• Dragnmn@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    You can’t virtualize it because you need to physically plug in the hardware, and backups are useless if you can’t read the files without the Win95 software.

    • VoxX@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You can connect VMs to physical ports. We use a Win XP VM to connect through a USB to serial converter to get data from devices 30+ years old. You can make and use backups because the VM can run the original software.

      • Pulptastic@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        Some lab equip has proprietary ports that would need reverse engineering to make and use a USB adapter.

      • Dragnmn@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        That’s fair, I read virtualize as “cloud/hardware far away” and not “local physical machine with a VM on it”.