Windows 7 and Neuron ToolBook 6.5

[djb_mm]

I have 4 Matrix Multimedia CDs - Electronic Circuits and Components, Analogue Electronics, Digital Electronics and Analog Filters. The first three, I have tried to install on Windows 7 (64-bit) with little success. The install file for the Neuron 6.5 plugin fails as it is not compatible with Windows 7. The latest versions of the software (was Asymetrix Learning Systems, now SumTotal Systems) are available from:

http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/support/ ... euron.html

in versions 9.5, 10.0 and 10.5. Unfortunately, none of these work with the Mike Tooley CDs and give script errors, particularly where the page displayed shows a "tabbed" set of choices. The first message says:

"The ToolBook book that you are opening will be opened by a later version of the program. Version specific scripts may not run properly."

OK-ing this results in a further error:

"Dead Script Detected: Cannot access script: script text has been removed for book C:\Program Files ..."

I notice that these CDs are no longer offered either at Matrix, or EPM (Everyday Practical Electronics) magazine where I first bought them. Is this because they cannot be supported beyond Windows XP? Are there any versions of the Neuron plugin later than 6.5 which might work on Windows 7, but which are backwards compatible with the version 6.5 scripts on the CD?

[djb_mm]

Follow up:

I have now also tried some legacy versions of the Neuron plugin from SumTotal Systems' web-site. Unfortunately versions 9.0 and 8.9(2004) also fail in the same way. Version 8.9(2004) was the first - apparently - to support FireFox as well as IE, so there is little point in me trying earlier versions than this.

[Steve]

Yes, the situation is how you describe. We have stopped selling and supporting these because of the compatibility issues we faced when Windows moved to Vista and then Windows7. These CDs are also not supported for any x64 OS.

It is a real shame because these are great learning resources with lots of useful interactive circuits to experiment with.

At the present time, your best hope is to run these CDs in a virtual environment using an older OS.

[djb_mm]

Steve, thanks for the reply - and the hint about emulation. I downloaded VMware Player 3.1.4 and installed it. After VMware Player finished, it prompted me for an OS disc so I loaded a Win XP (SP2) installation DVD. This was a Media Centre edition, which caused a few problems later, but the OS installation proceeded normally. Finally, I ran a separate SP3 update. VMware Player was configured to use 512 MB memory and a 20GB container file for the disk space.

The Matrix ECC, Analogue and Digital software loaded without problems, including Neuron 6.5. I installed Acrobat Reader 5.0 from the Matrix CDs, but it wouldn't run, so a copy of 6.0.1 from the CNET downloads site was substituted. The Sun Java RTE from the Matrix CDs was also installed. Everything works, except for audio playback in ECC. I searched for ways to uninstall Media Centre, which I suspect of being the root of this problem, but all I could find were instructions to disable some Windows services. I expect this problem might be resolved by using a "vanilla" Windows XP installation DVD. Finally, I installed and ran the Filters software without incident.

So finally I have a VMware Player system which consists of:
Windows XP (SP3) Media Centre Edition
Internet Explorer 6.0
Sun Java 2 RTE 1.4.1
ToolBook II Neuron 6.5
Adobe Reader 6.0.1

Hope this helps anyone else stuck with the same migration problem.

[Steve]

Great news - thanks for letting us know.