[etoys-dev] Can we run E-toys in Windows 98?

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 27.09.2009, at 23:51, Bruno Sperb wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> There are some teachers here (they are from Novo Hamburgo, Brazil)  
> asking to work with Etoys, but their lab has computers running  
> windows 98...
>
> Would be possible to run E-toys by any chance with that Windows?
> They have already tried with the last version of Etoys (from  
> Squeakland) but did not work...
> Any suggestions?
>
> thanks,
>
> Bruno
>
> -- 
> Bruno Fagundes Sperb
> cel - 96853758	

Hi Bruno,

the Squeak VMs since 2007 do not support Windows 98 anymore:

http://www.mail-archive.com/beginners@lists.squeakfoundation.org/msg06293.html

However, as Andreas wrote there, you might get it to run by replacing  
the Virtual Machine in current Etoys by an older "3.7" VM:

http://squeakvm.org/win32/release/Squeak-Win32-3.7.1-VM.zip

This should work but you may experience problems entering non-ASCII  
characters, and possibly other issues (this has not been tested with  
current Etoys).

The use of an old VM will stop working for Etoys when we switch to  
"closures", maybe next year already. That new image format cannot be  
read by older VMs anymore. But it is necessary to be able to use Cog,  
a new Squeak VM that is considerably faster than what we have now.

This should especially help older machines. Possibly an option for  
these may be Linux? Either installing Linux on them, or booting Linux  
from a CD and using Etoys-To-Go?

- Bert -