Dolphin 5 and Windows 95

Folks,

You may have noticed from the Object Arts website that Windows 95 is no
longer an officially supported platform for Dolphin Smalltalk. Microsoft
withdrew support for Windows 95 in November last year so we thought it was
about time we did the same. There are a number of facilities in later
versions of Windows that we'd like to start using in Dolphin and a continued
commitment to Win95 would prevent this.

Having said this, we haven't actually gone out of our way in this version to
include anything that specifically won't work under Win95. We've just had a
report, however,  that the Dolphin unlock process fails under Win 95.
Having just run Dolphin up under Win95 (running under VMWare since we don't
have a separate machine with 95 installed) it does appear to fail with a
"The Parameter is Incorrect" error when the Unlock button is pressed.

I'm not sure whether we are going to be able to fix this in the short term.
The problem appears to only be in the unlock process, so the an alternative
would be to temporarily install Dolphin on another computer (running Win98
or better) and to unlock it there. If you really want to run under Windows
95 you could then take the .IMG, .CHG and .SML files from the unlocked image
and move them to the My Documents\Dolphin Smalltallk 5.0 directory on your
95 box. I think you should find that Dolphin would then run okay.

Deployed applications, at least simple ones like "Bouncing Balls", don't
appear to be affected by this problem and run successfully.

Best Regards,

Andy Bower
Dolphin Support
http://www.object-arts.com
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Andy,

> Having just run Dolphin up under Win95 (running under VMWare since we
don't
> have a separate machine with 95 installed) it does appear to fail with a
> "The Parameter is Incorrect" error when the Unlock button is pressed.
>
> I'm not sure whether we are going to be able to fix this in the short
term.
> The problem appears to only be in the unlock process, so the an
alternative
> would be to temporarily install Dolphin on another computer (running Win98
> or better) and to unlock it there. If you really want to run under Windows
> 95 you could then take the .IMG, .CHG and .SML files from the unlocked
image
> and move them to the My Documents\Dolphin Smalltallk 5.0 directory on your
> 95 box. I think you should find that Dolphin would then run okay.

Sounds ok to me.  As the dust settles, I'll get Dolphin images going on
multiple 9x machines, including one crusty old 95 install, and will let you
know how it goes.  My issues with 9x have been:

(1) the PENDATA problems - as mad as you are at MS over the plugin, that's
about how I feel with respect to their having dumped a handful of documented
functions for reading/writing digital ink.

(2) some would be customers will want or need to run 9x, so I need to be
able to support it.

Having to unlock elsewhere is not a big deal, and would be my preference
anyway.

BTW, I'm pleased to report that my D5 image is free of the PENDATA hassles
:)

Have a good one,

Bill

--
Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
[hidden email]

On Fri, 3 May 2002 22:08:34 -0400, "Bill Schwab" <[hidden email]>
wrote:

>(1) the PENDATA problems - as mad as you are at MS over the plugin, that's
>about how I feel with respect to their having dumped a handful of documented
>functions for reading/writing digital ink.

You're doing stuff with pen? That's one of my fantasies! What hardware are you
running? What are you writing? Tell, tell!

I want my Momenta back!

Ronald E Jeffries
http://www.XProgramming.com
http://www.objectmentor.com
I'm giving the best advice I have. You get to decide whether it's true for you.