The trouble was the dongle. Back then, Steinberg used a hardware copy-protection key—a parallel port dongle that looked like a jagged blue brick. You couldn't buy them anymore. The ones on eBay were fried or lost. The only way to run the software on a modern (or retro-fitted) rig was a software patch: an emulator.
Cubase originally required a physical USB "dongle" (the eLicenser) to run. An emulator is a software workaround that tricks the application into thinking the hardware key is present. cubase 553 dongle emulator download repack repack
