Finding the Z: drive

[Anonymous]

I'm lost about this z: drive and moving old gw basic program to where I can acess them in pc basic. I have written GW programs for 30 years but I am not able to understand what "mount" means nor where to put the programs I have written previously. I look for Z: without any success and simply can't seem to get the idea at all.Do I put my programs in the Z: drive? (Where is it?) Can I put folders in the Z: drive that have sub-directories and files within those directories? I'm lost, Rob.
Alan Lephart [--edit: address removed--]

[Rob Hagemans]

Hi Alan,

If PC-BASIC is started from the Start Menu in Windows, PC-BASIC's Z: device is by default mapped to your personal directory under C:\Users\ (for Windows 7; I'm assuming that's what you use since I think it's the most common). The exact location of your personal folder depends on how you've set up Windows and your username - for example, if your username is Alan then the location would be C:\Users\Alan.

If you place your files in that direcory you can immediately get a list of them them with FILES "Z:". You can also create a folder in that location and then use CHDIR to get into that folder. I would recommend using at most 8 characters without spaces for folder names, to avoid difficulties with long and short file names.

You can assign other locations on your file system to PC-BASIC drive letters by using the mount option. Alternatively, you can use the map-drives option to assign all Windows drive letters to corresponding PC-BASIC ones, so that you can use the same drive letters as Windows uses. See http://robhagemans.github.io/pcbasic/doc/#options for how to use these options.

Hope this helps - if you're still facing difficulties, please specify what you're trying and what happens. It would also be useful if you could point me to the documentation you've consulted and what you find unclear, so that I can review if it can be corrected or rephrased more clearly.

Thanks
Rob

[Anonymous]

Rob,
Thanks...I guess. I finally got one of my research programs to run...but... This program fits data to a set type of curve that has two interdependent parameters. To determine these parameters, an iterative solution is run which takes anywhere from100 to 1000 iterations to determine the best fit parameters. On my XP Pro machine, this process using GW Basic takes about 2 seconds. Using PC Basic, each iteration requires about 10 seconds rendering the entire solution in anywhere fromabout 15- minutes to 3 hours. Obviously, this is far to slow for me to use. I don't wish to denagrate your efforts...I really do appreciate what you have done...but it is really a lost cause for my purposes. At the risk of offending you...which I don't mean to do...can you suggest any other program that would suit my needs better? Maybe DOSBox, or some other thing that simply runs GW faster?
Alan

[Rob Hagemans]

GW-BASIC in DOSBox would be faster, though if you need to fit curves I'd say BASIC is the wrong tool altogether - I would consider implementing the algorithm in GNU Octave (or Matlab).

Rob

[Anonymous]

Thank you, I also had no idea what directory z was looking at. The above information made it clear and i move my basic directory under my username and it work. Prior to readng the above I tried the mount command per the documentation and got symtax errors. I tried the map drive and got syntax errors.

[Rob Hagemans]

Glad it helped.

Note that mount and map-drives are not BASIC commands but options. You shouldn't enter them into the BASIC window (which will give you Syntax error) but set them in the configuration file (see also http://robhagemans.github.io/pcbasic/doc/#settings).