One of the most important programs that I only own in Windows format is the Oxford English Dictionary, which, unfortunately, only runs using C-Dilla. I understand that Parallels doesn't need to support that, nor does it need to support deep and direct hardware programs, but here's an idea... You can mount an .iso file, and, apparently, a few other kinds of images as a CD. Why not either (a) allow this to support formats like .CCD that can include subchannel data; or, (b) allow support for Virtual SCSI drivers like Alcohol120% or Daemon tools so that we can mount these images. I imagine the malware C-Dilla (I can't believe OED distributes this), whose secd.sys crashed parallels, isn't the only copy protection scheme that might be better addressed by one of these programs. It's not like we're trying to illegally copy, like a lot of users of those programs do, but we're trying to trick a computer into seeing something that's not there. These tools do that, and we have a legitimate need.
yep, really need OED to work Is the problem in Parallels though? Seems OS X driver cannot read the disk. But I'm not sure here. Did you manage to get the OED data disk into an ISO and you still cannot mount it in Parallels?
For those interested I have gotten OED v 3.1 running under Parallels. You need to install a Microsoft hotfix which you can find at: http://www.oup.co.uk/ep/cdroms/oed2v3_1/# I've installed the data on the hard disk and OED still requires that you insert it every 90 days to "re-validate" which is a pain but at least it runs. As you probably know OED abandoned their Mac version years ago, and the PC version did run on lower versions under Virtual PC, although painfully slowly. Here's another thing that Parallels is great for!
