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will a roland pcn-1000 work together with a mac osx?
Hello, I have a question about plotting with this device.
My father owns this Roland pcn-1000 cutter (he is a designer) and has it hooked up to an old OS 8 powered Macintosh. He also has a newer mac with OS 10.4 (Tiger) and he wants to be able to cut from this newer machine (and then get rid of the antique mac :wink:).
I really don’t know anything about these cutters and my father doesn’t know a lot about computers (that’s why he uses a mac) i thought i could ask here if anybody knows how to do this.
I searched the internet and i only found some information about plotting with Illustrator CS (2), does this work well? Are there other possibilities?
I appreciate any input! -
6 Replies
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hi
i also have an old pnc 1000 – it only has serial ports so will be unable to connect to usb ports on newer mac, I dont know if the convertors available will work properly!
good luck with it
mike -
Oh dear, i didn’t even know it had serial ports. I guess that makes it a lot more difficult.
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Keesje,
It’s not a problem.
Assuming that your father’s OS8 Mac is an old machine, he is already using an adaptor to convert from the computer’s ADB port to the serial port on the Roland. This is not always obvious if the Roland was supplied with an ADB/serial lead, but that is what is happening.
With a more modern USB Mac all he needs to do is to get a Keyspan USB/serial adaptor and plug it in. It will work. We have used the Keyspans on a variety of Macs and plotters for many years with no problems. Fit and forget.
I prefer standalone cutting software, but we are currently using an Illustrator plug-in on one OSX machine and it works fine.
Try it. I’m sure it will work but, if you have any set-up problems, I’m usually here to help.
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That’s great news!
So if I’m correct i should use this adaptor to connect the cutter to the new mac, and a plug-in for Illustrator. I have found several plug-ins on the web, which would you recommend?
Cheers, Keesje -
That’s a more modern one than we are using but, yes, that’s what you want.
As far as Illustrator cutting plug-ins go, I couldn’t make a recommendation. The only one I have used is FineCut, purely because that is what came bundled with our plotter, and whether any of the alternatives are better or worse I couldn’t say.
How old is the "antique" Mac? I ask because Macs have a much longer useful life than PCs and it may well be that he could continue to use his old one purely as a driver for the Roland quite satisfactorily. That would keep his newer computer free for jobs where a faster processor is of benefit, like the design work. That’s the way we operate here.
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Hi John, thanks for your reply.
I hope I can try it all out in a week or two, I will let you know how things went.
About the older mac, it’s maybe 10 years old or something like that. Actually the problem is that he currently has three computers and there are always problems connecting them in a network (there is OS 8, OS 9 and OS 10.4!) and they are taking up a lot of room so it would be great if he could get rid of one or two computers.
Again, thanks for your help and I’ll let you know how things went.
Cheers, Keesje
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