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Attaching a piece of hardware that has driver support for 32bit v. of Windows

Hey everyone. I am going to be purchasing a vinyl cutting machine to make graphics for my home business. The machine I want does not have driver support for the intel based macs, only 32 bit versions of windows. However I a strong desire to do creative design on a MBP.

My question is, when running windows via bootcamp or something like Parrallels will my cutter work? Ultimately I want to be able to design my graphics in Illustrator in Snow Leopard on a MBP, then import the image to the cutting software running on windows on the same machine. Hope
this makes sense. Anyone with any experiance with
something like would great.

My unqualified position would be that if say a printer connected to a mac but using windows drivers on windows running on the mac via bootcamp it would should work. The cutter is Essentialy a very printer like device.

Hope that the question is clear. Thanks again.

PS. Love macmost. Ecspecially the podcast. Keep up the good work.

— Will Pierce

Comments: 4 Responses to “Attaching a piece of hardware that has driver support for 32bit v. of Windows”

    14 years ago

    I would say that it might work in Parallels. It will have a better chance of working in Boot Camp. But you can't tell for sure unless the maker of the drivers knows if it works on a Mac running either of those two methods.

    Will
    14 years ago

    Thanks Gary,

    the more I think about it and get good input from a couple sources (I also posted this on the official Apple forum) the more I believe I should just have a dedicated XP machine for the cutter. It should eliminate any potential compatibilty issues and also give me an extra layer of backup should god forbid something happen to one machine and my network backup solution.

    Any headaches I should expect when transporting the files from the Mac over to the dedicated windows machine. The windows box will be running 32 bit XP.

      14 years ago

      I almost suggested that. You can get a cheap PC box that just runs the cutter. Share files between them directly or using DropBox or something. You can keep working on your Mac even when the cutter is running without worrying about things getting in each other's way. Maybe even keep the PC off the net completely, just local file sharing, to minimize viruses and such.

        Will
        14 years ago

        Thanks again Gary, I'm about 99% sure now that I will take my monster i7 box and just downgrade it to xp and use that for the cutter as long as the hardware holds I suspect it'll outlive the cutter.
        Then I'm going to use the new MBP I plan on purchasing for all my day to day computing needs plus the creative side of my home business. No reason to invest in another computer when I know realistically I won't
        really have a desire to use that big loud windows machine when I can just do all my
        day to day activities on the MBP.

        Again I love the podcast. Keep up the good work!

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