Copying and running my DOS program (with database) to wind8

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Nicolas
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Joined: 05 Nov 2014 06:53

Copying and running my DOS program (with database) to wind8

#1 Post by Nicolas » 05 Nov 2014 07:04

The last 13 years a friend of my is using a program called unitbeheer (unit management) which is a DOS program with some kind of database (DOS?). What the program does is quite easy, it has all this information about locations that are being hired (costs, duration, etc.) and we can either add information to it or retrieve it and print it out. Although the program has some more to it, that is basically what it does.

The thing is that it is now running on a windows xp pc and i want to migrate it to a windows 8 pc. I am perhaps in over my head with this but i have read a bit about how to do it and found out that i could use the DOSbox application to run DOS programs on 64 bits systems (my windows 8). So it is all working fine, i have mounted my driver and ran the program.

So the program (and its belonging files, as well its query / database files) are all copied to my pc.

Now when i am running the program i am getting a few errors which i can not figure out. Firstly, when i mount the program files to my c driver (where it is also copied to) and run the program, i am getting the error: no validate station: I: set dire to i:

When i look at what the program does (that is being executed) it seems to go to the folder DBASE5 (with cd DBASE5) and then runs a file called DBASE UB.PRG. First of all, no such file is in that folder, there are however 2 separate files: one being DBASE.EXE and one being UB.PRG. Apart from that, i was curious what was in the UB file so i opened it with notepad. This is the code that is in that folder:

Code: Select all

set dire to i:\
do ub.dbo


ub.dbo is another file with the same name obviously but a different extension. I thought to go around this problem by mounting my driver to I. This is by the way my mounting code (with i as driver) in DOSbox:

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mount i c:\DOSfiles
i:
cd unitbe~1
UB.BAT


unitbe~1 is the folder where the DOS program is in (and DOSfiles is a folder i made to put it in) and UB.BAT is the program that needs to be executed.

This worked (kinda) but lead me to another problem, now i am getting the error message: File doesn't exist: ub.dbo. This is rather strange since the file is there in the folder.. and when i open it with notepad i get this weird code that i dont understand:

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| DBO          9                                               ë ub.prg F P S&O«I¹\ ub.dbo  ž  
         $    ' ÿÿ     ub.dbo          @           h   „   '          ub        ub.prg   


At this point i am getting stuck.. Does any of you perhaps know what is going wrong? Its perhaps a hard question without detailed information about the program so i will try to upload as mich information below:

*Background: The program is being ran on a company's network, since i see this program today for the first time (with the explanation about what it does) i am not sure on which driver it exactly runs (but i guess it is I). Neither do i know what other (perhaps related) files are on there (will know this tomorrow though).

Furthermore i made some screenshots of all the files: (don't mind the notepad open with.. its now the default for some extensions..) - notice there are 2 screenshots of the files of the program in the general map and 2 of the DBASE5 map which is also located (as a map) in the program files.

Image

Image

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I hope this is enough input. Anyway, thank you in advance!

foxidrive
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Posts: 6031
Joined: 10 Feb 2012 02:20

Re: Copying and running my DOS program (with database) to wi

#2 Post by foxidrive » 05 Nov 2014 09:39

Without knowing how it works under XP it's hard to say where the issue is, and we don't know if it is compatible with DosBox either.

If we had the archive of the folders and files then debugging it would be possible.

Samir
Posts: 384
Joined: 16 Jul 2013 12:00
Location: HSV
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Re: Copying and running my DOS program (with database) to wi

#3 Post by Samir » 15 Nov 2014 10:41

From what I've learned about the command interpreter in win 7 and up, it's better to just have an windows server that people can rdp into xp and just run the program. Running legacy programs on win 7 and up can be quite challenging as so much as changed.

Another solution is to have a dedicated machine running dos that has a remote or ip-based kvm that people can 'log into' to use the program.

I've found that when you try to either bring legacy stuff into the future or put modern things on legacy systems, your results can be quite unpredictable. These things are much happy on systems of their own era.

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