Personal alpha on Windows 7

[Peter Zeiszler]

Has anyone seen anything about personal alpha being ported to windows 7?

[John Gillings]

Huh? Something needs to be "ported" to a later version of the same operating system? How weird is that?

[Peter Zeiszler]

Saw Personal alpha was on Vista - Windows 7 isn't the same - even though it is windows. I never assume anything working on one version of windows works on the next - heck, not even if its just one "major" patch from MS does it guarantee it will work :D

[Bill Pedersen]

Personal Alpha, from Stomasys, is supported on XP. There are some current issues with Vista which they are working on, the suggested manual work arounds are not consistent. As I have not heard about Windows 7 I would suspect it is not yet available. I would direct you to Stromasys for more information and any comment on availability.

Bill.

[Willem Grooters]

It runs on XP out-of-the-box, without anything special. If the claim of "XP mode" in Win7 is right, it _should_ work as well, without any special issues.
It runs on Vista with some precaution (You'll need to run the installation program as administrator, create a new shortcut and set it to run as admin as well), it _might_ be that the same procedure wil make it run on Windows 7.

Chances are that it won't work either way. "Backward comptability" is not in the DNA of most Windows developers...

[Hoff]

Here's a potential path:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.asp

Given the retirement of the legacy Microsoft Windows platforms locally, I do not know how well this approach might or might not work.

Or (best) ask Stromasys.

[Peter Zeiszler]

I checked Stromasys first. I figured with all of the knowledge floating around and answering the forums someone might have gotten information ahead of windows 7 release.

Asking about it because I run mainly XP at home and only 1 Vista computer. Learned the hard way to avoid windows ME (anyone else remember that). I am looking at a new system with windows 7 as a free upgrade and with a quad core cpu, thinking - hey - VM alpha on it :D

Thanks for the responses. Guess I will have to wait for answer from Stromasys.

[Volker Halle · Accepted solution]

Peter,

I've received 2 answers from Stromasys on this question:

- PersonalAlpha is supposed to work on Windows 7. Just set GUI.EXE and ALPHA.EXE to run with admin privs and in Windows XP mode.

- some 'official' version may be built with Windows 7 support until the end of this year.

Volker.

[John Reagan]

Don't forget that Windows XP mode is only available in Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate. It isn't in Starter or Home Premium.

[Milton Baar]

Tried on Win7 Professional, set all the .exes to run XPSP3 compatibility and with administrator privilege can boot but.....it can't install the packet driver - have rebooted and tried several tweaks of network setting - still no go.

[Volker Halle]

Milton,

I could install sripacket.inf using the NetDiag utility under Windows 7 Enterprise and I could add the binding of the CHARON NDIS5 driver to the LAN card, but I cannot see that network adapter in the PersonalAlpha user interface (UI.EXE).

I'll be at the CHARON training in Geneva next week and try to bring up this question.

Volker.

[Volker Halle]

Peter,

the CHARON NDIS5 network driver of PersonalAlpha does not work on Windows 7 64-bit. A NDIS6 driver is expected to be delivered in the future.

Volker.

[Volker Halle]

Peter,

PersonalAlpha V2.0.17 has been recently released. It supports Windows 7, see the announcement in the new Stromasys User Forums:

http://forum.stromasys.com/userforum/index.php

Volker.

[Art Wiens]

It'll cost you a bit more money, but if you have the cash and the available disk space, get yourself the new version of VMware Workstation 7 and put up a minimal XP VM to run personal Alpha in/on.

Works for me. ;-)

Cheers,
Art

[Milton Baar]

Well, I have downloaded 2.0.17 and tried to run it on a Windows2008 server (32bit).

Installs fine, NetDiag updated my NDIS to v6, it is all bound OK BUT....

Networking won't start successfully!! Here is the log:
---------------------------------------------
2010-02-21 21:06:49:121: Alpha: Personal Alpha Emulator
2010-02-21 21:06:49:121: Alpha: Version 2.0.17, build Nov 17 2009 17:59:02
2010-02-21 21:06:49:137: Alpha: ESA0.ROM: set physical address aa-00-04-00-10-04
2010-02-21 21:06:49:137: Alpha: SCC0_chip: reset
2010-02-21 21:06:49:137: Alpha: SCC1_chip: reset
2010-02-21 21:06:49:137: Alpha: PKA.chip: reset_53c94
2010-02-21 21:06:49:152: Alpha: PKB.chip: reset_53c94
2010-02-21 21:06:49:152: Alpha: BYPASS: device start
2010-02-21 21:06:49:152: Alpha: TC0: device start
2010-02-21 21:06:49:152: Alpha: ESA0: lance starting
2010-02-21 21:06:49:152: Alpha: ESA0: start
2010-02-21 21:06:49:152: Alpha: ESA0: device start
2010-02-21 21:06:49:199: Alpha: ESA0.port.handle: failed to determine suitable ethernet adaptors!
2010-02-21 21:06:49:199: Alpha: ESA0.port.handle: no packet network interfaces found
2010-02-21 21:06:49:199: Alpha: ESA0.port: NT NDIS port constructor for {AEA71E57-4140-41A6-8CFC-E4D5F9E0383E}
2010-02-21 21:06:49:215: Alpha: ESA0.port: creating SHARED mode port {AEA71E57-4140-41A6-8CFC-E4D5F9E0383E}
2010-02-21 21:06:49:215: Alpha: ESA0.port: starting NT packet driver port
2010-02-21 21:06:49:215: Alpha: ESA0.port.handle: driver_name 'Packet'
2010-02-21 21:06:49:230: Alpha: ESA0: the port failed to start!!
2010-02-21 21:06:49:230: Alpha: ESA0: the reason: failed to load driver
Last system error: The handle is invalid. [6]
Media is disconnected.

2010-02-21 21:06:49:246: Alpha: ESA0.port: deleting SHARED mode port
2010-02-21 21:06:49:246: Alpha: ESA0.port: NT NDIS port destructor
2010-02-21 21:06:49:293: Alpha: ESA0.port.handle: failed to determine suitable ethernet adaptors!
2010-02-21 21:06:49:293: Alpha: ESA0.port.handle: no packet network interfaces found
2010-02-21 21:06:49:308: Alpha: ESA0.port: NT NDIS port constructor for {AEA71E57-4140-41A6-8CFC-E4D5F9E0383E}
2010-02-21 21:06:49:308: Alpha: ESA0.port: creating SHARED mode port {AEA71E57-4140-41A6-8CFC-E4D5F9E0383E}
2010-02-21 21:06:49:324: Alpha: ESA0.port: starting NT packet driver port
2010-02-21 21:06:49:324: Alpha: ESA0.port.handle: driver_name 'Packet'
2010-02-21 21:06:49:339: Alpha: ESA0: the port failed to start
2010-02-21 21:06:49:339: Alpha: ESA0: the reason: failed to load driver
Last system error: The handle is invalid. [6]
Media is disconnected.

2010-02-21 21:06:49:370: Alpha: exiting
2010-02-21 21:06:49:386: Alpha: stopping
2010-02-21 21:06:52:379: Alpha: exited
---------------------------------------------

My reading of this is that it doesn't like the NDIS driver/binding. There is only one network device on the machine and it is in shared mode - I can see there is an option to install the multiplex driver (srimux.inf), except I can't find that anywhere on the server or in the downloaded files.

I have rebooted the machine several times since updating and installing the NDIS6 driver.

[Volker Halle]

Milton,

Stromasys has created a user forum. Please consider to post your questions related to PersonalAlpha or any of the other Stromasys CHARON emulators in:

http://forum.stromasys.com/userforum/

Volker.

[Milton Baar]

Hi

Thanks, I shall. Last time I looked the forum was still dead/suspended, so it is good to see it is back again!!

Cheers

[Milton Baar]

Well, registered for the new forum but no email confirmation arrived...reregistered and still nothing, so ....

However, from other messages in the forum, it appears that the problem is a known bug since about November last year and that a new mux driver is required (my inference). Nothing released yet, so its just a waiting game I guess.

[Peter Zeiszler]

I am going to hook into that forum too just to keep up to date.
Thanks everyone.

[Bart Zorn_1]

I am running Personal Alpha 2.0.17 on Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit (on VMware Fusion 3.0.1 on Mac OS X 1.5.8, but I don't think that is important). PA installed without problem and runs OK. The only thing is that most of the time, the first time I try to run PA, it fails with a packet driver problem. Just starting it again solves this somehow and I see no further problems.

My suggestion is, just try it. It won't cost you much!

HTH,

Bart Zorn