Russ,

If I ever need to do so, and it comes up from time to time, particularly when I need to do something thoroughly "hardware" in nature, I pull out the LINUX/Win9x/WXPSP2 HDD and stick in the old and reliable DOS6.22/Win3.1x HDD and use that. That's where my PCB's most often get their route and that's where I do the bulk of my schematic work, since, there, I can move back and forth between DOS and Windows without paying a penalty.

In fact, I normally don't have to swap anything, since I maintain a couple of boxes just for the purpose of running that old but reliable software.

A frame/tray combination, when I last bought 'em, cost about $15 and, since they avoid all those pitfalls associated with having multiple partitions on a physical drive with WXP on it, I find it reassuring to know that WXP can't "reach out and touch someone."

BTW, I have a couple of notebooks with Win98SE on 'em and I seem to be able to generate pretty much what I need via the parallel port if I boot that in "DOS-Prompt Mode." That means loading all the necessary drivers, which, in my case, normally means none.

Now, DOS doesn't understand how to talk to a 2TB drive, so don't get your hopes up, but if you had all the available software for DOS, I doubt it would fail to fit.

Normally I get by just fine with "slick edit", DEBUG, and a little patch editor called ED, that came with PALASM back in the late '80's, and whatever compiler I want, and usually MASM or TASM.

You can't get a virus in such an arrangement, unless it hides in your BBRAM, since DOS doesn't know about the LAN or the internet unless you load the necessary drivers. Back in the DOS days, I used IPX/SPX lan protocol (NETware) and nobody speaks that any longer.

RE