Re: XyWrite & Windows 2000

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

michael.norman@xxxxxxx wrote:

> >  David still maintains Tame;
>
> Any news on this or other DOS emulators, if that is the correct class of
> software, to deal with DOS-Box keyboard problems in W2000-XP?

Well, it's not a cheap solution -- you also need fast hardware, for best
results -- but there is the line of VPC emulation environments. These allow
you to run any of the well-known operating systems (and the app.s that run
under them) from within your "host" OS. I've seen some impressive demos,
where demanding, heavy-duty app.s ran well, and reasonably fast. You could
switch the foreground OS just about the way you would switch between running
app.s in W2K or OS/2. It was actually possible to momentarily forget where
you were: which was in fact the host, and which was the client. I can't
explain this in better technical detail, but it also seemed that the
virtualized Windows got you away from certain "real-Windows" problems.

> Also a question: Has anyone purchased a new desktop and installed W98SE
> just to keep XyDos running well? If so, was this done in a partition?

No, but another solution, which I've used since '97, is running a multi-boot
box. Your choice of OS at boot-time is mediated by something like System
Commander (which I used for several years), or one of its competitors. That
makes the mediation more convenient and polished, but strictly speaking, you
don't even need it. I'm now using a combination of the OS/2 Boot Manager,
with one of the choices it presents being the equivalent boot mgr. of W2K.
The latter gets me into either *real DOS* (which I retain for certain
special purposes), or either of my two bootable W2K partitions. Keep at
least one partition as FAT-16 (the lowest common denominator) for data or
anything you want every OS to be able to access. It's all less complicated
than it sounds, though I acknowledge that setting up, tuning, and
maintaining multiple operating systems involves more work than most users
are accustomed to in their computing. But I do like the flexibility it
gives me.

Jordan