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    Won't work -- you will badly screw up the timing of the bandsaw control. The most likely reason for the Win3.1 requirement for the existing software is that it installs its own interrupt handlers in order to get real-time operation. That isn't possible on modern OSes which run applications unprivileged, and while a VM can emulate it, the interrupt latency will be greater and much much much more unpredictable.
    – Ben Voigt
    Commented May 11, 2012 at 23:04
  • On modern Linux you can setup a virtual machine process for real-time scheduling using chrt --fifo qemu .... Also modern system will be hundreds times faster than 15-year-old one. I don't think there will be a problem with too slow reaction times.
    – Tometzky
    Commented May 12, 2012 at 16:37
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    Interrupt handlers are much faster than even real-time scheduled processes. Also, too fast a reaction may be just as big a problem as too slow. I don't see any way to avoid unpredictability of response latency when using a VM.
    – Ben Voigt
    Commented May 12, 2012 at 17:07