MATLAB 6 for Windows incompatible with emulation

Bradford Pollock found that the Windows version of MATLAB 6 Release 12 introduces a new copy protection scheme that prevents the application from running on a Windows emulator. He writes, "Although MATLAB 5.3 is compatible with Orange PC coprocessor cards (and probably with Virtual PC), MATLAB 6 will not launch unless it detects the "MATLAB 6 Documentation CD" in a drive. Although Win 98 (running on the Orange PC) and Win 2000 (running under VPC) are able to mount the Documentation CD, MATLAB 6 refuses to 'authenticate' the disk. It doesn't matter whether the disk is inserted in an internal Apple DVD-ROM drive or an external APS/Yamaha SCSI CD-RW drive, nor does a different driver seem help (I tried both the Toast CD Reader and CD-ROM SpeedTools). MathWorks, Orange Micro, and Connectix have so far been unable to help in find a solution to this problem."

Update: Jan Helge Bohn writes: "I have not had any problems installing MATLAB 6 on my Bronze Powerbook G3 running SoftWindows 98 (version 5.0.9). The only problem is that the new MATLAB 6 Release 12 Java GUI does not work. It crashes a few seconds after it is launched). My solution has been to run MATLAB 6 Release 12 without the new Java GUI, in which case it runs just fine." MathWorks acknowledged the problem, but declined to work on a fix, citing: "MathWorks does not officially support running MATLAB with any kind of emulator."