N8YX
01-19-2014, 12:25 PM
From my Windows 7 upgrade/reconfig project.
Have a pair of older Shuttle mini-ATX cubes (3GHz P4; 2GB RAM) that were set up as radio control systems and were running XP. Into each I dumped a GeForce 6200 AGP video card, a Siig combo SATA/USB/Firewire PCI I/O card and an Intel 180GB SSD then loaded them up with Win7. MS' Virtual PC and "XP Mode" VM didn't quite seem to cut it with regards to host-to-guest serial IO so I got hold of VirtualBox, installed on each system then built XP-SP3 VMs on them.
After hours fiddling with recalcitrant USB-to-serial adapters, null modem cables and whatnot I finally have things talking. That is, the two BC996XTs...two Pro-2052s...and a KAM. I have a neat host-mode program for that TNC (XpWare for Windows) which will NOT install or operate on Win7 or above. Thus, it must be run "in the can" and connect to the TNC using guest-to-host bridging. There is a lot more to build yet, but this phase of the transition is done.
Come April I'll remove the guts of the desktop I usually post with then throw them into a spare server case along with a few other peripherals and firewall it off from the Internet. The system is still useful as a general-purpose I/O and media authoring platform but time (and the vulnerability landscape) marches on.
Have a pair of older Shuttle mini-ATX cubes (3GHz P4; 2GB RAM) that were set up as radio control systems and were running XP. Into each I dumped a GeForce 6200 AGP video card, a Siig combo SATA/USB/Firewire PCI I/O card and an Intel 180GB SSD then loaded them up with Win7. MS' Virtual PC and "XP Mode" VM didn't quite seem to cut it with regards to host-to-guest serial IO so I got hold of VirtualBox, installed on each system then built XP-SP3 VMs on them.
After hours fiddling with recalcitrant USB-to-serial adapters, null modem cables and whatnot I finally have things talking. That is, the two BC996XTs...two Pro-2052s...and a KAM. I have a neat host-mode program for that TNC (XpWare for Windows) which will NOT install or operate on Win7 or above. Thus, it must be run "in the can" and connect to the TNC using guest-to-host bridging. There is a lot more to build yet, but this phase of the transition is done.
Come April I'll remove the guts of the desktop I usually post with then throw them into a spare server case along with a few other peripherals and firewall it off from the Internet. The system is still useful as a general-purpose I/O and media authoring platform but time (and the vulnerability landscape) marches on.