Pager programming software under Linux/Unix?

[jantman]

Hi,

I was wondering whether anyone has tried to run the Minitor (IV or V) programming software under Linux (or any other Unix)? Wine would be best, but if anyone has given VMware a shot, that would be good too.

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Background:
I'm the computer committee chairman at my local ambulance corps (and also an EMT of 3 years, and help out with radios and anything else electronic). I'm a Linux/Unix system administrator by trade. I'm also working or away most of the week, so I don't have much time to run to the building and fix a problem on the desktop computers *now*. So, the bottom line is that I'd like to move all of the machines to Linux, so they'll work with the remote administration systems that I already use.

For those who will suggest this: I don't really want to have to run a separate Windows box just for pager programing. And we're funded 100% by donations, so we don't have the cash to buy some fancy Microsoft remote administration tool - not that I'd want to.

Thanks for any advice,
Jason

[HLA]

partition off one of the machines and do a dual boot so you can run windows on one of the machines with a restart.

[tvsjr]

Err?

Remote administration tools for Windows are pretty easy... UltraVNC is free. Hell, it's even cross-platform.

Pick up an old computer somewhere, toss Windows of some flavor on it, and call it good. Any good computer nerd should have plenty of old machines in the garage... I've got half a dozen P2s, probably a dozen P3s, a few PowerEdge 4300s, etc. (such stuff comes in real handy when you want to build a heterogeneous network to play with). Anyway, find an old machine, grab a copy of DiskFreeze for a few bucks so people can't screw up the system, load only PPS on it and demand it only be used for PPS work, and call it good. You don't need anything powerful - a decent P2 running Win98, or a P3 with Win2K will work just fine.

If you're being pedantic simply because you're a rabid Linux/Unix fanboi... well, good system administrators use the tool that gets the job done efficiently, quickly, and cheaply.

[jantman]

HLA- I know that's an option. My question was whether anyone has tried to run the software in a Linux/Unix environment. If it came to it, I'd run VMware on the Linux box to get everything working, but it's not an option to ask other people to understand VMware just to program pagers.

tvsjr-
I didn't want this to turn into a Unix/Windows argument. VNC isn't what I consider remote administration. If Windows had an adequate shell and an adequate SSH solution, I might consider it, but Cygwin doesn't cut it.

If you're being pedantic simply because you're a rabid Linux/Unix fanboi... well, good system administrators use the tool that gets the job done efficiently, quickly, and cheaply.

Efficiently is the key here. All of my own systems run Linux or Solaris. All of my clients' systems run some flavor of Unix. All of the servers for this organization (call reports, scheduling, etc.) are Linux-based. I already have the infrastructure in place to perform administration, backups, monitoring, etc. for Unix. I'm trying to see if there's a way that I can avoid supporting *one* Windows machine just for pager programming.

As to efficiency and the VNC thing - you'd need to pry my BASH shell out of my cold, dead hands. I spent time working with Windows, and still use it on occasion. But as a matter of personal taste, I find offsite management of Unix to me much easier, largely because I can do most things a lot faster (and with less stress) at the command line than through a GUI. I know that Windows is evolving in terms of shell support, but IMHO it's not yet where Unix is.

Anyway, from the Wine manual (http://www.winehq.org/site/docs/wineusr ... ure#AEN408) it looks like it has parallel port support, so I guess next time I'm around I'll try and grab a LiveCD that has Wine and give it a spin.

[jantman]

Well, just for kicks, I installed the Minitor 5 PPS through Wine here at work. It installed fine and ran fine. I don't have the programming kit here, or any pager dump files, so I can't test much... but next time I'm home I'll give it a shot with a LiveCD, or bring a spare system down.