How can I

[USKiwi]

I may have a problem can anyone help, being my first time to the forum kick me if I do something wrong!!!
I have a machineshop and have been given a older CNC milling machine which requires a cam software to run. I have an older seat of Mastercam 9.1 which I was running on Win 2000 Pro.
I wish to buy a new computer running Win 8 with an AMD chip set.
Question, can I just create a partition then load Win 2000 pro as a second OS or will it not run on the new computer?
You see I am retired and the $10000 price tag for a new Mastercam 10x seat is out of the question. I also need to find out if I even can load my seat of Mastercam 9.1 and have it see the harps key.
I will do my best to answer any of your questions.   

[DaveLembke]

Question I have is.... why buy a new computer? Why not just find an older computer that runs good and install Windows 2000 to it and run the software that was intended for that OS and hardware.

I use to assist with a garage and machine shop that had some older systems/machines running on old OS's. The machines dont run any faster on a new computer, they are limited by design to cutting metal at a specific rate for example so you could run a 486 computer or a modern Core i7 which is overkill and the machine if the software can run on a modern computer will not run any faster etc.

My suggestion would be that if you plan on using the machine for many years to buy up some cheap good working used computers, load them up with the software, and store them someplace dry and dirt and oil free and this way when a system fails you can simply just swap it out 1 for 1 and be back up and running. You can probably get good used computers that run Windows 2000 Pro for $100 or less each. HP had a reliable business computer product line called the EVO which came as a small form factor and Pentium 4 processor with Windows 2000 Professional. Up until about 2 years ago I was able to pick these up as refurbished computers for $89.99 with 40GB HDD's and a CD Rom or DVD Rom drive.

[USKiwi]

Thank you for your input, I had thought of that but guess I was thinking I could also have just one computer in my small office. Having a dedicated computer just maybe a better way to go. I have a very good old computer with 2000 loaded and will try to load the software and see if that will still read the hasp key.

[soybean]

I suggest using virtualization software such as VMware Player or virtualbox.  This would allow you to run Win 2000 as though it were a program running in Win 8.1.  For additional explanation of this, see http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/virtual-machine-makeuseof-explains/

[DaveLembke]

Virtualization might work if its just a serial link to the machinery, but if the computer has a card installed into it that the software works with, you can run into a situation where that card can not be addressed directly from virtual environment.