Hi Tim

I'm afraid I can't help you with your questions, however there is a Recorder 3 group now at http://www.mailspaces.com/spaces/recorder3/ that may be able to help you.

The group is free but you need to register - just a thought if you'd not tried there yet.

Kind regards,

Sarah

Sarah Shaw
Biodiversity Information Assistant
JNCC

Late last year I tried to install Recorder 3 for someone. I installed Recorder 3.2 but couldn’t get the upgrade to 3.3 to work.

I was doing it on my desktop where I have expanded memory enabled. The first part - upgrading AREV - seemed to work despite running it in a DOS box. I couldn't get my desktop to start in DOS. It is running Windows XP Professional version 5.1 Service Pack 2. The second part (upgrading Recorder 3 itself) - running the TCL command RUN DOS A: UPDATE - produced the following message:

16 bit MS-DOS Subsystem
Advanced Revelation 3.0
An application has attempted to directly access the hard disc, which cannot be supported. This may cause the application to function incorrectly. Choose 'Close' to terminate the application.

The other option to 'Close' was 'Ignore'. I tried both but could not get any further. I also tried copying the upgrade files to the hard disc and running it from there but that didn't work either.

Is this the problem you encountered Tim? I am wondering if this is a Windows XP problem as I managed to install 3.2 and upgrade to 3.3 when I was still using Windows 98. Can anyone provide more information on this theory?

Because Recorder 3 doesn’t have any Registry entries the whole system (the Recorder folder) can be copied from one PC to another and it can be run without problems provided you can set up an appropriate PIF to run it (I have the instructions for this). You don’t need to install it. This works fine if the Recorder 3 folder is on the C: drive on both PCs. If the Recorder 3 folder was on a server drive you need to modify it to run on the C: drive – Stuart Ball provided the instructions for this several years ago.

I am puzzled by the file names you mention. All the \Recorder\Data folders I have contain 40-50 files called REV20000.LK/.OV to REV20051.LK/.OV and REVMEDIA.LK/.OV not REV530….

Could you get the whole Recorder folder for the system? Is it Recorder 3.3 or 3.2? If it is Recorder 3.3 I could give you the instructions for getting it to run. To transfer the data to Recorder 2002 or Recorder 6 you will need to know how to use Recorder 3. The instructions provided by Stuart Ball (JNCC) are very good but do not provide much help with the corruptions and other problems that are often present in old systems, and they assume knowledge of Recorder 3. I have done transfers from Recorder 3.2 but getting the data into Recorder 3.4 in order to do a transfer is more complicated.

Mike Weideli and I are still doing Recorder 3 to Recorder 2002/Recorder 6 data transfers. If you would like a quote, please let me know. Alternatively I could provide you with some support. I charge £30 per hour plus expenses for this type of support although expenses are usually only incurred for site visits.

Could this be to do with the fact that the later version of Windows don't have a true DOS environment. I understand it's "simulated" to look like the old DOS prompt, but the command shell CMD.EXE is very different. (It's 32-bit for a start). Windows 98 runs on top of DOS.

Just for information, I use Recorder 3 in a DOS emulator (dosemu) under Linux. There is a version which comes with FreeDOS pre-packaged and once installed Recorder 3 runs fine.

Cheers.