How to get Mathcad 6.0 on my new computer?

[AAlpha]

Hi,
a long time ago I purchased Mathcad 6.0 - student version. Last time I used it was a few computers ago and obviously some years ago. I dusted off the 7 disks, searched for my external "floppy" drive and hooked it up to my new laptop naively hoping it would install without any issues.

And of course the first message that came up was that the windows version is not compatible.

Is it worth the effort to try and contact PCL to find out if it is possible to run it on my new lap top (windows xp) or maybe I would get a discount for an upgrade. What is the best way to contact them?

Thanks

 

[IRstuff]

PCL? You mean PTC, who is the current parent company of what used to be Mathsoft? You can contact them, of course, but the upgrade from v7 to the current v15 is probably full price.

http://www.ptc.com/product/mathcad/

Have you tried to run it in Win95 compatibility mode?

Also, it's possible that you can get the XP runtime emulation for your laptop and run it as a subprocess, but, realistically, v6 dates from Win95, and few things from that era can still run on current versions of Windows.

TTFN

FAQ731-376
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[EdClymer]

AAlpha

I still run MathCAD 6 on 32 bit XP machine. I think the clue is in the 32 bit format. I can also confirm that it works fine on Win 98 second edition (as back up machine) MathCAD 6 is very limited.

I also have MathCAD 2000 - absolutly superb. Has earned me a small fortune. Runs on both XP 32 bit and Win 98 second edition.

Have MathCAD 14 - which I don't particularly like: only purchased to run with Roark and Young. Still consider that MathCAD 2000 best version.

Hope this helps.

Regards

Ed





Ed Clymer
Resinfab & Associates
England

 

[SSLA]

As IRStuff has suggested try downloading the free XPmode from Microsoft here

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

There is a video that shows how to install and use it. I have been running Visio 4 (pre Microsoft, now 15 years old) and Quickbooks 2004 and several other non-Windows 7 compatible programs without issue. You can even use the compatibility mode in Windows XP mode, so my guess is that anything from DOS on should run.

 

[SSLA]

You could also multi-boot. I run Windows 7 and Windows XP (each in it's own partition hidden from the other) using BootIt Bare Metal and for many tyears before that, BootIt NG. Both products allow you to multi-boot, create, resize, delete and format partions. There are videos on the Terabyte Unlimited site showing how to install each version of Windows (and any other OS you want to run in native mode). Multi-booting provides and easy way to keep old O/S's and software running in native node at full speed. Hang on to you MathCad license files so you won't have to bother with the PTC license server when re-installing after a clean re-install of XP in a new partition. I can switch between 32 bit XP and 64 bit Win 7 in about the same time it takes XP Mode to come up in Windows 7.

You could multi-boot Win 98 if you wanted to. Multi-booting and XP Mode both work for me when running old software. I still multi-boot because I like to mess around with various versions of Linux and it runs faster than a virtual machine.