Reply to note from Kari Eveli lexitec@xxxxxxxx Sat, 04 Oct 2014
19:51:31 +0300
> I worked with Harry Binswanger to get his W2K CD up and
> running.
Thanks, Kari. Based on Paul's and Bill's reminders -- something told
me to fish for information! -- I did some Googling and found a
working copy of W2K-SP4, with serial number, here:
https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-nt-2000/final.
Last night I installed it in VBox, with Guest Additions, and got Xy4
running. As Bill predicted, it's zippy -- and it's SO nice to have a
working Alt-Enter window/full-screen toggle! However, there are two
issues, and they are
biggies. First, of course, is the inability to
display remote directories using Xy's DIR command. I had thought
this was small potatoes since the DOS DIR command works and you can
easily import DOS DIR listings into XyWrite (U2 frame BDIR), but I
see now that the problem goes deeper than that. It turns out that
remote directories are invisible to XyWrite's EXIST command. This is
a major issue for me. I run XyWrite on three (physical) computers
with wildly different directory-tree structures. A lot of my
personal XPL programming depends on using the EXIST command to allow
XyWrite to detect which machine I'm using and operate accordingly.
Although we have a U2 EXIST that does work with remote directories
and LFNs, it would be a major hassle to redo my personal programming
to use it instead of the native EXIST command.
This would be a non-issue if I could get Dropbox working in W2K.
Although I installed IE 6,
there are still many websites that won't
load, Dropbox being one of them. (Firefox is my browser of choice
and, needless to say, I can't install that, either.) I could copy my
Dropbox folder to a local drive, but, without the Dropbox software
running, I'd have to manually sync it with my "real" Dropbox, which
would be a pain.
Technical glitches aside, there's a more basic issue for me. XyWrite
is my launching pad for websites and other Windows programs, and I
use it to compose, send, and receive email. Running Win 7 in VBox
allows me to install the latest 32-bit Windows software, and to run
an anti-virus program in the VM as well as on the host machine. In
short, I need the VM to be able to connect fully to the Internet,
and any OS earlier than Win 7 seems to throw up formidable obstacles
to that. So I doubt that W2K will be able to lure me away from my
current setup. But it's been fun
trying.
Best,
Carl
--
Carl Distefano
mailto:cld@xxxxxxxx