Sentinel Software & Mac ... help?

[sefrischling]

I have been trying to get the Sentinel Software to work on Mac, via WinOnX unsuccessfully now for probably a month. It constantly tells me I need to install NetFrame 2.0, which you can't readily install into WinOnX.

Anyone have any other solutions for running the software on a Mac? Since you can load everything onto an SD card for the 436hp, the lack of cable compatibility shouldn't be an issue.

Twice Uniden has told me there are not enough Mac users to make it worth their while for Mac software, which is interesting as nearly every radio person I know is a Mac user, just keeping one Windows machine around for radios.

 

[whsbuss]

Other have reported Sentinel work on a Mac using bootcamp under windows.

 

[mrkelso]

With Parallels running and Windows up plug in your 536HP and wait!! waiting sometimes up to 2 minutes. A screen will open asking you if you want to open using explorer. SAY YES!! At this point go up to devices for Parallels and make sure the 536HP com port is opened with a check mark next to it if not click it to activate.

Backing up a bit make sure you answered yes on the scanner when you plugged the cable in and go to mass storage.

Now bring up Sentinel and you are ready to go. Not sure why but this drove me crazy not being able to get the comport working until yesterday when i plugged in the scanner and told it to go into mass mode and then left to take a wiz. When i got back i found the window opened waiting for an answer so i proceeded from that point. Good Luck to you.

 

[durangoGreg]

Parallels works for Sentinel. I get best results using a card reader for accessing the MicroSD card rather than directly through the radio. This is fine for me as I have the BCD536HP and I really don't want to be moving it over to the computer every time I update the database.

Uniden is old school as is much of the radio industry.I mean it took forever for radios to even start using USB instead of 9 pin serial ports. Mac OS X usage has grown substantially in the US over the last 5 years. It now accounts for about 30% of all home users. About 90% of all musicians use a Mac. In addition, it isn't all that hard to maintain two builds of code. One for Windows & One for Mac especially since they both use the same intel processors and graphics cards. Using parallels you can actually have both programming environments on the same machine.

Sentinel isn't all that complex. Basically it just reads data in from the radio reference database, allows the user to edit that database, then writes the database to the MicroSD card. Uniden could easily build and maintain a mac version if they were so inclined. If they were worried about the maintenance of 2 code sources, they could easily build a web application that would work for any web browser.

 

[wa8pyr]

I'm using VMWare Fusion and it works just fine. As a Mac user myself I agree with you; sure would be nice if there were an easier way than having to either keep a Windoze box around or run it in a virtual machine.

You might also try VirtualBox, which is free. I tried it a few years ago; it worked OK and is supposedly even more polished and user-friendly now. However, already owning VMWare Fusion I didn't take the permanent plunge into VirtualBox.

https://www.virtualbox.org