old dos

[jaymak]

I’m new to this forum so hello to all you people.
That said I started programing on a Tandy (called then) trash 80. I programed in gwbasic and wrote a complete bookkeeping system. Yes it did not look like windows but it did everything the company I worked for. One of the parts of the program was a cost analysis routine that to this date has not been duplicated. Eventuality I bought the company, a sausage manufacturing firm. I’m retired now and my daughter has taken over. She doing a fantastic job and the company is growing. She’s modernized her data processing and the only thing she can’t replace is the costing program. It’s still on an old compact system. Now she’s out grown the program to accommodate more items. What I need is a way to load that basic program into windows 7 and expand the number of item she needs. I live 350 miles away and am crippled up and can’t travel.

I learned dos using Dan Gookin’s dos is for dummies . DOS don’t work that way anymore. I downloaded QBS4 AND DOS BOX. Can’t make either one work. Need help.

jaymak

[dbenham]

The DosTips name of this site is a bit of a misnomer - We really specialize in cmd.exe batch programming for Windows - nothing really with the old venerable DOS.

Perhaps someone here has some tips on how to get your software running on Windows, but it sounds like you need modifications as well to your BASIC code (and/or translation into some other language). That is really outside the scope of this forum.


Dave Benham

[ShadowThief]

I know QBASIC can run on Windows, and if you can't port GWBASIC to QBASIC, you should be able to run a DOS 6.22 virtual machine with something like VirtualBox or VMWare.

You could also try a GWBASIC emulator like https://sourceforge.net/projects/pcbasic/

[penpen]

Although it might be much work, i would recommend you to port your program to a "modern" language (best i think is C++ or Java):
If your daughter has the same problems in 40 years (or so) then it will be easier to for her to do the same again, instead of finding someone who could read BASIC then or try to get it to run on whatever systems existing in the future.

If you want to port it to batch or bytch/vbs or batch/jScript hybrid, then you might get support for that here in the forum.
If the program source is short enough and if you are willing to post the complete code it even could be that someone might be able to translate it (but i don't know if someone who is willing to do that could read the used BASIC dialect).

Probably the best way (you are able to read the sources and don't have to post source code) is that you port it and ask (depending on the target lanuage here in a C++ or Java forum or in case of batch related here) if you encounter any problems you cannot handle yourself.

penpen