I use a number of cameras dedicated for astrophotography work in my hobby and in a small software buisiness I run. I have used Parallels extensively for cross-platform development and have been very happy with it. One limitation has been that it did not have solid enough USB support to let me use these cameras under Parallels. Since I write software to drive the cameras, this has meant I needed to go to a real XP box to test out chunks of code. Now that VMWare Fusion is out in public beta and now that Parallels has upped their USB support to include USB2.0, I thought I'd give both a shot at running these devices.
I chose the popular Meade DSI II Pro for the tests. Test OS was XP SP2 and latest beta versions of each VM package (as of yesterday) were running in identical configurations (768Mb RAM, MacBook Pro). The DSI II Pro worked in both. In Parallels, it did require me to connect to the device twice (under the Devices, USB menu) as I have had auto-USB turned off for some time now, but the camera worked in the supplied software. However, it did not work as well. Many cameras are sensitive to the timing of the reads and the DSI is no exception. In VMWare Fusion, the image was clean. In Parallels, I got the fine horizontal lines indicative of timing issues.
So, the DSI works in both but works better in VMWare. So far, VMWare has the edge in support but both are still beta-level code. That Parallels supports these at all is new, good news, however. I certainly hope that as we move forward, things get even more solid.
Craig
I chose the popular Meade DSI II Pro for the tests. Test OS was XP SP2 and latest beta versions of each VM package (as of yesterday) were running in identical configurations (768Mb RAM, MacBook Pro). The DSI II Pro worked in both. In Parallels, it did require me to connect to the device twice (under the Devices, USB menu) as I have had auto-USB turned off for some time now, but the camera worked in the supplied software. However, it did not work as well. Many cameras are sensitive to the timing of the reads and the DSI is no exception. In VMWare Fusion, the image was clean. In Parallels, I got the fine horizontal lines indicative of timing issues.
So, the DSI works in both but works better in VMWare. So far, VMWare has the edge in support but both are still beta-level code. That Parallels supports these at all is new, good news, however. I certainly hope that as we move forward, things get even more solid.
Craig