Another OS please

[Terence Childs]

What is the chances of Mastercam being ported over to an UNIX/LINUX even an OSX Environment. I have read of people trying to use a CAD package within Vmware or WINE but it is cumbersome and really isn't a good use of resources. Windows XX is a non moduler fairly unreliable OS which really doesn't allow for optimiztion of the OS for a CAD package. And Unfortunately the Intel based CISC processor due to Microsofts need for backward compatibility is not as powerful as it should be. (Protected mode stuff). The Clone PC has its idiosyncrasies within the different components. Thus sometimes leading to a big head ache when looking for compatiblity. Anyway I would really love to run Mastercam on a indigo SGI box.

Thankyou sorry about my raving.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

Essentially, Mastercam is a spiffed up legacy DOS product ported to Windows plain and simple. Does this somehow diminish it's relibility? I think not. If it's the ability to fine tune resources, processor allocation, etc... then you'll most likey need to look to Windows 2000 Professional or maybe even XP though I don't know that you get more configuration control over 2k, mostly bells and whistles stuff that does not do anything for us CAD/CAM folks. Some of Mastercam's problems will be solved when they go fully Windows (Version 10 is the current word on the street) i.e. graphics related issues thoguh this would better solved by the Video Card Mfr's stricter adhereance to the OpenGL STANDARD, that's whey they call it a STANDARD, but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, "We have to hav our own flavor of bump mapping and raytracing etc...". Sorry for the rant, back to the subject at hand. Memory handling would imporove with V10 being native Windows as well. IMHO these two issues right here account for the lions share of Mastercam's issues, at least that's what Dr. Watson is telling me in the nifty Log file it generates.

 

As far as porting to Linux or OSX, I don't know that it's possible, then again I don't know that it's impossible but if it were possible, I see performance degredation in my crystal ball.

 

Intel's 64Bit offering is somewhat of a disappointment IMHO it's optimized for 64bit code PERIOD, meaning that a software developer must configure and compile for the Intel 64Bit and the old 32bit stuff. Not a very good itea IMHO. Intel has always been (up until now) able to run older code (16 bit 8 bit in a 32bit processor environemnt) at least as fast as it would run in the old environment. So if somebody were going to develop on that platform, they should have been thinking about it 2 years ago. As much of an Intel fan I am, I'm thinking that AMD is going to move in for the kill on this one. Their 64bit offering is going to be what Intel's should have been (backward compatable without sacrificing performance). As for Running an Indigo Box, sounds great but I don't think it will work.

 

JM2C

 

p.s I enjoy the rants. It gets me thinking about things and I enjoy that.

[Bullines]

One word; QNX. Now that would be a first for a CAD/CAM package. A little bit overkill though

[JAMMAN]

How about Lindows? It has Microshaft a little scared, scared enough to take it to court and loose again. Might this be the best of both worlds? Will the software most of us feed our familys on run in Lindows?

[Bullines]

I think Lindows would be a good introduction for those who want to try Linux but don't want a second system or don't feel like setting up a few more partitions. It's kind of like the old BeOS "personal" editions. They would run on top of Windows partitions, but if you wanted to harness the true power of the BeOS, you would install it on its own partition with all features available. Same thing goes with Lindows. Personally, I'd go full-blown true-blue Linux (RedHat, Mandrake or SuSe) or no Linux at all

 

On the other hand, I'm becoming more and more impressed with MacOS X. The underlying OS is BSD (a free flavor of Unix) and it uses Apple's Aqua window manager. Apple's first attempt at a window manager for Unix has done something that other Unix window managers like KDE, CDE and Gnome haven't been able to do up to this point; work flawlessly and intuitively. I think my next "everyday" non-development computer is going to be a PowerMac G4