Brian,
Well done! Glad that you took the time to give all us non-Apple folks
the complete sequence.
73,
Dudley
WA5QPZ
Brian Lloyd wrote:
I have been working on getting my MacBook Pro running Windows XP so
that I can use it to run my Flex 5000. (And thinking of using it for a
Flex 3000 but I wanted to make it all work before committing the
money.) I now have surmounted all the problems I have encountered,
including the problem with getting SP3 to install, and can document
the process.
(I can't tell you what you need to do to install Windows Vista as I do
not have a copy of Windows Vista nor do I currently plan to get one.)
Things you will need:
1. you need the MacOS Install Disk 1 that comes with the computer;
2. you need a Windows XP SP2 install disk (new versions of the Mac
come with an installer that will install an XP SP3 disk.)
Process:
1. Go to the Apple web site and download the Boot Camp installation
guide.
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Boot_Camp_Install-Setup.pdf
2. Follow the directions in the Boot Camp Installation guide.
RTFM! RTFM! RTFM! (Being one of those people who is too smart to read
the manual, I didn't the first time through and had to do it over.)
The general process is:
1. Start Boot Camp Assistant.
2. Let it partition the disk.
3. Let Boot Camp Assistant start the windows installation process.
4. Go through the normal XP installation process including letting
Windows to a quick format of partition "C: ... <BOOTCAMP> [FAT32] ...".
5. Once Windows is completely installed and running, insert the "MacOS
X Install Disk 1", and let it install all the drivers.
6. Do all the Apple updates.
7. Install the .Net framework 1.1 from Microsoft (needed by PowerSDR).
8. Do all the Windows updates.
At this point Windows update will probably try to install SP3. If you
get an error about needing 4MB more disk space, see my note 3 below.
9. Disable the ieee1394 (firewire) ethernet driver ("1394 Connection").
10. Disable the WiFi card ("Airport").
11. Install the Flex 5000 driver. Without disabling anything but the
two aforementioned items, my DPC latency peaks at about 4600
microseconds while beating on the machine, e.g. starting the browser
and poking about, moving windows around, etc. This will require Safe
Mode 1.
12. Install PowerSDR.
At this point, it is like any other PC and the information available
from Flex on configuration is correct.
FWIW, On my MacBook Pro with 2GB RAM I am running PowerSDR, VAC, the
N8VBvCOM driver, HRD, FLdigi, and DM780. Everything works properly. My
plan now is to get a Mac Mini and dedicate it to running the F5K. If I
get an F3K I will use my MacBook Pro to run that and use it on-the-road.
Good luck and here's hoping that Flex decides to support the Mac
natively and not make us keep using Windows. Remember two very
important things:
1. Windows is EVIL!
2. Friends don't let friends run Windows.
NOTES:
1. Boot Camp Assistant will give you several options for partitioning
your disk, including splitting it half-and-half between Windows and
MacOS, making a 32GB Windows partition, or letting you pick what you
need. If you are only going to use Boot Camp and the Windows Partition
to run PowerSDR and some other ham radio things, e.g. Ham Radio Deluxe
and a digital-mode program like FLdigi or DM780 (this is all I am
doing), you only need a couple of gig for your windows partition. I
gave my windows partition 10GB and it was happy. Remember you need to
leave enough room for Windows to do an upgrade to SP3 so there needs
to be room for the SP3 installer to do a backup. An extra gig is
probably enough. (Yes, Windows is a pig.)
2. Remember you need to let Windows format the new partition even
though Boot Camp formatted the partition as FAT32 when it created it.
This is needed to ensure that windows has a proper boot block in the
partition. If you fail to do this (I did first time), Windows will not
reboot after the first phase oft the Windows installation.
3. I ran into a problem getting SP3 to install after the system was up
and running. The error was the the SP3 installer needed 4MB more disk
space (on a disk with about 5GB of free space). The solution was to
add an entry to the registry. Here is the process:
a. Run regedit
b. navigate through the tree to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup
c. right-click and select "New" and "string value"
d. name the new entry "BootDir" and assign it the value "C:\"
After this I was able to install SP3.
Here is a link to the support discussion that had the solution:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8242489�
--
73 de Brian, WB6RQN
Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com
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