Old program runs fine on old hardware Win 98 computer - work w/Win 10?

So, I have a VERY old legacy program that was written during the late 90's (not by me) and runs just fine on an old Pentium machine I have (running Win98). This program basically plays wav files while it commands an external board via an RS232 port.

On a lark, I wondered if it would run under Win 10 (home edition, 64 bit) so I installed it on my Win10 machine, run it in Win98 compatibility mode and it kinda works. Except the serial com doesn't work (FTDI USB >serial converter). It plays the wav files just fine but it just doesn't seem to know about the comport (Device Manager reports it as Com3).

So... I also have an older WinXP machine (SP3) and did the same thing on that. Except this hardware has a genuine comport but the same problem - the program does seem to realize the port is there (Com1).

Am I simply SOL with this? I really hate having to keep the Win98 box around just for this one program!

I already have the FTDI drivers installed in the WIn10 computer as I have other programs that use it already.

Hadn't considered the VM idea though, I will give that a try, thanks

Nope, that didn't work but thanks for the idea

In the good old days often the problem was IRQ or DMA conflict on serial ports and some very port 1+3 so you couldn't use both at same time

TV2 said:

Well, worth a shot.
But the program was probably written back in the time when PC's had serial ports. So I would think the solution will be some derivation on the theme.
It might do good to read up on serial ports and parallel ports just to look for how newer versions of Windows dealt with the deprecation of those. That might lead to some clues.

One would think that if that if the non-existence of a comport on the Win10 machine was the issue, this program should have no comport issues with my XP machine with a genuine comport (which it does).

Your suggestion of of checking how newer versions of Windows handles serial ports is a good one. Then again, I am trying the VM approach and am installing Win98 on my Win10 computer as I write this

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Samuria said:

In the good old days often the problem was IRQ or DMA conflict on serial ports and some very port 1+3 so you couldn't use both at same time

True but as I pointed out, I have tried moving the USB > serial converter to Com2 (made no difference) and the converter has been working just fine as Com3 with several other programs.

It's a stumper for sure!