Power Mac & Flexi 7.5

[assortedNuts 0]

Afternoon all.

I see some great advice given on this forum and I am pleased to see a forum for Mac users! Since Mac is the standard for graphic creation and manipulation you'd think there would be more people using a mac based system. But maybe its a good thing that not to many have caught on yet 

So I have a small ( at least I hope its small ) issue with a system I am trying o hook up at home. I purchased a Jaguar JII-76s Vinyl Cutter for my son and daughter as a small business model. They are only 14 - 16 but its never to young to start right ? Well the plotter I know works as it was a system we had at my Company and it was hooked up to an old imac with OSX 10.3. I have a dual CPU G5 Power Mac with OSX 10.5 at home so I didn't buy the Imac unit.

The Cutter came with Flexi 7.5 Mac edition, a dongle and a serial to USB cable for connecting the Cutter to the MAC.

I installed the software with no issues at all and the dongle allows me to use the software and send files through "Production Manager" to be cut. Production Manager try's to send the file to the cutter but reports that it " could not open the port " I thought that the Serial/USB cable may have been the issue so  I brought a new 2.0 USB cable and connected it to the Cutter directly through USB. Still no port.

Production Manager gives you the option to locate and set up your cutter, but when I plug the Cutter into the USB port it only shows as a "USB-Printer" I went to the Mac System controller to see if I could "install" the "printer" but the System does not recognize it being connected at all.

Drivers where the first thing that came to mind as the cutter did not come with any install disks, but I went on to read the Flexi has built in drivers for my model of cutter, sure enough it does give me the option in Production Manager for my Cutter. I use this for the set up.

I have read on this forum information about port drivers for the Mac ? I am wondering if this may be the cause of my problems.

I know the cutter works and I did a test cut available as an option on the physical cutter and that worked fine. I know the software is good as it does everything BUT cut. so am I right in thinking the this is either a Cable or a Port driver issue ? The reason I am asking is ti see if there are any known issues with this set up that i maybe over looking... plus its always advantageous to have someone " check your math "

I appreciate any feedback team, my kids thank you also !

[assortedNuts 0]

Update:

Ok, so I installed the port drivers from the site mentioned on this forum, reinstalled the software and tried again , but no go. I have banging away at this for about a week now and dont seem to be any further forward now than when I started.

Any ideas how I can get my Mac to "see" my cutter and cut ??

Cheers in advance .

AN

[assortedNuts 0]

SOLVED::

So, for those that are interested. I went to keyspan and downloaded the latest drivers they had on their site for my OSX. I downloaded and printed their guide book on setting up the new drivers and then rebooted my mac.

I went into the Production Manager and built a new setup. Instantly the port was open and recognised by the Mac. I quickly opened a picture I had created in Adobe CS2, Sent it to the cutter and before I could cross my fingers it sprung into life and cut a 8 X 8" coat of arms with a ton of detail faster than I could have imagined. 

I hope this helps anyone in the same position as I was.

Thanks all.

[kenimes 42]

Thanks for keeping us updated and posting the resolution. My first question would have been about the drivers for the connection method, because that is the biggest issue we had with setting up our cutters through Flexi for Mac. I was not aware that they had a 7.5 version, as I was under the impression that 8.5 was the very first Mac edition. So this is another thing I learned through your post.

Glad it got resolved for you, and thanks again,

Ken