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Mac, DigitalCat, CaseCat, Protege...Help!!

Hi,
I'm new here. I stumbled upon the community, and I figured someone could help me here. I was on cheapandsleazy.net looking for a way to configure my Macbook with DigitalCat. I was lead to the Wine application, but I still can't get it to work. I would also like to use my CaseCat as well. I do have another pc I can use in the mean time, but it saves me having to carry around two laptops because the Dell is pretty ancient.

I have DigitalCat 167, 190, and 192 installed (I think) on the mac, but when I attempt to open them it just says preparing and doesn't actually open.

If someone could give me some advice, it would be great. I can't afford to buy any additional software at this point.

Thanks!

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Comment by Glen Warner on January 13, 2010 at 9:13: Hi, May.

Best thing I can suggest is uninstalling digitalCAT and reinstalling it.

Make sure you back up your dictionaries (that is, copy them to a flash drive or something) -- just in case.

What version are you working with?

Comment by maymajesty on January 13, 2010 at 7:08: Hey Glen,

I'm not getting any error messages, I just can't open the program. The progress goes to about 75% but no further. I'm starting to panic now because ever since I installed DigitalCat on the Dell, it's been acting up and I can't find my restore Cd. So now I have no way to do homework, and school started Monday.

Comment by Glen Warner on January 11, 2010 at 17:12: Hi, May.

Are you getting any error messages? That might help narrow the problem down somewhat.

Comment by maymajesty on January 11, 2010 at 0:10: I don't know what the heck I'm doing wrong, but it isn't working still. I guess I'll have to carry around dinoDell until I can figure it out.

Comment by Glen Warner on January 10, 2010 at 7:43: Hi, Mary Jo.

One of my classmates has an XScribe Stenoram Ultra that she picked up for $200.

Got her up and running (wth Windows 7, no less) in about 5 minutes.

Comment by Mary Jo Cochran on January 10, 2010 at 5:56: It sounds like you're at - where I was a month ago. I desktop Dell is six years old, and I'm using DigitalCat Student on it. I'm using a Xscrbe Stenoram II.

The main reason I couldn't get mine to work was because I needed an adapter to connect to my realtime cable to the USB port. If you look at my previous posts regarding Stenoram, you can find that info.

Comment by Glen Warner on January 10, 2010 at 2:54: Hi, May.

Not sure what you're seeing on Winebottler.

I'm going through creating an installer for Speed Teacher right now ... so, step by step, I started Winebottler, selected "Create Custom Prefix," browsed to the installer, and checked two check box ("Copy only. Select this if the file is the actual executable," and "Silent install ...") ... then I clicked "Install."

If the list you're talking about is on that window, you don't need to select anything in that list!

Hope that helps.

Comment by maymajesty on January 10, 2010 at 0:47: One more question-- at this winebottler install box I need to select a startfile. What should I select? There is a list.

Comment by maymajesty on January 10, 2010 at 0:37: Thanks Glen! I hope I don't mess anything up. This kind of stuff is beyond my pay grade lol. I think I'l just get a serial port adapter to keep it easy on myself.

Comment by Glen Warner on January 10, 2010 at 0:23: Hello, May.

Sorry my site suggested you could actually use digitalCAT under WIne --! There is no serial support, so that simply will not work -- at least, not until version 1.2 of Wine hits.

If you actually want to run digitalCAT and have it work with your writer, you will need to install either VMWare Fusion or Parallels -- both of which will run, for free, for about a month.

You will, of course, need a copy of Windows to install for this to work ... BUT you might get away by cloning your Dell's drive with either VMWare's Converter, or Parallels' Transporter.

To save you some time, I had trouble making Converter actually do anything ... so I used Transporter to convert my Virtual PC drive, and used VMWare Converter to convert it to something that VMWare Fusion could read!

Kinda convoluted, I know, but it worked!

On the Wine side of things, to install digitalCAT, you have to use Wine Bottler to build a prefix especially for the digitalCAT installer ... and I recommend starting with Build 182, and upgrading from there to Build 192.

Basically what should happen is you will open Wine Bottler, select "New Prefix," name it appropriately (I like "digitalCAT Prefix," myself), point it to the installer, and click Okay.

Eventually, you will have an application that will install the build of digitalCAT you selected. Once you have run that application, you can then upgrade the install from the lower number build to build 192, which is, as I hope you read on ol' Cheap and Sleazy, is the last version of DC that actually runs on the Mac under Wine.

As for what I'm using it for these days, I use the Dictionary Maintenance program to manage my dictionaries -- that is to say, anytime I find a potentially useful brief or phrase online somewhere, I look through my various dictionaries, and if it doesn't conflict, I put it in Glenz Dictionary ... which I later copy to my flash drive and merge with the copy of Glenz Dictionary on my (cheap and sleazy) Dell.

Good luck ... and hope all that helps!

--gdw
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