I’m running Xentry/DAS 2015.12 (not OpenShell) on my MacBook Pro together with SD Connect C4 via LAN cable and VMware. Works without problems.
Need bridged networking in VMware. And adjust the network settings/IP addresses.
VMware:
Use VMware Fusion Professional and and allocate enough resources to the VM.
Mac hardware specification:
MacBook Pro, Core i7, 16GB RAM, 512 SSD, 15″ 1GbE, SuperDrive, Mid-2012
Virtualization:
That is the magic of virtualization. If you can locate a copy of Star Diagnosis that was intended for the IBM ThinkPad T30 running Windows NT 4.0 Workstation, you could easily install Windows NT 4.0 in a virtual machine and replicate that environment with near native performance. If you prefer to use a Windows XP-based version, that is easily done as well, up to and including Windows 10 1709 or Windows Server 2016. Almost any computer you purchase now will not have drivers available for Windows XP, so either an old PC such as a Dell D630/D830 will allow you to install Windows XP natively and make it work, but virualization takes the headache out of that. OS X us built on UNIX, so it is a very stable host OS and can run nearly any version of Windows was a guest with easy, stability and performance. The only think I would refrain from doing at this point in time, is if you are using OS X 10.13 High Sierra, do not use APFS just yet. It still is not as stable IMO as HFS+. You certainly don’t want to introduce system instability when programming a control module!
Battery:
The battery life is good when running Windows in a VM, as OS X has excellent power management. Allocate at 2 cores to the Windows VM, and if using an XP-based version, 2048GB of RAM should be sufficient.
In detail…How to setup Xentry/DAS on a Mac OS X
It is very straight forward. I elect to not use the automated installation of Windows, as it automatically configures the partition sizes, formats them, etc. Instead, do a custom installation and select your ISO. It will then determine the contents of the OS ISO and select your low-level hardware components automatically, such as CD-ROM bus, HDD bus, etc.
For the network cable, it defaults to NAT, so it shares the IP of OS X, but cannot receive unsolicited network traffic due to the nature of NAT. You can select Bridged, and it can have an IP on the same subnet as OS X.
I think I would prefer to install my installation from scratch, as the pre-built images that are distributed have an unknown product key, and also could contain malware or other unwanted applications.
If you are installing the XP version of DAS/Xentry, specify your virtual disk to be about 120GB, and when Windows XP asks you to specify your partition size, instead of pressing Enter and allowing it to consume the disk specify 20GB and quick format as NTFS. Create the remaining three partitions in Disk Management after XP completes installation.
Also, the first thing you will want to do is install VMware Tools after XP installs. If you want to install all available updates for Windows XP, and download WSUS Offiline version 9.2.3 and it will get your all of the available updates that were released when XP reached EOL.
I have used 12.2015, but if I still used it, I would revert back a few months to avoid the hard-coded timebomb that was implemented at the end of 2015.
Result:
I have used this setup for many years for control module programming and SCN coding with no issues from AUTONUMEN.
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