Have I got a REAL astronomy problem for you guy! It's with my 
Dance of the Planets program. Having a newer computer running Windows 
2000 at 700+ Mz, the program is all kinked up. 
    To save some time I copied off the files from my old computer onto 
a CD and then copied them onto the new machine using the same 
directory structure. This works fine for DOS programs, of which I 
still keep a bunch for astronomy.
    Dance fires up properly and most of its functions work. Two main 
problems. First, the most disastrous, is that the 'Observer's 
Companion' section crashes and I'm thrown back to the desktop. I did 
find a workaround for this, explained below. 
    The animation, using Pace, runs only for a few seconds, then 
stops. Pressing Enter (or maybe any neutral nonaction key?) resume it, 
but only for the next spell of a few seconds. Thus to run a long 
animation, I must repeatedly tap Enter. It is no longer possible to 
start a run and busy myself elsewise.
    For the OBserver's Companion, I found that my editing the 
Directories part of the Configure section I can get the OC to start. 
For some reason, like maybe field length, I can not edit into it the 
entire path to the Dance program. But by putting in just 'C:\', it 
allows OC to work properly. I checked with a bunch of occultations. 
However! the various files for comets, asteroids, vectors, &c are no 
longer 'seen'. 
    What's more, this configure file seems to revert to its original 
form after each use of Dance. 
    Your first obvious suggestion is: why not just reinstall the 
program from the prime discs? OK, I GOT those discs and I DID try a 
fresh install. I first saved the object, resume, &c files so I can put 
them back after the install.
    The setup.exe file bombs out with a runtime error. It never gets 
going to unpack the other files from the discs! 
    Despite irs vintage, from 1994, it was never updated according to 
the ARC (publisher) website, only that it is reissued as is on CD, 
this is a program that so far still is a workhorse for me. In fact, I 
want to explore it to demonstrate Dr Belbruno's chaotic dynamics. 
    Any suggestions? Patches I haven't learned of? Third party fixes? 
 

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