older COMPAQ Fortran 6 to Windows 7 platform

[Albert_G_1]

The Compaq Fortran running on Windows7 64-bit has recently started giving errors worded as follows:

forrtl: severe (8): internal consistency check failure, file E:\forrtl\build\for_desc_item.c, line 581

Image PC               Routine   Line        Source

desl.exe 0057B6E9 Unknown Unknown Unknown

at seemingly random times. I have seen in posts that associated with this error are suggestions that perhaps more needed to be done to properly bring up the working 32-bit code on the 64-bit platform. Any best directions to search for reasons? Thanks.

[Steven_L_Intel1]

Compaq Fortran builds 32-bit applications only. There is no way to have it create 64-bit applications. There could be an error in your program that is corrupting memory - that's the only thing I can think of that might cause this error.

[mecej4]

Did you build desl.exe on the machine where the failure occurred, or did you build it elsewhere? Can you provide some details of what it does?

[TimP]

In my experience, CVF had to be installed and its builds run under XPM on Win7-x64.  It would not run on platforms which didn't support XPM.

As Steve said, it should be possible to run the resulting .exe on any Win7 if the necessary .dll is copied over e.g. to the same folder as the .exe.

[FortranFan]

I am still a regular user of Compaq Visual Fortran Standard Edition 6.6.a and have been running it on Windows 7, 64-bit for more than 7 months now.  I use CVF with Microsoft Visual Studio 6 Enterprise Edition.  Everything seems to work ok (touch wood!).  I often build code side-by-side using both Intel Fortran 2013 and CVF, especially to confirm behavior for code that uses Fortran 95 and older constructs.

Here're some of the things I'd to do on Windows 7, 64-bit:

* extract all the files from the CVF CD to a folder and use ..\X86\Setup.exe to install CVF on the 64-bit Windows 7 machine.

* The default install folder picked by x86\setup.exe was ”C:\Program Files”.  I manually changed it to “C:\Program Files (x86)”.

* install Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 second i.e., after installing CVF.

* use "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\COMMON\MSDEV98\BIN\MSDEV.EXE" to bring up the IDE instead of DFDEV.EXE.

* always run the MSDEV.EXE as an Administrator

[Albert_G_1]

Thanks to all. It may well boil down to the data instance in question. After Steve's words, if it is supposed to work on the command line then that seems to say it all. I'll have to research more.

But, I am not dreaming when I said that my good old Windows XP situation, when I was the administrator, using the Compaq 6.x, worked fine and I could distribute executables that nobody complained failed on W7 platforms. In that era, just the executables were distributed and there was no expectation that the target machine had any piece (DLL's) of Compaq software also present; I always assumed that in the exectuable was all that was needed to have a "complete" executable.

After I was "upgraded" to W7 and not able to be the administrator, there were immediate problems. The SA and I tried various flavors of "compatibility" mode execution but the system still failed. By the way, desl.exe is a very integrated, large, multi-purpose code to do a lot of aero data crunching. It may not be so easy to isolate the offending situation, if the data used IS the problem.

Some internet searches, as I recall, led me to a nugget that led me to a simple how-to that involved some "trick" at install time so that the Compaq system behaved the same way as I was accustomed to it behaving. I was happy. As I said initially, I always compile via the command line via "f90 ...". (Yes, very old school.) I never use the actual "visual" environment.

So, thanks again and I will refer back to the comments to possible improve my situation.

[Albert_G_1]

The "trick" is not something I can now recall, unfortunately. But I do recall that it was very simple to accomplish.

[FortranFan]

Albert,

"After I was "upgraded" to W7 and not able to be the administrator, there were immediate problems" -

From what I've seen, one needs administrator privileges to be able to install and reliably run almost all the development applications on Windows 7.  If you are not the administrator, then it is amazing what you've managed thus far. 

[mecej4]

CVF 6.6C can be installed and run even on Windows 8 X64. I have an old CD with CVF 6.6.0. Here is what I did (today) to install on W8ProX64:

1. In Windows Explorer, find SETUP.EXE in the X86 directory of the CVF CD. Run as Administrator, and let the installer complete the installation after you tell it where to install.
2. Obtain the 6.6C update file CVF-66-66C3.exe (still available from HP after registration), run the file as Administrator.
3. Obtain the file MSDEV.EXE from a working VS6 installation, put it into the MSDEV98\BIN directory. Change the properties of the Start Menu CVF->Developer Studio shortcut so that it points to the just-installed MSDEV.EXE rather than to DFDEV.EXE.
4. Set the Compatibility property of MSDEV.EXE to Windows XP-SP3.
5. Run the CVF IDE, build and run a small project to make sure that the installation is functional.
6. Run the Per-User-Setup as necessary.

Note that this procedure is roughly the same as that given above by FortranFan. It may not be worth the trouble  for most readers, but is meant for the few who want, for various reasons, to run the nine-year old CVF software package on a current operating system.

As in Windows 7, the old .HLP help files that come with CVF opened fine in Windows 8 after downloading the viewer WinHlp32.exe. (Thanks for corrections, "app4619")

[andrew_4619]

Unlike in Windows 7, the old .CHM help files that come with CVF opened fine in Windows 8 without having to download the viewer WinHlp32.exe -- a small and pleasant surprise!

Sorry to dissapoint but CHM is html help and is supported on Win 7 it is the older WinHelp (HLP) that launched with windows 3.0 in 1990 that requires the viewer download. The question is when will proper CHM support stop? I still use this quite extensively .....