Best thing I could tell you would be to call Brother. I called Vikant to see if I could use my Ultimate box with the PE Design I found on ebay and was told that Brother made the software so it wouldn't work without the Brother box. I would think you could use the original Brother box with the newer versions, but it would be best to check with Brother instead of taking my word for it. Don't know about the ones on ebay being worthwhile. The one I saw was going for $68 at the time I saw it with sevearl days to go, but didn't have the brother box with it, so after calling Vikant, I didn't bother to bid.

Unfortunately I believeBrother changed from using a "dongle" in the original versions to including the security device on the transfer box in Version 5, but I have no knowledge of version 1 although I doubt it would work. Its very artful but the only consolation is that once you have the Brother box, you can buy and use Vikant cards which have 3 times the capacity of the Brother ones and are, of course, much cheaper!!

I do have the Brother box, but I bought it with Version 1, and that was over eight years ago.

I updated to version 2, and the everything works fine.

I will try and update to version 5, via E-bay and see what happens.

With thanks for your replies.

The upgrade to version 5 or 6 includes a new reader/writer and card. PLEASE make sure anything you buy includes these, because the old reader/writer WILL NOT work for the new version. I tried to use my old reader/writer and card when I first got my upgrade, just to see. It doesn't work.