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Topic: old DOS music notation software (Read 4598 times) previous topic - next topic

old DOS music notation software

Hello. I'm a newbie to this group and I'm writing for a
friend who is a composer. She is considering buying a
computer and music notation software for the first time.
Since she has very little money, she would like to buy an
old second hand computer for as little as possible.

Does anyone know where she could get music notation software
that would run on an old system, say a 286 or 386? Perhaps
some old DOS, pre-Windows software?

I know that, in theory, Noteworthy will run on a 386, but
I would think running Windows on a 386 would be kind of
tight.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Please reply by email,
since I don't read this forum regularly.

Thanks a lot.

Joan Wikler
jwikler@orednet.org

Re: old DOS music notation software

Reply #1 –
MusicPrinter Plus is an excellent DOS notation program. Last I knew it was still rather spendy thought, like $400 or more. It is made by the same company as the Macintosh program Nightingale.

Re: old DOS music notation software

Reply #2 –
The 16-bit edition of NWC 1.52 will run on a 386 with Windows 3.1. With memory costs so low, you could run it with 16M of RAM and get reasonable results. However, you have indicated your friend is about to buy a computer. My advice would be to very carefully consider the logic of investing in a new computer that includes an 80286, 80386, or 80486. These Intel CPUs are extremely outdated technology, and newer PCs equipped with Pentium chips just do not cost that much more...

Re: old DOS music notation software

Reply #3 –
Noteworthy runs perfectly happy on a 386-dx40 with 8 megs of ram.
Why don't you go halves on a high-end 486 with 16meg ram?

(I personally use a p200mmx with 128meg ram and it runs okay as well :)

Re: old DOS music notation software

Reply #4 –
I run Noteworthy (currently 1.51a) on a 386 with 8 MB
of RAM (as well as on a Pentium 166). The 386 works fine,
except that it is noticeably slower. Of course, that is
a matter of perspective (if that's all you know, then
speed is relative).

I would also recommend not buying a 386 today. Low end
pentiums are pretty inexpensive and you may have Y2K issues
on a 386 (you might not care, but if you end up using the
computer for other things, then you probably will).

-- John

Re: old DOS music notation software

Reply #5 –
Noteworthy 1.50 runs fine on my 486-66DX with only 4 MB RAM.

Re: old DOS music notation software

Reply #6 –
An older version SCORE would definitely run on a 386. I'd check around with some SCORE users via the SCORE mail list. They might have an older version for sale cheap.