the programmer. In the past I ran Office for Mac and Parallels/Windows 7 on my 17 inch Macbook Pro and it got to the point where I was having total crashes several times a week. The people at the Apple Genius Bar told me that If it took the Microsoft software off my computer it would most likely stop. I removed Office and Parallels and the problem completely stopped. I am hesitant to buy an update for Parallels and try again because of my past experience. I do have Bootcamp set up exclusively for use with 4NEC2 but that means I can't access any of the other things I do with this computer while using Bookcamp. I frankly don't think Windows is a very secure or well-designed operating system.

DonS

Luke, are you using the latest version of SSDR with DAX? If so, and if you do digital communications have you looked at your transmitted signal? I get a horrible waveform doing digi work so I had to switch over to a PC for the digi stuff.

Jeff Herhold

I have successfully run SmartSDR on a Win 7 virtual machine on VMware Fusion 4.1.3 on an iMac 27 with two monitors. Used Fldigi for some PSK31 QSOs with DAX until RF in the shack (I think) knocked my network down. I haven't yet tried a voice contact yet.

DonS

Jeff, I also tried VMware but again I had the same bad waveform in the digi mode as I had with Parallels. Did you happen to notice your waveform in the digi mode?

Sergey R5AU

Well Team, since last July i am in deal with my F6700 and really hard testing many SW on VMware and Parallels. Summ: 1. Both VM platform partly good for CW&SSB and one Panadapter 2. Both VM unacceptable with any DIGI mode (signal is very poor) Suggestion - unfortunately i started with BootCamp as native Win machine

Alan - KA4B

Sergey. Do you mean that both Parallels and VMware Fusion are not good for digital modes?

Sergey R5AU

Alan, first of all i would like to put note regarding my previous post, of course that i said in relation to DAX usage, all of us a long time wait a DAX solution, but you know some times not at all tested and supported from VM software side, unfortunately. Of course you can use stand alone solutions for DIG mode like Sound Card or any external devices in connection to the Flex AUX port, but not with DAX. I send some reports to the Parallels and VMware without visible solution on that at the moment from both sides.

Steve K9ZW

Having DAX working well under Parallels/Win7-64 with about the same amount of issues as when running natively on a WinXP box. I did have to reboot, reboot, reboot to get the ports sort out and some other small issues, but once running it has worked without a hiccup. Sergey, what is your setup doing wrong? Thanks & 73, Steve K9ZW

Sergey R5AU

Steve, i am tried FLDIGI and MIXW with both of them my signal on panadapter occupied a wide specter(~2kHz on level around -20db from the peak), on RX side this is noise+distortions(signal is unreadable). I have no idea what this, but in the same time in case using native Win machine with equal setup - all clear. Sporadically on VMware signal comes back to the good conditions but it only sporadically.

DonS

Steve, Alan I have to concur with Sergey as I have also experienced the same issues with both Parallels and VMware in the digi modes. See this thread and you will see the type of signal display I got using Parallels and also VMware in the digi mode. On rare occasions the transmitted signal looked normal but rarely. http://community.flexradio.com/flexradio/topics/dax_on_transmit

Steve-N5AC

I'm using exclusively Parallels (not VMware). I do development on the office on a MAC in a Parallels VM running Ubuntu (for radio firmware). I do my SmartSDR testing on a Windows box at the office. But at home, I do all of my Windows testing under Parallels running Windows 7. I've run JT65/9 using WSJT-X and this last weekend I ran WSPR-X overnight from inside Parallels. To see the results I got on WSPR-X, go to the database page on WSPRnet (http://wsprnet.org/drupal/wsprnet/spots) and use these parameters: I was running a Carolina Windom in my backyard and it's not in very good position, draped across a building, run through the trees, etc. Best heard contact looks to be VK5EI @ 14,796km and best contact I heard looks to be GM4SFW at 7,364km. Not surprising that I send better than hear in an urban environment. The only issue I have had with digital modes under parallels is this: when connecting to my Windows VM using remote desktop, Parallels tries to move around the sound cards to send sound remotely and disconnects them. I got around this by altering a parallels setting under sound. It's a pain to run digital modes remote like this, though. We need full remote of digital modes ;-)

Sergey R5AU

Hi Steve, thank you for update, but i think this is not a DAX issue but VM SW, for better review i recorded couple minutes ago Bad TX signal. You can see it on: http://youtu.be/JzS-U1fbO2o?hd=1 This was: iMac 27 2010 OS X MAVERICK Parallels Win7 64bit Professsional SSDR 1.0.24 Fldigi 3.21.77

Steve-N5AC

OK I looked at the video, but I'm not sure exactly what I'm looking at. It looks like you were calling attention to the bandwidth of the signal, but way down. I can't tell exactly because I can't see how your panadapter is scaled, but it looks like you are pointing out what is going on 50-70dB down, but you said previously that the issues was at -20dBc so perhaps you are zoomed in on the panadapter. If so, this could be from settings in Windows which are causing a resampling of the audio. Can you check to be sure that your sound cards for this channel (if you are on channel #1, this would be DAX Audio RX 1, DAX RESEVED Audio RX 1, DAX Audio TX 1 and DAX RESERVED Audio TX 1 are all set to 48kHz and NOT 44.1kHz sampling rate)? Resampling can introduce this kind of noise. Incidentally, using the SmartSDR API eliminates all of these issues so we're working with as many digital mode programs as we can to get them to use the API directly. Using the API completely bypasses all Windows Audio devices, drivers, etc.

Sergey R5AU

Well Steve, sure no resampling(48kHz, this was a step #1 for starting with DAX), in Parallels more worse result then in VMware, more time i am with VMware and -20db was related with this machine, just was started Parallels for other case that i utilized for SSDR demo, again, i am tried it many times and wonna to say that is really sporadic(means unpredictable) and depends on VM CPU loading and application switching beetween each other. Nevertheless I installed already on same machine BootCamp already to be ready to use all 8 Pan's in 1.1. :-) and waiting it on this week :-) BTW for testing purpose, what is native sampling rate for DAX channels?

DonS

Steve did you view my display? http://community.flexradio.com/flexradio/topics/dax_on_transmit

Steve-N5AC

It is 48kHz on the PC, down sampled to 24kHz for transmission to and filtering in the radio and then up sampled to 61.44MHz for transmission by the DAC.

Steve-N5AC

No, but I just had a look. This really looks like resampling as it has the tell-tale out-of-band DSP humps (see the humps in the noise sidebands at 40dB down). Have you verified that you are set to 48kHz on all the sound cards in Windows for DAX (this was required in the Beta version)

DonS

Steve Two pictures, one taken from Parallels and one from a PC. Both were running win 7 and the audio was set as before to 2 channel, 16 bit, 48000hz. This is basically what I posted back in December, however, they were taken today. This was into a dummy load at 10 watts out in digu using channel 1 in DAX.

Jeff Herhold

I did not happen to look at the waveform. Will try checking it in the next couple days.

Steve-N5AC

You should probably use 24-bit as that is what we are supplying, but I don't think this is the source of your issue. So you verified that all 4 devices are at 48ksps?

DonS

Check at the bottom of this list and you will see the two waveforms I experienced using Parallels and a regular PC in digi mode.

DonS

Yes, I checked both tx and rx and made sure they were set to 48ksps. I wonder if there are others using Parallels or VMware getting a good waveform like what I was getting on the PC. I know Sergey was also experiencing the same issue with Parallels and VMware. I assume you mean 24 bit, 2 channel at 48ksps.

Steve-N5AC

Yes, 24-bit 2 channel, 48ksps.

DonS

I will give it a try in morning to see if it makes a difference. If you supply 24 bit why not use 24 bit? I know you mentioned it shouldn't make a difference.

Luke Evans

No, I haven't tried DAX yet. I'll probably try this with v1.1 when it lands.