I was fixing a computer for this guy with an embroidery machine he was trying to sell. When I was working on it I didn't realize it had a dongle, and somehow I lost it (I don't ever remember seeing it and I normally detach everything before bringing a computer home.) I called the company that made the software, they don't support it anymore. And the only option is to buy new software which is going to cost $800-$3,000 depending on what version I get. The software he has is this old Brother PG1 software that runs in DOS, and I was wondering where I'd even start to try and crack it.

you probably wont be able to reverse it if you havent had any experience... but your first step is to identify your target... you can do this by looking if it has dongle drivers like hasp.exe sentinel.exe something like this.. installers for the application itself also the documentation might help indicate. If you cant identifyf r om here decompile it and look for strings like sentinel.vxd or some sort of driver that it runs on? If its older implementation might be very weak and older dongle tutorials on fravia or crackz would be fine to study from. If you are in time sensitive situation try some other forums like russian forums that crack for $.

Does it matter that the program runs in DOS? I think I'm gonna use an old Windows 98 computer to try and crack it. I really have no way of testing it until I can get windows 98 installed (and even then I don't know if it's going to work.) What kind of tools do I need? And is there anything that'd run in DOS?

no not really it does not matter what OS it runs on. Any decent decompiler and debugger (ida/sice) will detect what you are working with. Since its a dos/older application it will likely not be 32bit. go to crackz site link on bottom of this forums page and start reading.....