After I found out how good vDos is with XyWrite and its variants, notably NB3 DOS, I thought about an old favorite that is rather difficult to run these days, namely MS-Word 5.0. DOS Word 5.0 is an excellent program with some capabilities that are still useful. VDos seems to run it ok, but there is a major problem: you cannot save files in Word 5.0 if the date is beyond 2000.
It seems that, as is, vDos does not support changing the date. Could it be possible to change the internal date seen by DOS programs to something in the range 1980-1999? This would make it possible to run any Y2K-crippled software.
Best regards,
Kari Eveli
LEXITEC Book Publishing (Finland)
lexitec@lexitec.fi
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Changing the date or time in vDos wouldn’t do anything, the DOS clock is always is sync with that of Windows.
Problem with most Y2K-crippled software is that the year is entered as 2 digits. So calculating with, and sorting on dates can go wrong when 20th and 21th century dates are mixed. Setting the DOS date to something else wouldn’t help here and this problem minimizes when 20th century dates are used less and less.
Your problem with saving files in Word 5.0 are the creation and revision dates, being 30/11/114?
You can just type over these, or find (out) a patch to Word so it won’t subtract 1900 from the current date, but 2000?
Jos
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
There is a free version of Word 5.5 for DOS (not 5.0), provided by Microsoft, that apparently has the Y2K bug fixed. See here; I installed it as a test, and it seems to work (although I'm a WordStar user myself):
You say: Changing the date or time in vDos wouldn’t do anything, the DOS clock is always is sync with that of Windows. Well, the point is precisely to get the vDos clock out of sync with the operating system. I do not know if this is impossible out of design reasons, but I have successfully done this with Virtual PC 2007. It lets me change the DOS time, but Windows is unaware of this. The result is that Word thinks it is back in the golden 80's, and lets me save the DOC file. The bug is the file summary feature included in the document file which is not Y2K-compliant. When you try to save a file in this century, the file format becomes corrupt and Word crashes. When the file is on disk, you can touch it to set the date correctly on disk, that is not a problem. The problem is in the internal Word file structure. I do not know of a patch.
Rob,
Yes, I know of Word 5.5, it works ok, but is essentially a different program altogether. The menu structure was modernized to conform to Windows file menu structure, and the program does not resemble Word 5.0 in the least. Windows Word (any version) beats Word 5.5, but Word 5.0 was the greatest DOS version.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Have you tried using the method that Jos described of writing over the date in the file summary, so that it reads (e.g.) 01/01/94 instead of 01/01/114, before saving the file?
The files that I tried, using this method, do not become corrupt.
Last edit: Edward Mendelson 2014-12-01
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Thank you for trying to solve this, but this does not work as far as I can tell. If I have an old file from 1999, there is nothing to change, i.e. the creation and revision dates are ok. If I save this file, it crashes Word and vDos. Then again, if there is a new file that I want to save, I cannot change the dates beforehand as the file does not exist in MS-Word document retrieval before the save. The working solution that I use is to change the system date. If I knew how to patch Word.exe, I would consider shortening the date fields so that they would not overrun the space allocated. The document-retrieval feature is a later invention and could be dispensed with. Earlier Word versions (without d-r) work ok in modern systems, but they lack other features.
Best regards,
Kari Eveli
LEXITEC Book Publishing (Finland)
lexitec@lexitec.fi
This is very puzzling. I have many old Word files; I changed and saved them in Word 5.0 under vDos today (exactly as you describe with your old files) with no trouble at all. At most, I changed the dates in the Summary screen when Word refused to accept those dates. I can't imagine why this doesn't work on your system.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
There are at least two versions of the Word 5 package, in the first version Word.exe file size is 622 428 bytes, in the second version (version B shipped with 5.5) the file size is 627 327 bytes. I have been using version B, but I managed to find version A, and it freezes all the same. Saving as text works, but formatted DOC and RTF saves fail.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Per request by Kari, I have added the feature to disable date/time synchronization in vDos-lfn so that it can maintain its own date/time different from the host system. This can be done by setting "SYNCTIME=OFF" in vDos-lfn's config file. After that you will be able to change the vDos-lfn date/time directly by using the DATE and TIME commands from the vDos-lfn command line. vDos-lfn is available from:
Jos,
After I found out how good vDos is with XyWrite and its variants, notably NB3 DOS, I thought about an old favorite that is rather difficult to run these days, namely MS-Word 5.0. DOS Word 5.0 is an excellent program with some capabilities that are still useful. VDos seems to run it ok, but there is a major problem: you cannot save files in Word 5.0 if the date is beyond 2000.
It seems that, as is, vDos does not support changing the date. Could it be possible to change the internal date seen by DOS programs to something in the range 1980-1999? This would make it possible to run any Y2K-crippled software.
Best regards,
Kari Eveli
LEXITEC Book Publishing (Finland)
lexitec@lexitec.fi
Changing the date or time in vDos wouldn’t do anything, the DOS clock is always is sync with that of Windows.
Problem with most Y2K-crippled software is that the year is entered as 2 digits. So calculating with, and sorting on dates can go wrong when 20th and 21th century dates are mixed. Setting the DOS date to something else wouldn’t help here and this problem minimizes when 20th century dates are used less and less.
Your problem with saving files in Word 5.0 are the creation and revision dates, being 30/11/114?
You can just type over these, or find (out) a patch to Word so it won’t subtract 1900 from the current date, but 2000?
Jos
There is a free version of Word 5.5 for DOS (not 5.0), provided by Microsoft, that apparently has the Y2K bug fixed. See here; I installed it as a test, and it seems to work (although I'm a WordStar user myself):
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?15238-MS-Word-5-5-for-DOS-for-FREE-%28legally%29
Used this command to extract, then run the setup program:
(that's space-hyphen-space-d after the program name)
Best of luck!
Rob in Toronto
View and moderate all "General" comments posted by this user
Mark all as spam, and block user from posting to "Discussion"
Jos,
You say: Changing the date or time in vDos wouldn’t do anything, the DOS clock is always is sync with that of Windows. Well, the point is precisely to get the vDos clock out of sync with the operating system. I do not know if this is impossible out of design reasons, but I have successfully done this with Virtual PC 2007. It lets me change the DOS time, but Windows is unaware of this. The result is that Word thinks it is back in the golden 80's, and lets me save the DOC file. The bug is the file summary feature included in the document file which is not Y2K-compliant. When you try to save a file in this century, the file format becomes corrupt and Word crashes. When the file is on disk, you can touch it to set the date correctly on disk, that is not a problem. The problem is in the internal Word file structure. I do not know of a patch.
Rob,
Yes, I know of Word 5.5, it works ok, but is essentially a different program altogether. The menu structure was modernized to conform to Windows file menu structure, and the program does not resemble Word 5.0 in the least. Windows Word (any version) beats Word 5.5, but Word 5.0 was the greatest DOS version.
Have you tried using the method that Jos described of writing over the date in the file summary, so that it reads (e.g.) 01/01/94 instead of 01/01/114, before saving the file?
The files that I tried, using this method, do not become corrupt.
Last edit: Edward Mendelson 2014-12-01
Edward and Jos,
Thank you for trying to solve this, but this does not work as far as I can tell. If I have an old file from 1999, there is nothing to change, i.e. the creation and revision dates are ok. If I save this file, it crashes Word and vDos. Then again, if there is a new file that I want to save, I cannot change the dates beforehand as the file does not exist in MS-Word document retrieval before the save. The working solution that I use is to change the system date. If I knew how to patch Word.exe, I would consider shortening the date fields so that they would not overrun the space allocated. The document-retrieval feature is a later invention and could be dispensed with. Earlier Word versions (without d-r) work ok in modern systems, but they lack other features.
Best regards,
Kari Eveli
LEXITEC Book Publishing (Finland)
lexitec@lexitec.fi
This is very puzzling. I have many old Word files; I changed and saved them in Word 5.0 under vDos today (exactly as you describe with your old files) with no trouble at all. At most, I changed the dates in the Summary screen when Word refused to accept those dates. I can't imagine why this doesn't work on your system.
There are at least two versions of the Word 5 package, in the first version Word.exe file size is 622 428 bytes, in the second version (version B shipped with 5.5) the file size is 627 327 bytes. I have been using version B, but I managed to find version A, and it freezes all the same. Saving as text works, but formatted DOC and RTF saves fail.
Per request by Kari, I have added the feature to disable date/time synchronization in vDos-lfn so that it can maintain its own date/time different from the host system. This can be done by setting "SYNCTIME=OFF" in vDos-lfn's config file. After that you will be able to change the vDos-lfn date/time directly by using the DATE and TIME commands from the vDos-lfn command line. vDos-lfn is available from:
http://wpdos.org/dosbox-vdos-lfn.html
Wengier
Last edit: Wengier 2016-08-12