WHOA! Microsoft strikes again...

I think you need to learn to port programs to Raspbian. .

--

Rick C

That's no problem. A whole industry has formed around legacy computing needs. When a PC in an in-circuit tester at a client croaked many years ago I found them a legacy dealer, they ordered a newly produced DOS-based computer, loaded the software and were back in business. It took one week. As a bonus they now have a CD drive in it which the old one didn't have.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Yes. It is even recommended by medical folks not to set up your work environment in a way that allows too much of a sedentary work routine. For example, don't place "The Art of Electronics" within 2ft reach but

5ft. That way you must get out of your chair.

I guess Canon engineers must have know that when they messed up the ImageClass software. The machine will not understand a scan command unless you get out of your chair and press a few buttons to "prime" it, then within x second press some more back on the PC.

Doesn't always work well for stuff that needs USB drivers and such. If there is no Linux driver you are up the creek.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Dosbox runs so well on a Pi that the port might not even be needed, except that the physical I/O ports are different.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net

There in the I/O ports is the problem. Much legacy hardware is controlled through fancy handshake signal "abuses" in the serial or parallel ports and will not work at all without that. Often you need a genuine LPT cards in a PC that can drive that the classical way.

Even in this millenium there were such devices. I still have a MSP430 programmer from Texas Instruments somewhere that staunchly refused to work with USB-LPT adapters. It had to be retired when I retired my NT4 box and the Inspiron 2500 laptop.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On Thu, 28 Apr 2016 07:31:58 -0700, Joerg Gave us:

So, you never heard of NET USE to re-assign to a virtual port.

I have plenty of legacy EDA software that ONLY prints to LPT and they work fine using NET USE port re-assignments.

Try timing critical bit-banging of handshake pins with Windows 7 or up.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

So even TurboTax won't work in Wine? That's a concern.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Bingo!

Example: I bought a 2-in-1 tablet with Windows 10. The experience was horrible and some promised features such as HDMI output (to be able to do layout reviews in the living room using the TV) did not work. Sent it back for refund.

Absolute requirement: Wine pre-installed and ready to spool PC software onto it without needing a Ph.D. in conputer science.

One one campany has (finally!) started a project to deliver a Linux-based touch-screen tablet but it is in Europe, in Spain. There is a huge untapped market, people who simply won't touch Windows 10 with a

10ft pole. Most are going Android but not if they must be able to run PC software under Wine or something.

Another option would be Android add-ons that allow the install of Windows software. There is also a work group active in that direction but it's going to be a while and also will not likely work on any ARM processors. So must be Atom or something.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Doesn't work with DOS programs that call the software interrupts directly, I expect.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net

Does it work on Dosbox?

Rediscovered Space Quest 3 on Dosbox and it was loads of fun.

Michael

...

Hmm. I didn't try it yet, but with my taxes already filed, maybe I'll try running it now.

Well, after I finish repairing the car. Oil pump seal decided to retire, so I'm still putting the car back together after replacing the seal yesterday.

Regards,

Michael

Same here but with the bicycles. The mountain bike chain was finished. Again. Mounted a new one ... skipped ... durn! The cassette was obviously shot as well. It took a while to find a fitting new cassette so now that works. Then the road bike chain gave it up ...

Now I have a seemingly indelible oil stain on my right hand.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On Thursday, April 28, 2016 at 7:58:25 AM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:

Well, I downloaded the latest Knoppix (7.6.0) since I had played with it a few years ago on an old laptop, the latest Ubuntu (14.4 LTS), and the latest LinuxMint (17.3 cinnamon), and burnt them onto DVD's to play with and compare on my desktop machine. PC is a vanilla homebuild, about 5 years old, i5-2500, 8 GB ram, 1 TB hard drive, asus mb, radeon hd5670 video card, with Win 7 Ultimate 32 bit since I had a tv tuner card that did not have 64 bit drivers at the time of build. Main uses these days are as dvr and internet surfing. Ubuntu booted right up and seemed intuitive enough to get programs launched and to look at some files on my hd. I didn't really like the differences with Windows, like having the sizing and close buttons on the left instead of the right, and the sliders outside the windows for scrolling just looked funny. Also didn't like the big button bar on the left of the screen. I'm sure in a few days I'd not even notice, but starting with Windows it all just seemed a little different just to be different. Knoppix also booted right up, and to me, anyway, the desktop looked more like Windows. Seemed to have more "stuff" installed, like apps or plugins for Firefox when I went to websites with video, and tried to play some recorded tv program files from my hd. Overall I just liked it better (yes, that's a completely subjective opinion :-)). In my casual linux browsing I'd never noticed LinuxMint before Jeff and Joerg mentioned it, so it was next up but unfortunately it failed. Just doing a standard boot it complained about something missing but the message scrolled by too fast so I couldn't tell what it was but it appeared to finish booting ok and display a desktop. However, there was no menu along the bottom of the screen so I couldn't access the menu button to launch any applications or play with settings. I did open some files from the hd, and the window appearance seemed ok and it did play my video file. I rebooted in compatibility mode, and it complained a bunch about the video card but this time it did show the menu bar. However, it thought it was on a laptop and limited the screen resolution to well below the true max. I could probably get used to it pretty quickly, and I imagine that if I was installing it on the hd instead of just running it off the dvd updated drivers or whatever it needed would be available to fix the boot issue. However, to me Knoppix had the most "familiar" look and feel, compared to Windows, included lots of apps, and has never failed to boot on my laptop or desktop, so I think I will install it in a partition on the hd and start spending time using it so when Microsoft succeeds in killing off my Win7 I'll just move to linux. I replaced that old tv tuner card a few years ago with one that did have 64 bit windows drivers available, but never got around to upgrading to 64 bit win7. Of course, neither card has linux drivers, so when I do make the permanent change I'll have to get yet another tuner, sigh :-). Anyway, my one afternoon take on linux :-).

----- Regards, Carl Ijames

Goop helps a lot.

That reminds me. I'm almost out.

Michael

I started out with Knoppix! :) First just booted to CD to get a secure web browser, for online banking. Then I did more and more with it.

I think it's based on Debian.

Yep, there are so many distributions, and some hardware works better with some distros and not others.

I would use Ubuntu, except I just cannot stand the GUI that is drastically different from WinXP/Vista/7. Linux Mint at least retains that windows-icon-like-thingy on the lower-left.

Regards,

Michael

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y different from WinXP/Vista/7. Linux Mint at least retains that windows-i con-like-thingy on the lower-left.

Nowadays you can install the boot image to a bootable USB flash drive inste ad of from CD/DVD. It's a little faster.

Every distro had some idiosyncrasy. One wouldn't play YouTube videos full- screen. One hated my network adapter. One wouldn't work right unless I al ways logged in as root (not going to happen). Mint had the minimum number of problems on my system, at the time.

Ah! Xubuntu worked pretty well too. But again, like Ubuntu, it has icons in strange places, and I was fighting the taskbar to make it look more like what I was used to.

Cheers,

Michael

I made a patch for that, I rewrote the CRT unit and included many many windowing functions and mouse functions.

The Software Delay was no more.. All hardward delay from that point on.. I also wrote a FIXED point floating point Library and hooked it into the RTL when needed.

Jamie

you can just pick another gui,

-Lasse