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Alpha4 under 64 bit Windows

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    Alpha4 under 64 bit Windows

    Some of those looking for a method to run Alpha4 under newer 64 bit versions of windows (for example Windows 10) have tried using vDos. vDos is a DOS emulator designed to run business applications under the newest Windows Operating Systems. Originally vDos would not run many version of Alpha4 because it did not supply math co-processor emulation.

    The author of vDos has released a new version of vDos 2017.08.01 that added a FPU (Floating-point unit) to the emulated CPU.

    I have tested vDos version 2017.08.01 and it will run Alpha4 Version 6 under windows 7 64 bit quit well. It should support Alpha4 version 7 and 8 as well.

    What a walk down memory lane.

    Learn about vDos at https://www.vdos.info/index.html

    #2
    Re: Alpha4 under 64 bit Windows

    I'll add that, in my experience, vDos indeed seems to work well with A4V8 in Windows 10. I have one application that I haven't yet translated to A5, so I've had to jump through a few hoops to continue to use it. I can even print with vDos - something that wasn't possible with DOSBox.

    There's a version of vDos with more functionality, called vDosPlus: http://www.vdosplus.org. However, although A4V8 displayed with the original colors, it hung, which I attribute to a problem with how it handles memory. (Just a guess and I could be wrong.) I haven't taken time to tinker with it further since vDos seems to do the trick.

    I can even run WordStar - and those old control-key commands came right back, just like riding a bike.

    Doug

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      #3
      Re: Alpha4 under 64 bit Windows

      The latest release (09/16) also works with a4 networked data. Multi-user shared database and file locking is now supported. We are running alpha4v7 in Windows 10, 64 bit without issues.

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        #4
        Hi,

        Has anyone had any recent experience with vdos? In my case, I need to migrate about 40 users on XP to Windows 10 64bit, so I'm looking, mainly, for information (good and bad) of this setup in networked environments with lots of activity, but anything would help.

        The database's main tables are in the 500MB to 1GB range and it's mission-critical, so we can't afford to find out that something's not working two weeks after the change and no matter how much though we've given to the problem, we can't come up with a reasonable way to test this thoroughly without seriously disrupting the client's operations.

        My preferred option was to set up a Win2008 server and have the users run instances of alpha4 via rdp as opposed to running something like vdos (or virtualbox) on each workstation, but this is no longer an option because both, Window 2008 nor XP (running in virtualbox), are discontinued products.

        Thank you!!!

        Alex

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          #5
          We are running vDos on 5 windows 10 stations without any issues. Our databases are 400 MB. Why can't you introduce a couple of windows 10 PCs on the network and run vDos to access the data? In the past we had some users on XP and others on windows 7 with virtualbox and windows 10 with vDos. The dbf files don't care what os you are running as long as it's setup correctly on each station. Of course always have a backup.

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            #6
            Hi, and thanks for replying to a rather old thread admin@dci,

            In an ideal world, I'd have the users work on parallel systems until we feel confident that the solution works and no weird side-effects surface. I'm pretty sure that alpha4v8 behaves normally in a virtual environment (vDos, virtualbox, etc.) but I've seen my share of weirdness after doing this for 30 years.

            I am grateful for your sharing some of the details of your setup, which despite being somewhat smaller than mine has a configuration quite similar to what I'll be seeing until we migrate everybody to Win10.

            If you have any tips or caveats, I would be much obliged.

            Thanks!

            Alex

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              #7
              I have a about a dozen users rinning Windows 7,8 and Windows 10 machines across 3 continents. All needed to access Alpha 4V8 custom application. Containg 20-30 tables, many thousands of records each, scripts, reports, sets etc.
              Solution that works well for us over many years:

              I set up a dedicated Windows 10 computer, installed on it the free Oracle Virtual Box. In the Oracle free Virtual Box I set up about dozen Virtual XP Windows machines, one for each remote user.
              Windows XP runs the Networked version of Alpha4V8.
              Each Windows XP has 2 options for remore access: 1) Team Viewer (paid solution) and 2) Remote Utilities (free)

              The setup works well for many years

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