Cobol - NT 4.0 Laptop with Cobol/CICS

Author

NT 4.0 Laptop with Cobol/CICS

G.Hobbs

2005-11-16, 9:55 pm

Good evening,

A question if I may.

Since 2000 I have been running an NT 4.0 laptop with IBM Visualage for
Cobol V3.3 with CICS for Windows NT 3.1 (came as a package way back
then at $1800) and DB2 V7.2. . . but the laptop's dying.

Is there anyone running the aforementioned software with a modern
laptop with an operating system like XP or XP Professional or Win2000
(and is Win2000 on the way out?).

Not sure I want to talk to IBM yet since I'm retired and really
haven't got the thousands of dollars for software upgrades which, I am
sure, is what they will recommend.

Very interested in any advice. Please, thanks.

Graham Hobbs
ghobbs@sympatico.ca

defaultuser

2005-11-17, 3:55 am

"G.Hobbs" <ghobbs@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:m2unn15atfu9erlo4d6vbgbhd4iiad8usj@
4ax.com...
> Good evening,
>
> A question if I may.
>
> Since 2000 I have been running an NT 4.0 laptop with IBM Visualage for
> Cobol V3.3 with CICS for Windows NT 3.1 (came as a package way back
> then at $1800) and DB2 V7.2. . . but the laptop's dying.

Well 2000 would make it 200 people years old. If there is death in the
picture I'm not sure why there is a question - isn't it just a case of
trying the next best thing?

What does laptop dying mean anyways? Hard drive screeching....fans not
working....OS finally corrupt? A little bit of effort might resuscitate the
beast if that is all you need.

> Is there anyone running the aforementioned software with a modern
> laptop with an operating system like XP or XP Professional or Win2000
> (and is Win2000 on the way out?).
No, but I wouldn't be surprised. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't run
on that spec. I used to have VA Cobol running on 2000 (not sure on version
though). Not sure about CICS. DB2 will run, but you can download and use
'developer editions' for free as long as only you and your kids
benefit...and you don't need remote connectivity (i.e. you don't buy two
laptops) I'm sure you could plop in any DBMS anyway. Bottom line, youre not
supported, you can try and I'm sure find many people willing to help if you
have weird issues.

Windows 2000 was on the way out a few years back.

> Not sure I want to talk to IBM yet since I'm retired and really
> haven't got the thousands of dollars for software upgrades which, I am
> sure, is what they will recommend.

It's free to talk. You can always ask, they can always say no, you can
always try a different alternative. If your business is one they don't
want, someone somewhere might want it.

>
> Graham Hobbs
> ghobbs@sympatico.ca
>
>

Michael Wojcik

2005-11-17, 6:55 pm

In article <m2unn15atfu9erlo4d6vbgbhd4iiad8usj@4ax.com>, G.Hobbs <ghobbs@sympatico.ca> writes:
>
> Since 2000 I have been running an NT 4.0 laptop with IBM Visualage for
> Cobol V3.3 with CICS for Windows NT 3.1 (came as a package way back
> then at $1800) and DB2 V7.2. . . but the laptop's dying.
>
> Is there anyone running the aforementioned software with a modern
> laptop with an operating system like XP or XP Professional or Win2000
> (and is Win2000 on the way out?).

To answer your second question first: Win2000 is on the way out. I
don't know offhand if Microsoft's announced anything about when
they'll end support for it, but with Vista/Longhorn on the way - with
major changes from XP/2003 - they're not going to want to devote
resources to maintaining it any longer than they have to.

Most NT 3.1 programs should run without problems on XP. And on the
off chance that this isn't one of them, if you still have your NT 4
installation media, you can always get VMWare or Virtual PC and run
NT 4 as a guest OS under XP. Performance is not bad (I recently had
XP running in VMWare under XP on my Thinkpad R40 - 2.3GHz CPU, 728 MB
RAM - and it was responsive), and I believe there's now a free version
of VMWare available.

--
Michael Wojcik michael.wojcik@microfocus.com

Pogo: The dogs *scarcely* ever catches the rabbit.
Bun: "Scarcely" got a very unpleasant ring of frequency to it.
-- Walt Kelly

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