If this has been broached, forgive me, I couldn't find the thread. Here is what I need out of Parallels Desktop or software like Parallels Desktop. I work as a lighting designer in the entertainment industry. The big lighting control console maker is ETC. They have offline software for working with their consoles when one isn't around. The software is DOS/Windows based. Their software has to have direct control of a floppy drive to be of any use. While I would love Parallels with XP to be able to create floppies, it isn't all that big a deal with boot camp. I can write my show in Parallels and then boot with boot camp to write the disk. However there are two legacy apps that need DOS and, these days , need USB support for floppy drives. Enter Windows 98. On a PC I was able to use these apps on VirtualPC with windows 98 in XP. However, VPC does not support the Core 2 Duo chips in PCs, much less Macs. So my VPC in XP won't work. Or so it tells me. I installed (after many, many frustrating failures) Windows 98se and the requisite apps (ETCEdit and Obsession Offline 4.4.2) but there appears to be no floppy access. Windows 98 can use the floppy drive, but the apps I need cannot. Again, this software needs to directly control the floppy drive, so floppy images are not a functional work around. I imagine it is due to a proprietary formatting. Is this something that Parallels can handle? Thanks, Joe Futral
OK, a bit of a follow up. I found the USB floppy drive as the "B" drive in Windows XP. Much joy! I don't HAVE to reboot in boot camp. However, I have had to reinstall Windows 98se several times for one reason or another and I can't get it to recognize the USB floppy for nothin'. It is a TEAC FD-05PUB. Windows 98 can't find a driver. I can find a driver, but then it shows up as the "E" drive and I start having shut down and reboot issues. Well, at first I thought it was because of the driver. now it happens almost all the time. Parallels and 98se do not get along. Joe
