First of all thank you for finally giving me access to GWbasic which I used years ago. Unfortunately after buying the newer model computers that wouldnt run my programs, I tossed all of them.
My question is how do I access the programs that I have saved (and you are correct they are saved under \users\myname). I can find the programs but I dont know how to make pcbasic load them.
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Hi Tom, I'm assuming you're running Windows and can start PC-BASIC from the start menu. Supposing your program is called MYPROG.BAS, what happens if you type RUN "MYPROG" (Enter) in the PC- BASIC window? If that does not run the program, what is the output if you type FILES (Enter) ?
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I am not really a programer, I just started doing by trial and error and advancing from there, about 30 years ago. I had quit programing almost 20 years ago, and work to up a lot of my time and limited my shooting at the same time. I am retired now, farmer and farm worker. I wrote a number of programs for scoring shooting events starting about 30 plus years ago. These were all in gw basic. they were saved on 5 1/4 floppy discs and a few on 3 1/2 discs. I don't think I have any way to run those discs. I would like to get these programs on to the newer computer and use them again. How would you suggest I do this? Can USB port disk drives be used? And will the computer with PC Basic read them? I did have the print out sheets but haven't found them yet, since we have moved from the farm located we lived at, about 10 years ago, I am having trouble finding a lot of things. My wife knew a lot better where they were at than I did but she has passed on from cancer. These programs were very helpful for scoring and putting out results from the shoots we held, and still are a lot of the different ones. I had quit on the running and keeping results from these shoots and no one really picked up and did it. It is all just a local thing and they shot and went home maybe knowing the high score for the night, but no averages, standings or anything else. Numbers when from 30 or 40 shooters a night to maybe 5 to 8 now. I would like to bring this back and printed posted results is one way to help that out quickly. Thanks for any help you are able to provide.
❤️
1
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If USB floppy drives were able to read your old disks, you could copy them to another filesystem location on your new computer. Then PC-BASIC would surely be able to handle them.
However, I find it unlikely that the data on your old floppy disks would have lasted so long, unfortunately.
Everton
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Hi Ralph, the main problem is getting the files off the old disks - this can be difficult.
USB drives will only read 3.5in HD (1.44MiB) floppies, for anything else (3.5in DD floppies, any 5.25in or 8in floppies) you would need either original hardware that is still in working order, or special equipment.
Some people who have such equipment may be willing to extract floppies for others; the article in the link gives a few names. Michael Drueing has previously been happy to help me with an old floppy; this was some time ago though and in any case he's Germany-based, so depending on where you are based you might want to look for someone more local.
If you can't find any volunteers you could also use a professional data recovery service which can also advise you on how to send the floppies over safely; I don't know how much they generally charge however. I found these guys with a Google search for "floppy disk recovery": http://retrofloppy.com/ - they charge $13 per disk. I haven't used their service so I can't comment on quality. There are more similar services so you might be able to shop around to see other offers...
You should also be aware that floppies are unfortunately not very robust and decay with time; depending on how the floppies were stored and handled or just dumb bad luck they may have degraded to the point of being unreadable, in which case unfortunately you would be out of luck altogether. If you have old hardware which you don't know still works, or are generally not sure what you're doing, it's best not to try to read an old floppy - you may end up destroying the data in the process.
Sorry I don't have a more uplifting message... however you do have some options that may be worth trying if you're keen to get your old programs back. I have in the past successfully retrieved programs off 25-year old commodore 64 disks, for example.
Once you have the programs off the disks and onto your new computer, PC-BASIC should have no issues running them.
Hope this helps,
Rob
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Thank you for your help, it is appreciated. If the original equipment read the disk in to the old computer, how do I get it to another medium to get it to the new computer? I am not understanding that part of the process. I had loaded one of the old disk about 8-9 years ago and it worked fine, I think the equipment will still work, I don't know about the disks. Thanks again. Ralph
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Hi Ralph, good point, hadn't really thought of that. I take it the old machine is not connected to the internet in some way. I can think of this:
- if your old machine has a HD 3.5in 1.44M floppy drive as well as a 5.25in drive, you could copy the disks over to 3.5in HD floppy, preferably a new one, and use an USB floppy drive to read it into the new machine. This is probably the easiest way and I think USB floppy drives are fairly cheap.
- otherwise, you might be able to set up a serial connection between the machines, you'd probably need a USB serial RS232 connector on the new machine but those can be bought off Amazon or eBay. However I don't know much about serial connections and what software you could use on the old machine or on the new one to set up the link and copy files.
- if your old machine has no HD 3.5in drive but a free drive slot and you're happy to mess with it, you could try to buy an old working floppy drive on eBay and connect this. Again this will require some research to make sure it has the right bus connection and cables etc to work with the old machine. Once more, I'm not an expert on this at all unfortunately...
Hope this helps,
Rob
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Thanks again, I will try that route, and the old machine has a 3 /12 drive, I never used it much but when I did it worked fine. Ralph
I try to let you know if this is successful. R
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I have to files copied to a 3 1/2 floppy, using the USB port floppy drive connected to the new machine, it recognizes the dish and drive, I have checked the directory on the dish and it says the programs are there, but when I try to access the base program from PC Basic it does not pick it up, I have tried several different load commands, but it always tells me that it cannot find the program. I tried coping the program to hard drive on the compter and it still does not pick it up. And suggestions? Is it possible I am using the wrong load command? Or is in just not recognizing the different drive? Or is the data just not there? Although it show the programs being on the 3 1/2 disk. Just thought of something, maybe try another a different disk and try to read the new one? Any help appreciated. Thanks Ralph
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If there's a file, the data is probably there. The programs may not be in the right folder on the hard drive for PC-BASIC to find them with the command you use.
If that still doesn't help, you're going to need to tell exactly what LOAD command you use and what the error message is, otherwise it'll be very difficult for me to know what's going on.
Rob
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Rob. I took the disk back to the old machine, it will load and run. I have tried using ; LOAD, Load, load, then " and also even leaving out the ("), program name (BP), (bp), and another program (bp6), put in and left out; .BAS, .bas, ("), and leaving it out, put (BAS) and (bas) outside the quotes. and the error is mostly "File not found", also "syntax error". I have to be using either the wrong command or I think that the program is not finding the right drive, I even copied both of these program to the hard drive where the PC Basic program is listed. PC basic is loaded from a short cut on the screen. Put there when I saved and ran PC Basic. Still looking for ideas, I read what you suggested above but did not try changing anything as of yet. I also tried adding different drive designations as I saw suggested in either PC Basic instructions or from GW Basic instruction book that I still have, none of them worked either. Thanks Ral;ph
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You may want to notice there is a trick in that PC-BASIC driver letters are distinct from Windows drive letters.
Try this recipe:
Suppose that:
a) You copied your programs to the location C:\Basic in your new computer.
b) You want to mount your C:\Basic directory as drive A: for PC-BASIC.
Locate the file PCBASIC.INI file in your new Windows computer.
PC-BASIC documentation says that file should be located at %AppData%\pcbasic-1.2\PCBASIC.INI
Point is, you need to locate that PCBASIC.INI file, edit it, and add the following line into it:
mount=A:C:\Basic
Then save PCBASIC.INI and re-run PC-BASIC.
From within PC-BASIC, now try this:
CHDIR "A:"
FILES
You should see the files from your new computer's directory C:\Basic.
Otherwise, let us know if you hit any unexpected difficulty.
Everton
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It may not be necessary to edit PCBASIC.INI - first you can try to put the programs in the correct place for PC-BASIC to find it. They should go in your user profile folder - this is probably named something like C:\Users\Ralph or C:\Users\Morton or some such. You can also get to that folder by typing %userprofile% into the location bar in Windows explorer.
If you put your files there, PC-BASIC should be able to find them easily. Try this:
Start PC-BASIC normally from the start menu
Type the command FILES - you should now get a list of all the files in the user profile directory, including your BP.BAS. (If not, let me know - something is not as expected)
Type the command LOAD "BP" - it should now load your program and you can LIST or RUN etc.
Note that commands and file names are not case-sensitive, you can use capital letters or lowercase and it makes no difference. The quotes " are mandatory.
Let me know how it goes.
Rob
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Rob, my system is Edge on the new machine so I think the files had different names for that reason, but I figured them out and found the users file. I moved the files all into the same folder and they for the most part work. I had a couple of files from the old disk that would not give up the data. maybe a bad file or spot in disk? IDK. but over all, seems to be working. Everything has to be in the same file folder, like you said. The printer is not working right. When loading an 'old' shoot file, doing the calculations and then trying to print, nothing happens. After getting out of the program and then closing down the lap top, at a later time then at least part of what I had tried to print did print when I wasn't there. The first time I found it Sat. morning. I tried again and the same thing occurred Sat. evening. I will try some more 'experiments' and see if I can figure out how much it is actually printing, as far as number of pages go. Will be working on this next. thanks for all the help. Ralph
Last edit: Ralph Morton 2019-03-25
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First of all thank you for finally giving me access to GWbasic which I used years ago. Unfortunately after buying the newer model computers that wouldnt run my programs, I tossed all of them.
My question is how do I access the programs that I have saved (and you are correct they are saved under \users\myname). I can find the programs but I dont know how to make pcbasic load them.
Hi Tom, I'm assuming you're running Windows and can start PC-BASIC from the start menu. Supposing your program is called
MYPROG.BAS, what happens if you typeRUN "MYPROG"(Enter) in the PC- BASIC window? If that does not run the program, what is the output if you typeFILES(Enter) ?You're a genius. That works. Im sure this wont be the last question I have for you and thank you for your help.
I am not really a programer, I just started doing by trial and error and advancing from there, about 30 years ago. I had quit programing almost 20 years ago, and work to up a lot of my time and limited my shooting at the same time. I am retired now, farmer and farm worker. I wrote a number of programs for scoring shooting events starting about 30 plus years ago. These were all in gw basic. they were saved on 5 1/4 floppy discs and a few on 3 1/2 discs. I don't think I have any way to run those discs. I would like to get these programs on to the newer computer and use them again. How would you suggest I do this? Can USB port disk drives be used? And will the computer with PC Basic read them? I did have the print out sheets but haven't found them yet, since we have moved from the farm located we lived at, about 10 years ago, I am having trouble finding a lot of things. My wife knew a lot better where they were at than I did but she has passed on from cancer. These programs were very helpful for scoring and putting out results from the shoots we held, and still are a lot of the different ones. I had quit on the running and keeping results from these shoots and no one really picked up and did it. It is all just a local thing and they shot and went home maybe knowing the high score for the night, but no averages, standings or anything else. Numbers when from 30 or 40 shooters a night to maybe 5 to 8 now. I would like to bring this back and printed posted results is one way to help that out quickly. Thanks for any help you are able to provide.
Ralph,
If USB floppy drives were able to read your old disks, you could copy them to another filesystem location on your new computer. Then PC-BASIC would surely be able to handle them.
However, I find it unlikely that the data on your old floppy disks would have lasted so long, unfortunately.
Everton
I am running a Windows 10 program now, usb ports, and disk drive.
Hi Ralph, the main problem is getting the files off the old disks - this can be difficult.
USB drives will only read 3.5in HD (1.44MiB) floppies, for anything else (3.5in DD floppies, any 5.25in or 8in floppies) you would need either original hardware that is still in working order, or special equipment.
There's an overview here: https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Rescuing_Floppy_Disks
Some people who have such equipment may be willing to extract floppies for others; the article in the link gives a few names. Michael Drueing has previously been happy to help me with an old floppy; this was some time ago though and in any case he's Germany-based, so depending on where you are based you might want to look for someone more local.
If you can't find any volunteers you could also use a professional data recovery service which can also advise you on how to send the floppies over safely; I don't know how much they generally charge however. I found these guys with a Google search for "floppy disk recovery": http://retrofloppy.com/ - they charge $13 per disk. I haven't used their service so I can't comment on quality. There are more similar services so you might be able to shop around to see other offers...
You should also be aware that floppies are unfortunately not very robust and decay with time; depending on how the floppies were stored and handled or just dumb bad luck they may have degraded to the point of being unreadable, in which case unfortunately you would be out of luck altogether. If you have old hardware which you don't know still works, or are generally not sure what you're doing, it's best not to try to read an old floppy - you may end up destroying the data in the process.
Sorry I don't have a more uplifting message... however you do have some options that may be worth trying if you're keen to get your old programs back. I have in the past successfully retrieved programs off 25-year old commodore 64 disks, for example.
Once you have the programs off the disks and onto your new computer, PC-BASIC should have no issues running them.
Hope this helps,
Rob
Thank you for your help, it is appreciated. If the original equipment read the disk in to the old computer, how do I get it to another medium to get it to the new computer? I am not understanding that part of the process. I had loaded one of the old disk about 8-9 years ago and it worked fine, I think the equipment will still work, I don't know about the disks. Thanks again. Ralph
Hi Ralph, good point, hadn't really thought of that. I take it the old machine is not connected to the internet in some way. I can think of this:
- if your old machine has a HD 3.5in 1.44M floppy drive as well as a 5.25in drive, you could copy the disks over to 3.5in HD floppy, preferably a new one, and use an USB floppy drive to read it into the new machine. This is probably the easiest way and I think USB floppy drives are fairly cheap.
- otherwise, you might be able to set up a serial connection between the machines, you'd probably need a USB serial RS232 connector on the new machine but those can be bought off Amazon or eBay. However I don't know much about serial connections and what software you could use on the old machine or on the new one to set up the link and copy files.
- if your old machine has no HD 3.5in drive but a free drive slot and you're happy to mess with it, you could try to buy an old working floppy drive on eBay and connect this. Again this will require some research to make sure it has the right bus connection and cables etc to work with the old machine. Once more, I'm not an expert on this at all unfortunately...
Hope this helps,
Rob
Thanks again, I will try that route, and the old machine has a 3 /12 drive, I never used it much but when I did it worked fine. Ralph
I try to let you know if this is successful. R
I have to files copied to a 3 1/2 floppy, using the USB port floppy drive connected to the new machine, it recognizes the dish and drive, I have checked the directory on the dish and it says the programs are there, but when I try to access the base program from PC Basic it does not pick it up, I have tried several different load commands, but it always tells me that it cannot find the program. I tried coping the program to hard drive on the compter and it still does not pick it up. And suggestions? Is it possible I am using the wrong load command? Or is in just not recognizing the different drive? Or is the data just not there? Although it show the programs being on the 3 1/2 disk. Just thought of something, maybe try another a different disk and try to read the new one? Any help appreciated. Thanks Ralph
If there's a file, the data is probably there. The programs may not be in the right folder on the hard drive for PC-BASIC to find them with the command you use.
Have a look here for where PC-BASIC looks for programs: http://robhagemans.github.io/pcbasic/doc/1.2/#mounting
If that still doesn't help, you're going to need to tell exactly what
LOADcommand you use and what the error message is, otherwise it'll be very difficult for me to know what's going on.Rob
Rob. I took the disk back to the old machine, it will load and run. I have tried using ; LOAD, Load, load, then " and also even leaving out the ("), program name (BP), (bp), and another program (bp6), put in and left out; .BAS, .bas, ("), and leaving it out, put (BAS) and (bas) outside the quotes. and the error is mostly "File not found", also "syntax error". I have to be using either the wrong command or I think that the program is not finding the right drive, I even copied both of these program to the hard drive where the PC Basic program is listed. PC basic is loaded from a short cut on the screen. Put there when I saved and ran PC Basic. Still looking for ideas, I read what you suggested above but did not try changing anything as of yet. I also tried adding different drive designations as I saw suggested in either PC Basic instructions or from GW Basic instruction book that I still have, none of them worked either. Thanks Ral;ph
Ralph,
You may want to notice there is a trick in that PC-BASIC driver letters are distinct from Windows drive letters.
Try this recipe:
Suppose that:
a) You copied your programs to the location C:\Basic in your new computer.
b) You want to mount your C:\Basic directory as drive A: for PC-BASIC.
Locate the file PCBASIC.INI file in your new Windows computer.
PC-BASIC documentation says that file should be located at %AppData%\pcbasic-1.2\PCBASIC.INI
Point is, you need to locate that PCBASIC.INI file, edit it, and add the following line into it:
mount=A:C:\Basic
Then save PCBASIC.INI and re-run PC-BASIC.
From within PC-BASIC, now try this:
CHDIR "A:"
FILES
You should see the files from your new computer's directory C:\Basic.
Otherwise, let us know if you hit any unexpected difficulty.
Everton
Ok, thanks, I will see if I can do that and try it. Ralph
It may not be necessary to edit
PCBASIC.INI- first you can try to put the programs in the correct place for PC-BASIC to find it. They should go in your user profile folder - this is probably named something likeC:\Users\RalphorC:\Users\Mortonor some such. You can also get to that folder by typing%userprofile%into the location bar in Windows explorer.If you put your files there, PC-BASIC should be able to find them easily. Try this:
Start PC-BASIC normally from the start menu
Type the command
FILES- you should now get a list of all the files in the user profile directory, including yourBP.BAS. (If not, let me know - something is not as expected)Type the command
LOAD "BP"- it should now load your program and you canLISTorRUNetc.Note that commands and file names are not case-sensitive, you can use capital letters or lowercase and it makes no difference. The quotes
"are mandatory.Let me know how it goes.
Rob
Rob, my system is Edge on the new machine so I think the files had different names for that reason, but I figured them out and found the users file. I moved the files all into the same folder and they for the most part work. I had a couple of files from the old disk that would not give up the data. maybe a bad file or spot in disk? IDK. but over all, seems to be working. Everything has to be in the same file folder, like you said. The printer is not working right. When loading an 'old' shoot file, doing the calculations and then trying to print, nothing happens. After getting out of the program and then closing down the lap top, at a later time then at least part of what I had tried to print did print when I wasn't there. The first time I found it Sat. morning. I tried again and the same thing occurred Sat. evening. I will try some more 'experiments' and see if I can figure out how much it is actually printing, as far as number of pages go. Will be working on this next. thanks for all the help. Ralph
Last edit: Ralph Morton 2019-03-25