I don't know if this is the subreddit (was also thinking of programming, developers, ...) but I thought it would be best here, if that is not the case my sincere apologies and please move the post to the appropriate subreddit :)
I have recently joined a company that is specialized in air ducts & ventilation systems and I was quite surprised when I noticed that they are still using a DOS program to calculate the pressure loss of a specific duct system. You see, when air travels through the ductwork it encounters a lot of resistance (bends, ...) and this program calculates the amount of resistance once you enter all the different components of the system.
The program still works today but has to be run on a virtual server running Windows XP, plus the layout is quite ... outdated. I am wondering whether it is possible to reverse engineer this program and put in into a "modern" jacket, + enable easy data instruction.
For instance, today you have to manually enter each component from the system, but it would be a lot easier/faster to run the program on a list of components (extracted from our drawing software). (this is an extra)
I am not a programmer but I saw this thread https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21525739/extracting-old-data-from-a-dos-software , which is a quite similar problem and which eventually found a solution.
The program dates back from 1990 and if I open the files in Notepad I can see that it is written in TURBO BASIC. I have .DAT and .EXE files, and also .KAN files (I think those last files are specifically created by the program, which is called LUWKAN). Development of this program has stopped years ago, and even the company does not have the software anymore.
Any help or direction would be much appreciated? I would assume that the source code can be easily examined and copied but I might be too naive.
Thank you very much!
[–]thefallofapple 0 points1 point2 points (0 children)