Re: running Xy on a Mac

[flash flash@xxxxxxxx]

On 4/11/11 8:59 PM, Lynn Brenner wrote:

> So we're talking about running Xywrite (and Tamedos, I assume) on a
> virtual XP inside a Mac. Sounds like a lot of moving parts

Yes, that's one road you can go down. The other is to install a DOS
emulator only, without the Windows baggage; fewer moving parts. Which
one is right for you depends, I think, on whether you intend to run only
Xy or lots of other Windows-based apps too on the Mac.

≪presumably, one can install XP on Parallels on new and future Macs as
well as old ones? (In other words, we don't expect a new version of
Parallels that won't accept older versions of Windows?)≫ Well, we
didn't expect Microsoft to drop support for DOS, which, after all, was
Gates' own product, so how can we expect Apple to continue support for
DOS? There is already considerable difficulty getting new apps to run on
non-Intel Macs (PPC), and future support appears to be limited to Intel
Macs.

Win7 is said to be quite a different creature than all previous Windows
versions, so it may come to pass that future versions of Parallels (or
other simulated environments) cease to support previous versions of
Windows. The Windows users at this list can better inform you than I how
well Xy runs in recent versions of Windows (Vista, Win7). My impression
(this may be wrong though) is that older versions of Windows, in which
Xy ran well, will someday cease to install on new hardware (due in part
to hardisk sizes and bootsector parameters which are over the horizon
for w2k and earlier versions). So we Xywriters are gradually being
forced to seek alternative platforms.

Snags? You mean in addition to the usual snags of installing Windows
(missing DLLs and so on)? Virtual Windows may not recognize peripherals
attached to the Mac (scanner, camera, stereo, etc.). My VPC, for
example, doesn't share USB sticks with my PPC-Tiger--one OS throws the
other off the stick. Maybe Parallels doesn't have that particular
problem though.

Xy-specific snags: getting Xy to print from a simulated environment to a
network printer or a USB-attached printer is probably going to be dodgy.
Getting Xy to 'see' the Mac's file structure is tricky (nothing in the
Mac world corresponds to c:\).

Flash