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[Phys-l] Teachspin Muon Physics on a Mac?



Greetings, everyone,

We just bought one of the Teachspin Muon Physics experiments, and I am
trying to get the software to work. This is totally my problem and no
deficiency on the part of the folks who make the instrument (they were
very nice and polite, but haven't dealt with this problem before, and
they don't officially support Macs, so I'm not complaining), but we
don't have any Windows computers here in the department, and the
software only comes in Windows and Linux flavors. They say they're
working on a Mac version but haven't had time to complete it yet.
I've spent the last couple of days trying various work-arounds to get
it to work on a Mac and have reached the end of my expertise.

Yesterday, I tried installing it inside the Windows Parallels Desktop
virtual environment, and the software worked without a hitch, but I
can't seem to get the virtual Windows to recognize that the hardware
is plugged into the USB port. Today, I spent the better part of the
day trying to get the Linux version working inside the Mac OS X X11
linux environment, but I have never worked with Tcl before, and I
haven't been able to figure out the instructions to compile the
muon.tcl file from scratch. The last thing I tried was "wish
muon.tcl", which seemed to start the process successfully, but then it
said that the libimg1.2.so file was an unknown file type, and I don't
know enough to go further.

So I thought I would ask the communal hive mind out there if anyone
has succeeded in either getting Parallels to capture this USB device
(I've tried the obvious things like going under "device" and clicking
"USB" to try to tell the guest OS to capture the USB ports -- I can
get to the DVD-ROM drive inside the Windows OS, but not the USB port.
I've had similar problems trying to get a SBIG video capture CCD to
work inside Parallels, come to think of it.) or if someone could point
me to step-by-step instructions for how to install the linux version
on a Mac OS X that would be clear to someone who's never worked with
Tcl before?

Thanks in advance,
--
Donald Smith
Guilford College Physics Department
http://www.guilford.edu/physics/dasmith