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Short question here. Does a program that is compiled as "Executable Formant: Console" work on old computers that run on, say for example DOS 6.22 ?

No.

Roger.

Is there any other way to make a PureBasic program work on such old DOS 6.22?

Download a copy of VDOS that will allow you to run older software and is 100% solid.

Whilst on Console and DOS screens, I can't understand why PureBasic doesn't provide the capability to place text and variables on the screen as you could in dBASEII, dBASEIII and Clipper using 24 lines and 80 columns. After all that worked just fine over 40 years ago.

@ 12,10 SAY "Label "
@ 12,17 GET Variable PICTURE "!!!!!!!!"
....etc

No, at the moment PureBasic "only" has compilers for Windows, MacOS, Linux (just some distributions) and Raspberry OS. I don't think it will ever be compatible with any DOS, also I don't think this makes sense.
But you can easily create programs that look like DOS-programs.

StarWarsFan wrote: Tue May 10, 2022 12:28 pm Short question here. Does a program that is compiled as "Executable Formant: Console" work on old computers that run on, say for example DOS 6.22 ?

There should be other programming languages/compilers that you could use for old computers that still run DOS 6.22, but I think it needs to be a 16 bit compiler.

C87 wrote: Mon May 23, 2022 5:00 pmWhilst on Console and DOS screens, I can't understand why PureBasic doesn't provide the capability to place text and variables on the screen as you could in dBASEII, dBASEIII and Clipper using 24 lines and 80 columns. After all that worked just fine over 40 years ago.

@ 12,10 SAY "Label "
@ 12,17 GET Variable PICTURE "!!!!!!!!"
....etc

It does: the ConsoleLocate() command -> https://www.purebasic.com/documentation ... ocate.html

Sadly not. That would be awesome ,but it doesn't. All setting format to console does is make your program not pop up its own terminal when being ran from something like CMD or Terminal, I think.

Pure Basic won't run in 16-bit DOS like 6.22 but it provides a limited set of functions to work with a console window that works in 32 and 64-bit. See the Console section in the PB documentation. Years ago I developed a few additional procedures to do some of the things my favourite 16-bit language, ZBasic, could do.

a) purebasic does not support dos
b) with a little bit of time, somebody could use the purebasic x86 compiler with a small 16bit stub, to create a 16/32bit dos executable by using DOS/32 and write dos software with purebasic

Here is UltraBasic.
It should run on 16-bit DOS.

I wonder how many "mission critical' computers still run on DOS or CP/M...

Btw. DOS was never limited to textmode or rarely supported native (s)vga mode's. With Vesa 2.0 you could get a very comfortable linear framebuffer with paging support. Just ignore the 64kb segmented first VESA version.

For a fun challenge, implement a vesa 1.0 line drawing DDA version. But a fast, optimized one - no "single dot function call" nonsense.

ps : Vesa back then vs Vesa now

I've written little DOS-like programs using PureBasic, but they're 32 or 64-bit, and DOS is still a part of Windows. PB doesn't do 16-bit. With the old ZBasic I produced several graphics-oriented programs using EGA and then VGA display modes. QuickBasic could do this, too, and with the addition of extra software, include animation. The educational software production group I worked with did this in the early 1990's. We would make a program for the Commodore 64, port it to Amstrad 6128, port it to the PC (286 & 386 in those days) and then to the Amiga. Port means literally connecting via RS-232 and transferring the files which were then worked into shape. At one point I had 16-bit DOS and Windows 3 programs calling 32-bit PureBasic exe's and sharing the same data files.

Is FreeBASIC good enough for MS-DOS 6.22?

A terminal/console on Windows, Linux, macOS, Raspberry PI is not the Disk Operation System that's usually called 'DOS', or in this case MS-DOS 6.22.