A Geek Goes Flying

Oracle has released a beta of VirtualPC running on Apple’s ARM (“Apple Silicon”) machines, like this MacBook Air 13.6". The most recent version is 7.0.8, for whatever reason they have not pushed 7.0.10 or later. About VirtualBox window screenshot Download it here (look for the " macOSArm64.dmg " file): https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/7.0.8/ I tried it out with both the “Intel and AMD x86_64” and “ARM® aarch64” spins of Fedora Workstation 39 (in both instances using the Live ISO image). Since I’m running a base model Air, I gave each machine 2GB RAM, 1 CPU, and a 15GB disk image - should be enough for a proof of concept. The Intel image was a bust, though it did initially start to boot. The logfile wasn’t much help: 00:00:59.847132 !! 00:00:59.847132 !! {vmsvga3dctx} 00:00:59.847132 !! 00:00:59.847154 !! 00:00:59.847154 !! {vmsvga3dsfc} 00:00:59.847154 !! 00:00:59.847155 !! 00:00:59.847155 !! {vmsvga3dsurf} 00:00:59.847155 !! 00:00:59.847155 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...

Wow, really? Have to launch virtualbox as root to use USB devices (at least under Monterey). Once done, getting usbscale up and running took more steps than I’d expected, too: $ sudo yum group install "Development Tools" $ sudo yum install -y autoconf automake libtool systemd-devel $ git clone https://github.com/erjiang/usbscale.git $ git clone https://github.com/libusb/libusb.git $ cd libusb $ ./bootstrap.sh $ ./configure $ make $ sudo make install $ cd ../usbscale $ make $ ./usbscale # after attaching the scale to the virtual machine This is for the Stamps.com model 510 5 lbs postal scale that came free with a subscription years ago. Code: usbscale ; libusb . Software: VirtualBox .