I have a lot of brute force methodologies I have programmed in Power Basic through DOS. I have finally concluded that I need any help I can get to make these programs run faster. I do not want to learn/convert to C++ or equivalent. What would be the best and fastest way to service DOS and my Power Basic executables? Would 64-bits do me any good? Dual core whatever? Is DOS through the Windows CMD the way to go? Etc... Thank you for your help in advance.
Frequently Asked Questions Does PowerBASIC run under 64 bit operating systems? With the current versions of PowerBASIC Console Compiler and PowerBASIC for Windows, you'll need to compile your programs on a 32-bit operating system. The executables they produce will run on either 32 or 64-bit operating systems. We will be releasing versions of both compilers which will compile on 64-bit operating systems in the near future. We do not have a date set for this release. Keep an eye on our web site - that's where we'll announce it. In the meantime you can compile on a machine with a 32-bit operating system and move the .EXEs to your 64-bit operating system machines. PowerBASIC creates tiny .EXE files so this is a very easy thing to do. look like you can time them and see if there is any improvement.
Tamaharbor, this is a bit off topic but could you tell us how steep the learning curve was with Power Basic?
For best results, match your operating system to the compiler. 16-bit programs run best under 16-bit DOS. 32-bit programs run best under 32-bit Windows. If you run 16-bit programs in a console window under 32 or 64-bit windows it will be slow. The extra emulation and overhead will outweigh the benefit of the wider CPU addresses. My best guess would be to move your source code over to Win32 PowerBASIC and recompile as a 32-bit program, then run it under WinXP with a fast CPU and plenty of memory.
If your powerbasic is not a compiled version then you can gain sevral magnitudes of performance increase by going to compiled BASIC and let it run under Windows instead of running it under the command line. Holmes