old scsi adapters and the benefits of open source [was: Anthony's issues [Slightly OT]]

[Peter Risdon]

On Tue, 2005-03-22 at 18:58 -0600, David Kelly wrote:
> On Mar 22, 2005, at 10:11 AM, Peter Risdon wrote:
> 
> > By contrast, I maintain a networked Windows machine that controls 
> > plasma
> > cutting systems for a manufacturing business. It uses a serial port
> > connection to send cutting patterns to the plasma controller. The 
> > serial
> > port communications software was custom-written and runs only on
> > versions of DOS that shipped with Windows up to and including 98. It is
> > specifically incompatible with Win ME and all the NT family including 
> > XP
> > and 2000/2003. I don't have access to the source code either of the
> > custom application or any currently maintained version of Windows (of
> > course), so no hacked upgrades are possible and we have to run Win 98 -
> > which is desperately horrible and insecure in a networked environment.
> 
> I don't use Vmware, but what you describe sounds like a good 
> application for it. Run a Win98 virtual machine. Let a modern OS host, 
> wrap and protect the virtual machine. Do all the networking with the 
> host.

Yes, that's a good idea. Thanks. It also addresses the problem I didn't
mention of having to use old hardware (contemporary with W98) in a key
role.


Peter.