Replacing Prippit?

Hey everyone, so I have been casually helping out a shop for a few years, and after a recent issue with one of their older computers Im looking into doing... well something about their over reliance on Prippit.

Any good suggestions to look into a replacement (Amada focused shop), or perhaps any luck getting around the issue of needing the stupid dongles? Ive personally attempted running an emulated dongle but never had any luck with prippit accepting it as real.

What is Prippit?

Nevermind.

A programming interface from around the year 2000. It allows you to use cad files to generate control files for some machines. The guy who made it died a few years back and its essentially abandonware at this point.

See here if youre interested in details.

Its a programming interface that allows you to generate files based on CAD drawings from the early 2000s, its essentially abandonware after the guy who made it died.

You can use the wayback machine to look up the prippit.com website if for some reason youre interested.

If you are having trouble with keeping hardware running to support older software and operating systems, consider using some sort of virtualization solution.

I have VMWare running Windows Server 2003 and Windows 98 everyday for ancient business critical software with no issues. Very easy to backup and migrate from computer to computer. There's many different options for virtualization platforms out there, VMware, Virtualbox, KVM etc etc. From free to $$$.

One of the applications I run virtualized uses a HASP dongle with no issues. VMWare (and others I'm sure) has a sort of USB passthrough that lets you use the physical dongle with the virtual machine. I've also had to use serial interfaces with a virtualized windows 95 program to set up an old motor drive, no hardware hiccups with that either.

This is all ignoring the fact that you probably could benefit from modern software, but sometimes you just gotta keep the old stuff running for a little while longer. Virtualization is great for this because when it is set up right you can get rid of the old beige towers cluttering up the office and back up the whole package.

Yeah I attempted virtualization first, but I havent been able to get the printer port dongle to work on a usb converter even on real hardware, and there isnt a passthrough for the old printer port. Its a sentinel C Plus dongle that it requires.

Hi,
I am recently retired. The shop had older Amada Punch Press.

We had Prippit running on older DOS PC.
Prippit requires "Dongle" plugged into parallel port.

We got a New DOS PC, from Nixsys.
We ordered PC with "older" Parallel port (for the Dongle).
The the New DOS PC ran Prippit OK.

We were concerned since Prippit was designed for slow clock speed PC.

MS DOS Computers - Legacy Computers - Products
The DOS PC was good quality. DOS is preloaded.
The company can answer DOS questions.


We looked at a virtual windows DOS box, we did not have bandwidth to maintain one.
The type of setup may require PC with built-in Parallel port.