19 Mar 16 04:18, you wrote to All:

 AK> I need the XP drive to contiue to use FIDO and also to run a ham radio
 AK> program called STSPLUS which I use to track satellites, especially the
 AK> Shuttle.

actually, no you don't... STSPLUS is pretty limiting in the number of sats that
it can track at once ;)

 AK> Well STSPLUS will not run on the machine.  It just blanks out the
 AK> screen and the only out is to reboot the machine.

STSPLUS was written QuickBASIC and for early EGA modes... it is long past time
to upgrade to software that is operable with today's systems and hardware...

 AK> Anyone have any ideas why this program will not work on this machine?

no clue... the author, Dave Ransome, passed away of congestive heart failure
back in Nov 2006... SOP0223 was the last release of STSPLUS...

 AK> It it worked well on my "old" XP machine which still is a pretty slick
 AK> system.

agreed, STSPLUS is a nice system... i used to use it all the time... still have
it installed on my OS/2 system... had it taking snapshots that i was posting to
my space tracking web page... i stopped that a few years after dave's death...
i switched to using Orbitron and HeavenSat (on my sole remaining Vista box) and
several other tracking type programs that i use on my *nix boxen... there is
also an online site called Heaven's Above which is very good and i also use
satflare.com's live tracking map to replace the static updated every 5 minutes
one that i used to get from STSPLUS...

Orbitron was written by a kid in highschool... it has very little support these
days but it is a good winwhatever program to use... it has the same type of
ground tracks as STSPLUS as well as a prediction center that is very similar...
here's a link to the author's site... http://www.stoff.pl/

HeavenSat provides several views but is not as polished as STSPLUS was and is
not as graphical as Orbitron... it is also low in the available support area...
i don't have a direct link to heavensat's page where i downloaded it from but
this one should get you started... you might want to check out the stuff that
the satobs guys have, too... https://www.google.com/search?q=heavensat

here's a link to satflare and its tracking app for ISS...
http://www.satflare.com/track.asp?q=25544#TOP

here's a link to heaven's above... http://heavens-above.com/main.aspx

FWIW: i also use another program called Stellarium... it is a plantearium
software package but it has the ability to pull TLEs and show them on the
openGL 3D sky dome that it projects...
https://sourceforge.net/projects/stellarium/

they're all good and i use some combination of all of them at various times...
i've even written my own TLE tool to replace dave ransom's old orbitel program
because it is extremely limited in the number of TLEs that it can handle... for
example, a supposedly complete list of all available TLEs processed by Orbitel
results in only 1903 satellites in the list but there is actually 16581
satellites available in my TLEs... yeah, Orbitel is much too limited, too...
like STSPLUS it has also reached its EOL...

)\/(ark

Always Mount a Scratch Monkey

... Jewish Dilemma: Pork chops; half-price.
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