Having played around with JMRI for a couple of weeks, I have managed to install it exactly as I wanted.Firstly, I bought the NCE USB interface and got all that working on my iMac2. I defined a panel and turnouts to interface to my Heljan/Walthers DCC turntable3. Set up WiThrottle on my iPhone.4. Got all of this going in a great way.I then picked up a cheap laptop on Ebay - it cost me £6 ($10) with £8 ($13) postage.I installed an old copy of XP onto it. Loaded up Java, JMRI and the correct USB/Serial port driver.The Toshiba laptop works perfectly with the lid shut (the only thing wrong with it was that it had a broken hinge - hence the price - but as it will sit with the lid shut all the time, that shouldn't matter).I have run up JMRI on it, imported my roster, set up the turnout configurations of the turntable and shut the lid.I can now run the layout from the iPhone whenever I want without messing about.​Brilliant!
Long Haired DavidA.K.A. David Penningtonmain man on the Sunset and North Eastern R.R.http://www.gmrblog.co.ukfrom the UK
Jim Bernier
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
Hi, SBX
That's a great success story and terriffic find on the laptop. I have my JMRI running on some old Dell Optiplex computers that my employer was getting rid of. (one is XP the other I upgraded to WIN7, they both run JMRI flawlessly)
I have been a fan of Decoder Pro since the very beginning. I use Digitrax and even with the DT400 throttles I still do ALL my programming on Decoder Pro. I was so impressed I made a donation to their cause!
http://jmri.sourceforge.net/donations.shtml
I also use a Sprog II in the workshop, http://www.sprog-dcc.co.uk/
The only headache I ever had to deal with was when I wiped out my hard drive and I THOUGHT I had my roster backed up but I lost the disk it was on... SO I had to re-enter about 125 locomotives back into the roster one-at-a-time! Lesson learned! Make TWO backups!!
Happy modeling, Ed
I put all of my JMRI files in my Dropbox folder. That sorts out backups for me!