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I thought the first question and answer in the following article might be
of interest to my fellow XyWrite users. We should be extremely thankful
for Carl and Robert in their fight against the xp plague launched by mr.
Gates.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram March 18, 2005, Friday KR-ACC-NO: FT-COMPUTER-COL-20050318 LENGTH: 1149 words
HEADLINE: Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas, Dr. Emilio Bombay column
BYLINE: By Michael Gerst
BODY: QUESTION: I have a new Dell with Windows XP, and much to my consternation, I soon learned that it is not backward-compatible. I cannot run my older software. I just loved an old, old DOS chess game because I could
occasionally win. I have been working with Dell support, but they want me to
reprogram the computer. Yeah, right. Do you have a fix?
--Backward Incompatibility
A: Yes, it's called "getting over it." The problem isn't with
Dell or even with Windows XP. It's with your sentimental attachment to things
that just won't work on today's computers and operating systems.
Windows XP operates much differently than its predecessors. It
processes data differently, and it uses different built-in libraries of
programming snippets. And DOS? Forget it. There's a DOS emulation window -- I
suppose for the benefit of old codgers who still like doing things at the
command line -- but it's not the real DOS that an older version of Windows had
hiding at its core.
So, there's no guarantee that programs that ran under Windows
95 or DOS or whatever you used to have will behave under XP. The only thing you
can try is XP's compatibility mode.
Right-click a shortcut to the old program, then pick
"Properties." If you see a "Compatibility" tab on the properties display, click
it and try making XP behave like its forefathers. I doubt you'll meet with any
success with the DOS chess game. Are you so in love with it because it was the
only game you could beat? Just wondering.
I share your pain, though. I dearly miss being able to
use XYWRIGHT, an ancient DOS-based word processor, under XP. It
creeps along like a stuttering sloth now, and it's too painfully slow to be of
any real use, not unlike me the mornings after my wife makes vodka surprise for
dinner. I found a replacement for XyWrite; you need to find one for
this chess program.
If you're really hot to play it, though, and you can't find an
XP version you can beat and you're very, very, very desperate, there may be a
way.
Microsoft makes something called Virtual PC, which lets you
create a fake computer on your XP box. The virtual computer boots up in a
window, and it looks like the real thing. You can load many different operating
systems on separate virtual hard drives, and that means you can format the
virtual drive in good ol' MS-DOS 6 or 5 or whatever.
The real trick is finding a set of DOS installation floppies.
Good luck with that. I found mine in a file cabinet I hadn't cleaned out in 12
years. There was some Kentucky Fried Chicken in there, too. At least, that's
what I think it was.
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