virutal PC gpib

[non-specialist]

We have recently bought Dell Vostro 200 PCs with Windows XP as the OS. Our application requires Windows 98 OS only. We are told that the Dell motherboard does not support Win98. As an alternative We installed Virtual PC 2007. This creates a Win98 environment as a child process. While this works fine with some Win98 softwares, we have not been successful in installing the PCI-GPIB driver ( we even tried NI48222 driver). Although the software installation goes clean, the system refuses to see the board. Would be thankful for any suggestions.

[markus kossmann]

You would need have a emulation for the PCI-GPIB card included in virtual PC to get that working. The OS running in the virtual machine sees only the hardware which is emulated by the virtualisation software. 

The only solution that might work , is to use a  converter from GPIB to emulated hardware. Maybe using Ethernet  with GPIB-ENET100 or USB  with a USB-GPIB-HS may work in the emulated environment. But that requires that your application supports these adapters also on win98 not running in a virtual machine.

The other thing , you could try, is to install Win98  on the new PC even if it is not supported. There will be some restrictions. For example there will probably no graphics drivers available and you have to live low resolution graphics ( 800x600) .Mightbe it will run well enough for you purposes.

Message Edited by markus kossmann on 05-28-2008 10:02 AM

[non-specialist]

Thanks for the information. I am told that the motherboard of this machine is not compatible with Win98. Let me try out the suggestions by you. Thanks again.

[Gary Neal]

It is possible to use the GPIB-ENET device in Virtual PC 2007.  I use it for my VB 6 development.  We also use it company wide on virtual machines running in a VMWare environment.