run harlequin rip on mac with bootcamp?

[agent_orange]

been a while. hope you are all doing well.

we upgraded our old platesetter a few months ago. stepped up to metal plates and this unit blows our old one away when it comes to screens and gradients. new platesetter was pulled out of a shop that went out of business so we basically got a crate of STUFF and had to try to make heads or tails of what was what. the company that sold it to us deals strictly in presses so they had no idea what they were selling, they just wanted it gone. we got the pc with the harlequin rip up and running, after replacing power supply and motherboard. worked great for a couple months and then it died. replaced a couple more parts. back up and running for a bit then died again. think it's done for good this time. we're exploring options and i had a thought that might be crazy but don't know enough about it to say. instead of buying another pc to do only one task [run the rip/output plates] why can't i just use boot camp [or parallels/vmware/etc] to run windows on my mac workstation? is this feasible? has anyone seen or done anything like this? the only downside i see is if i run bootcamp, i think i'll have to log out/log in when switching. 75% of our work is digital, though, and we run the press one or two days a week, so it's not like i'd have to constantly be logging in/out. like i said, i know zero about this side of things. i set up virtual box on my mac at home several years ago and installed linux just to mess around a little, but it was very limited. i must be overlooking something, because this seems like too easy a solution, am i right?

edit: prob should have mentioned my setup. running 10.8.5 on a 2012 imac. will upgrade to 10.9 within the month [waiting for new digital press]. 16gb ram, 2.7ghz core i5, 2tb hdd
harlequin is version 7.something. if i can get the pc to power up i can verify

[Joe]

With bootcamp you have to actually reboot to switch between Mac and PC operating system. With Parallels or vmware you can have both the Mac OS and Windows OS running at the same time. I think the biggest issue would be getting the platesetter hooked up to the Mac. I assume it is probably connected via SCSI cable. Getting a SCSI card to work on a Mac these days is no easy feat. If your Mac workstation is an iMac I know that isn't possible as there is nowhere to plug in a SCSI card. Not sure if it is even possible these days as I don't know if anyone is even making SCSI cards for newer Macs.

[David]

OS  X and SCSI are not a good thing.
I fried a SCSI tape drive putting it on a Mac with OS 9/OS X...

 

[agent_orange]

lucky for us it's connected via usb! i'm thinking this might be a feasible avenue, then? asked our rep but they've been less than helpful. prob because they're selling computers with their platesetters that might not actually be necessary for smaller shops like us and that's a pretty good revenue stream.

[Joe]

If it is USB it will probably work. You will need to buy a copy of Windows though as you have to activate it. I would recommend Windows 7 Pro. XP is a dead end, Vista sucks, and Windows 8.1 is Windows 8.1 which I consider a consumer version.

[agent_orange]

the bummer is harlequin version 7 is xp only. version 8 will run on windows 7. i have a copy of xp and upgrading the rip will probably be a deal breaker for the boss. it's looking like this dual boot plan might work out, though. i'm surprised no one really tries this. i can see the downsides for a big shop, but for a small 2 ½ man operation it could be a way better way to go...

[Joe]

You can use XP if you can get it installed (no problem) and activated (might be a problem). But after April XP will be completely unsupported. Probably isn't that big of a deal.

[Farabomb]

Does that mean I can't get suppourt for Win NT?

In the words of my boss "well I can't see how that's possible". 

[Joe]

Does that mean I can't get suppourt for Win NT?

In the words of my boss "well I can't see how that's possible". 

 

[Farabomb]

Yes, the same man that couldn't concive how a PDF at 100% doesn't measure correctly on the screen with a ruler placed on it.

and...

How that if the temp in prepress (has the thermo set to drop to 56 at 3:30) drops below 65 degrees the thermo plates come out very, very dirty.

Yes, I just discovered the thermo setting after the 3rd progressively dirty plate came out. I'm now waiting for the temp to come up so I can finish making plates. Saving those $.03 cents vs. the not inexpensive plates. 

[frailer]

I've been remiss in not binning an older manual (doorstop), for Screen flavour of HQ-PM. If you think it'd be any use to you, let me know. I have ways of sending o'seas ...   

[Farabomb]

Now we just had an argument about how a $3 thermometer at the platesetter isn't smarter than me running to check the thermostat in another room every time I make a plate.

Are you fucking serious? I'll buy my own then.

[frailer]

Are you fucking serious? I'll buy my own then.

Sometimes it's just easier. 

[StudioMonkey]

Are you fucking serious? I'll buy my own then.

Sometimes it's just easier. 

Don't forget to take it with you when you go.

[Farabomb]

As soon as I can figure out what direction I want to go. I can't continue to battle daily against someone that will contest simple logic.