VOGONS


First post, by workerant

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For most of the day now, I've been trying to install a custom-made point-of-sale program built approximately 20 years ago. I've been trying to build it off two floppy disks. I've tried using physical disks with an external floppy drive, a virtual floppy drive, and simply putting all the files in both disks in a plain old directory.
I'm trying to install the program to [u]q:\[/u], which in real life is c:\cashbox.

Installing from floppy drives:
[code]
mount a a:\ -t floppy
mount q c:\cashbox
a:
install a q cashbox
[/code]

This produces, varyingly, a prompt of "insufficient parameters" and a second prompt to insert disk 2, which repeats itself even if I insert the disk, until I quit trying, or a warning that "install" is an invalid command. Personally, I didn't think this method would work anyways. "install a c cash" was a syntax prompt given by DOSbox.

Dumping all the floppy drive files into one directory:

[code]
mount q c:\cashbox
cashprog.exe
cashdata.exe
cashfils.exe
cash.exe
[/code]

After typing in cash.exe, DOSbox stops returning a command prompt. The status bar at the top says Program: CASH. However, no program appears. Is my POS software simply incompatible with the program?

I'm including a copy of the floppy drives, if anyone feels safe running them and thinks they can help me out by it I'd really appreciate it.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=W5VZ2FOQ

Reply 1 of 9, by ripsaw8080

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Seems to work with core=normal, at least it doesn't hang at startup like it does with dynamic core. The app is using the Clipper Exospace linker's PMode memory management.

Reply 6 of 9, by ripsaw8080

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Seems to be working OK here in 0.74 with default settings except for core=normal, but maybe you're running into a problem with some specific program function. At what point does the error occur?

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Reply 7 of 9, by hoserjoe

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Clipper was always a giant pain this way, which is why VP-Info (later Sharkbase) was so popular. Shark could be networked easily, wasn't a memory pig, no licence required (shareware), could import & export data, and it was dead reliable. As a result, it still runs nicely - in DOSBox.

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Reply 8 of 9, by Joey_sw

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oh? you decompile the clipper-based apps and re-create using sharks?
i remember hellish experience using RESCUE5 to salvage any non-encrypted functions from clipper apps, the horror.

-fffuuu

Reply 9 of 9, by hoserjoe

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Joey_sw wrote:

oh? you decompile the clipper-based apps and re-create using sharks?

You don't decompile anything; you need the source code. Shark is a compiler. The shareware version is called "SR-Info". The language is similar to dBase, which in turn is similar to Clipper, except that Shark accepts unlimited records and has a compiler. You have to adjust the code slightly to compile in Shark. Clipper is a huge headache to deal with, which is why so many businesses turned to Shark. I'd rather hurl myself off a bridge than try to run a Clipper app! Previous versions of Shark were called VP-Info. See
http://books.google.ca/books?id=zzAEAAAAMBAJ& … epage&q&f=false