I've got yet another machine on which I run DOS app's. That one has never had Windows on it, nor has it ever been connected to the internet in any way ... not that that's a problem, but it's just the way it is. Some of the old app's that I've used for years work WAY better than their Windows-compatible descendants, so I use this old DOS-based box to run, for example, the very excellent OrCAD version 3.22 and associated software and PSPice v5.1 on it, both of which work WAY faster, with fewer crashes, and much less complexity and resulting human interaction, than the Windows scions that their vendor (Cadence) has provided since the early '90's. This box is the one on which I can run applications without ever worrying about a crash, and on which I know the software will behave as the documentation indicates.

The other "old" PC is one on which I run old Windows app's that don't work under XP and beyond, but I've found to be useful. I have no objection to more modern software, but this stuff works well, unlike some of its "modern" scions, and that's probably because it was written to work with the then-prevailing hardware scheme.

What might be useful, friends, would be to specify which of the USB-based serial port adapters work successfully with which< serial port programmers to which MCU's. There are lots of programmers, and lots of USB serial ports, as well as parallel ports. I'm sure it's frustrating for those who are forced to use 'em because their PC's don't have I/O ports any longer to acquire a programmer only to learn later that it doesn't work with adapter XYZ though it works with adapter ABC. I've never been plagued with these problems because none of my PC's use USB serial and parallel ports, and, therefore, the serial programmer that I use with those Maxim/Dallas 89C4x0's has always worked satisfactorily. This is a very narrow sample, and I don't recall that this programmer uses any of the handshake lines in a non-standard way. In fact, I don't recall that it uses them at all, but I could certainly be wrong about that. I wire0wrapped the programmer, it worked fine, and I've had no call to modify it in any way.

I know some of you guys will be aghast that I've not upgraded my PC's in about a decade, but I've had no reason to do that. Further, I've stuck with WIndows XP because it appears to be the last useful version of Microsoft's Windows. Everyone with whom I've discussed the matter has agreed that Windows Vist and Windows 7 are not as comfortable and reliable, or, worse, that they demand a software upgrade from many of the products that I'm too cheap to replace. Oddly enough, it appears that some of this stuff works better under LINUX with a Windows emulator than under Windows 7, though I've not verified that.

RE