| Subject | Re: Dbase 3 plus database - how to migrate to Windows 10? |
| From | Russ Fisher <rfisher@ccnintl.com> |
| Date | Tue, 25 Feb 2020 13:39:53 -0500 |
| Newsgroups | dbase.getting-started |
Ken Mayer Wrote: > > You might want to look at dBDOS which is a product by dBase, LLC > designed to let you run your older dBASE apps in Windows ... > > I have no experience with it, but it might allow you to do things as you > are used to. It is worth going to the dBASE website (www.dbase.com) and > checking out. > > Ken > We run a huge legacy production management system written in dBase IV on almost 50 computers at our facility. We have a few licenses for dBDOS that we had to use on our CAD systems because they had to be 64 bit machines. The pros are that it is relatively fast and configuration is wizard-based, making it fairly easy. The cost is $149 per PC. When we were faced with the mass upgrade to Windows 10 plus the ongoing hardware upgrades to 64 bit systems, we needed a consistent platform on which to run that application. The $7000+ cost for 50 machines was a big roadblock. With some research, I found vDOS by Jos Schaars which is built with the same open source engine as dBDOS (DosBox). http://www.vdos.info His latest version is pretty quick and for a single machine NOT on a server-based network, it is free to use. If it detects a server, you will get constant nag screens to purchase a license. The good news is that the cost is only $250 Euro (he's in the Netherlands) for your entire network. (The trickiest part was getting the money to him - we used Western Union) A person named Wengier Wu took Schaars' source (an older version) and added some significant enhancements to it and called it vDosPlus. http://vdosplus.org It is not as fast as the latest versions of vDos or dBDos and configuration isn't as easy as dBDos, but the enhancements made it our choice (you still have to pay the license to Schaars since it was based on his code but he won't directly support it.) One of the things we really like is that we have it configured to automatically generate a PDF file for every report and display that in your PDF reader (we like Sumatra). From there, you can print it, save it or just look at that one piece of data you needed and discard it - save a tree! I would suggest downloading each of these and giving them a try (no cost but your time). I'm happy to help if you have further questions about our setup. Russ Fisher | |