Ok, this is isn't quite possible yet, but this is a pretty good alternative that I am going to discuss below. The reason I am discussing this is because server hardware is often overspecced and under utilized. The current way of getting more mileage out of your server is thru server virtualization. This basically means running multiple virtual servers on the one physical server. In this way, you separate each server instance into a bunch of files, and it makes it easier to backup and restore a server - you can just copy all the virtual server files and transfer them to another virtual server without having to reconfigure a physical server. Moka5 recently released a new version of their bare metal engine. This is basically a customized stripped down linux distribution that is just intended to run virtual PCs. You don't need any Linux experience to install this. You can use this to take over the whole hard drive of a spare PC. You should have a minimum of 512Mb of ram, and a modern PCI network card. You can then create a new LivePC selecting a Windows 2003 type. When you start this LivePC, it will then start installing Windows 2003 from your cdrom drive. If you don't have Windows 2003, you can use Windows XP or 2000. If you wish to try Windows 2003, you can download the iso images from MS website . They have .img as the file suffix, but Nero will burn them if you rename them to .iso. You'll need a license number from Microsoft as these are 90 day trial versions. As this Live PC is going to be used as server, you need to choose Bridged networking mode and not NAT. Once Windows 2003 server is up and running, you can then download synapse-server.exe, and install as normal. You also need ghostscript if you wish to create pdfs.
Just had a thought .. Windows 2003 server is really overkill just for hosting synapse-server. It may that NT server 4.0 will do ... and it can be purchased new with 5 cals for US$60. I will resurrect my NT 4.0 disks and try to do an install today to see if works.
Updated NT 4 with sp6, installed vmware tools, firefox 2.0 Installed Firebird server, odbc, and created the odbc connection. Downloaded remr.zip .. eventually found an unzip program that works under nt 4 called Alzip. However, even though the odbc test connection is okay, synapse-server is unable to connect to the database ... so it looks as though NT 4 is not a viable platform.
