I have some programs I need to use at work which require serial/parallel port access which will not work under WinXP. I was trying to use Virtual PC with a Win 98 install but the program is saying it cant open the serial port. The setup in Virtual PC is pretty simple (just map the virtual port to the real one) so I'm not sure what I would be missing. Any suggestions/ideas?

My other option was DOSBox, but it does not seem to have parallel port support.

1/11/2010 9:35:45 PM

VMWare? You can use serial devices in a virtual machine. The virtual machine player is free. You might get lucky and find a Win 98 image out there.

[Edited on January 11, 2010 at 9:44 PM. Reason : -]

1/11/2010 9:41:26 PM

A lot of older technical/scientific equipment suffers the same issue where serial or parallel ports are required. Many keep a single machine with Win95 or Win98 hooked up to it and disconnected from the network for that reason.

Is this "I need a single machine to do this" or "we are performing a large migration and need multiple machines to do this?" If it's a single machine, you can probably find a cheap machine or older laptop for less than $100 that would do this function.

1/12/2010 6:12:46 AM