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Turbo C For Vista / Seven


Normally in India, majority of schools and colleges have Turbo C/C++ as the default IDE. Most students are younger than the Turbo C/C++ compiler they use at colleges. I checked our college's Turbo C++ and it was made in 1993. Back then George Bush Sr. was the president of the USA and Windows 95 was still 2 yrs away. I tired to run Turbo C in Vista / Seven and failed and so found a solution for the same. Now U can run Turbo C++ 3.0 on Windows XP 64 bit , Vista / Seven 32 bit and 64 bit OS (in full screen) using the tutorial below :

(1) Install the software DOSBox ver 0.72 ( 1.2 MB ) (Freeware) from the link below (Direct Link)


(2) Before going to the details u have to create a folder (any name will do). Here we name it as Turbo

(3) Copy the TC into the Turbo folder. You can download Turbo C/C++ here.

(4) Run the DOSBox 0.72 from the icon located on the desktop or from the location of the installation folder

(5) Then u are presented with two screens which look like the command prompt in Windows. One with a Z prompt. You can ignore the other screen.

(6) Type the following commands at the command prompt [Z]:

Mount [Type in any alphabet that u wish except z] [Type the source of the turbo C] press enter

(7) Now , Type in the following commands after the Z prompt:

Z: mount d c:\Turbo\ [The folder TC is present inside the folder Turbo]

(8) Now u should get a message which says: Drive D is mounted as a local directory c:\Turbo\

(9) Type d: to shift to d: prompt . Next follow the commands below

cd TC [The contents inside the folder Turbo gets mounted as a virtual drive (Here D drive)

cd Bin

TC or Tc.exe [This presents u the Turbo C++3.0 screen]
Options>Directories> Change the source of TC to the source directory [D] ( i.e. virtual D: refers to original c:\Turbo\ . So make the path change to something like D:\TC\include and D:\TC\lib respectively )
Points to Note:

(1)
In order to get the full screen use the key combination of Alt and Enter

(2) When u exit from the DosBox [precisely when u unmount the virtual drive where Turbo C++ 3.0 has been mounted] all the files u have saved or made changes in Turbo C++ 3.0 will be copied into the source directory(The directory which contains TC folder)

(3) It is a good idea to backup your files in the source directory prior to running DOSBox 0.72

(4) For additional help go through the readme file located in the installation folder or look on the website of the DOSBox forum.

(5) Don't use shortcut keys to perform operations in TC because they might be a shortcut key for DOSBOX also . Eg : Ctrl+F9 will exit DOSBOX rather running the code .

UPDATE :
You can save yourself some time by having DOSBox automatically MOUNT your folders

For DOSBox versions older then 0.73 browse into program installation folder and open the dosbox.conf file in any text editor. For version 0.73 go to Start Menu and click on "Configuration" and then "Edit Configuration". Then scroll down to the very end, and add the lines which you want to automatically execute when DOS BOX starts.


Now those commands will be executed automatically when DOS BOX starts!
If still you face some problem running the program read the comments below or post you query as a comment.