Digital Visual Fortran Professionel 5.0

[ole_rydahl]

A dear friend of mine is desperately trying to power up some old programs developed using Digital Visual Fortran professional version 5.0. To make matters even more complicated a proprietary graphics package from the Danish Technical University is included in  these old programs.

Anybody out there that know how to get such an old licence – Digital Visual Fortran Professional 5.0?

Regards Ole Rydahl

[JohnNichols]

I would suggest that you first try oneAPI Fortran.  It is free, integrates well with VS Studio or runs on Linux. it might work and it is free. 

Other than that I would try ebay or such, there are always old disks for sale? 

The program installs in about an hour if you include VS. 

[ole_rydahl]

Tanks! He tried Compaq Visual Fortran 6.5, but without success. The proprietary GUI is probably a DLL....

[Ron_Green]

DVF: ebay may be your only hope, as those licenses are no longer produced nor sold.  And you may need a PC running 32bit Windows XP because it won't run on any newer Windows OS.  Suffice it to say that you are looking at porting this to something newer.

The graphics library may be a problem.  Is it a binary DLL package or source code?  Any idea if the library has a newer edition that runs on Windows 10 or 11?  

Intel Fortran has some compatibility options to help with DVF compatibility to some degree.  But if the graphics library won't run on a modern Windows OS this is going to be a problem. 

[ole_rydahl]

Thanks! I'll try ebay once more. Yes, the proprietary GUI is probably a DLL....

[JohnNichols]

Replace the GUI and modernize the program. 

[Steve_Lionel]

I'm not sure I understand what your friend has. Are they trying to install the DVF product so that they can recompile from sources? Does he he have a copy of DVF 5.0 and simply needs the license key? If so, I can help with that.

[ole_rydahl]

As far as I know, he has got a running version of Compaq Visual Fortran version 6.x, but for one of 3 programs it fails. It’s the one that includes graphics!

Somebody got DVF 5.0 in an archive box in the garage?

[JohnNichols]

No one said in the 1980s to keep your old disks one day you may need them.  

The best version of Autocad is the 2D windows 95 release, but it needs Windows 95 and a parallel port. 

It is much easier to use than the modern 3D version, no paper space. 

Autocad and Fortran are tied together through DXF files. 

Old Physics Professor:

We are teaching you some of the most advanced physics of atoms currently known.... a long lecture. 

Student common room 60 minutes later...

Bro, how do you open a text file?

1981 was fun.   

[JohnNichols]

Upload the graphics package here and let people look at it, 

[Steve_Lionel]

I can't think of any plausible reason why DVF 5.0 would enable the program to run correctly but CVF 6.x wouldn't. How exactly does it fail? Is he rebuilding the application from sources?

[ole_rydahl]

You have a point! I’ll advise him to carefully look for other reasons. It is my impression too from reading about DVF and CVF. Hopefully he provides me with some details..