Installing older LW with a dongle

Z

zaubermac

New member
Greetings!

I started using LW back in the day on my Toaster 2000, but then I got distracted with my day job and kids. I'm back in school, taking art and 3d classes and playing with the good stuff again.

I have LW 2021, so I have a license and it works. However, I have an older Mac I still do projects on for fun and I'd like to be able to use LW on it for some of that. One of my old Toaster peeps has an earlier verision 7 or 8 I think? The Mac's a Powermac G5, so the 7 or 8 system requirements aren't an issue. LW has the box, disks, serial, dongle, etc; eveything that came with it. In conversation, it sounds like it was in the kit he got when he purchased some books and software from a company that went out of business years ago.

Is this installable? I have to assume that I have no access to transfer anything, but with the dongle and the serial will it install and work anyway? I never used any of the versions that need one and I'm not finding specific info on how they work. If I have a dongle, can I use/get a different LW 9 license and register it instead?

Thanks for any assistance!
 
There's nothing in this post that makes sense. Can you try again? What do you have? What do you want to accomplish?
 
Ok, sorry for the confusion. Other dongle based software I've used, the dongle is the key, effectively, it is the license. Install, enter serial with dongle plugged in, it just works.

LW seems to make this a lot more complicated from what I have found here.

With the original cd's (for 7 or 8, don't know for sure which yet), serial number and dongle in my hand: will this allow me to do the same thing? I have no idea if the software if registered. I'm assuming it is to a now defunct company. If I have to have this software license serial transferred to my account in order for this to work, I don't see that happening. I don't have it all in front of me, I'm going up to visit next month. I'll pick it up from him, if it's useful. I have never installed a dongle version of LW, so I don't have a clear understanding of how it authenticates, especially for a version that old?

I'm just hoping to find out how the authentication handshake works, before I waste my time on a known deadend.

Thanks
 
Narrowing the topic to 7/8 helps. LW 2021 and 9 was confusing.

All that you need to run Lightwave is the dongle and the accompanying license key file. There's no online activation to worry about.
 
Ok, sorry about that. So is the key file created during first install and stored on the dongle? Or is it a separate file, like the one LW 2021 uses, that is stored on my account?

He thought all that was in the box was the original doc/discs/SN/Dongle. I won't have any 3rd party media.
 
There is no Lightwave 2021. Lightwave 2020, yes.

Installing an ancient dongle version of Lightwave on an ancient OS version is indeed possible - but prone to problems. 7 and 8 are virtually unsupported now and there's no real Newtek support anymore. And there's apparently little help to be found in old forum posts here (all of the Mac install help posts I looked at simply ended with the user being directed to Newtek support). So, you'll pretty much be on your own with this.

However,

It sounds like you have what you need for the install. The big question is the MacOS version. You're talking about Lightwave 7 or 8. So, for best results, I believe you should use a MacOS version that was in release during the 2001-2005 time frame. Lightwave for Mac has always been a bit more picky about OS versions than Windows.

That's the best I can offer. I've never used the Mac version of Lightwave. Windows, SGI Irix, Sun Solaris and Amiga - yes, Mac OS - no.

PS: the dongle is read-only. It's programmed with a unique ID code. The license key included with the install media (usually printed on the back or inside the CD/DVD cover) is coded to be paired to the unique dongle ID code.
 
Ok, thank you both very much! It sounds like it's worth pursuing then.

I completely understand, I've used pretty much anything that ever pretended to be an OS. To my wife's dismay I have at least 3 Mac's that will run software that old and every OS from System 6 to MacOS 12, so I'll build as needed there. I just struck me as a fun project, hopefully it will stay that way!

Happy Holidays!

Come to think of it...I have an SGI O2 kicking around too. Hmmm
 
@zaubermac - I have to admit to being extraordinarily curious as to why you'd want to use such an old version of LW at all, given that you say that you have a licence for LW 2020.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top