Anyone used Portmon on a USB-RS232?

Once when we had to wait out a major re-boot I had a brief chat about this kind of migration with one of the SW guys I network with. He said he used to be a HW engineer but the continuous obsolescence, allocation and leadtime issues with parts drove him nuts and he switched careers. Well, at least he still deals with some hardware because he own a large sea-going sailboat. There, you either develop excellent mechanics skills or you have to be a millionaire.

It would be for me as well but not if a routine that runs fine with 1.1 refuses to run with 2.0. To me that's a clear sign to stay away. Same with Vista. I have seen too much SW that I need or may need where there is a little note about compatibility and this either doesn't mention Vista or explicitly says it won't work with Vista yet. I'll definitely wait at least until those problems go away.

Yep, and the other problem is that sometimes you find a nice product from a healthy mid-size company but then a major corporate player swallows them. After that it's a coin toss. In rare circumstances the product is kept afloat. Many times they ditch it, other times they jack up the price so much that the product ditches itself.

Well, there's more to that. For example, some of the programs for a computer controlled radio (Icom 1500 series) that I need for my job to hunt noise sources supposedly do not work with Vista.

Just one example (not a program I need, but similar):

Until remarks like this vanish I won't touch Vista.

Oops. Guilty as well ....

... snip 200 or so useless lines ...

Again, why quote all that junk?

Oh well, his loss.

You guys are going to love the next generation of windows, Vienna!

HAd that too. ABout 12 months ago I had to add some features to a piece of hardware. IT uses Kadak amx kernel and the SDS toolcahin. SDS has been swalloed up by someone, then another company. I recall windriver was in there somewhere. Needless to say, i could not buy the tools anymore or licence. I had to steal a copy, then copy the mac address from one network card into another so that it would work.

I can still download windows 3.11, even DOS6.1 from MS..

Sure but there are programs that are only used in an industrial setting and there the migration path is a whole lot slower. Often those are quite mission critical apps and IMHO there really isn't an excuse for an OS not to be backwards compatible to the version from half a year ago. The designers are supposed to test that.

I might still be on XP/2000/NT by that time, just like now. Stability is another issue. My wife's PC froze up for the umpteenth time yesterday night and all she does is email. That can be inconvenient when I am on a four-week biz trip. In the DOS days that has never happened. Not once.

Hey, Chuck, was this short enough now? Sometimes I am admonished by people because I snipped too much, other times I am told I didn't snip enough ....

Whee. Note that it is perfectly read (and understand) able.

Why does it matter? If you dont want to read it then DONT. Otherwise dont complain.

... snip ...

It occupies storage on many machines. It carries no useful information. I have to skip over it and watch it all to see if there is anything new of interest. It consumes bandwidth. It is contrary to standard Usenet practice. For starters.

You can install any version next to the other. Have a look at C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework

If you don't explicitly define what framework your app uses, then it will default to the version that the current dev environment uses.

Its refreshing to see a fellow asm,c, c++ programmer that likes .net!

ISTM that you are advocating an approach to backward compatibility that is ripe for VM. Vista (say) should come with a VM monitor and a copy of all previous versions of the OS (DOS, Win 3.1, Win95, NT, XP...) so you are bound to have an environment compatible with old software.

Peter

Then why is there so much software where a footnote says something like "not compatible with Vista"?