What is The minimum Hardware and software Required to run a Executable file?

Question

I have Made a fully Working Program In Borland Delphi 7
With it there is a .Dat Data File
What is the absolute minimum Hardware and Software required to run the The Fully Workable Executable File without any crashing or errors
If possible please be specific

Answer 1

OS:

For a start Delphi 7 compiles to a 32bit executable, so it'll run on any 16/32 bit OS (Windows 95 up).



CPU:

You'll also need a 32 bit CPU (Intel or AMD these days), processing speed (or power) of the CPU will depend entirely on what OS you plan to run the EXE under and what processing your program needs to do, light (older CPU "486DX" for basic floating/integer maths) or heavy (newer dual core CPU for image manipulation or 3D graphics) processing, etc.



Graphics:

Again, depends on OS and what your program does. If it's very graphical (and I'm guessing not, since it uses a .DAT file for a database ;) then you'd need a better GPU with more on-board graphics RAM, other wise a basic ISA card with quarter Gig. (you probably won't be able to buy one these days)



RAM:

Memory will need to be measured against the OS only, since most versions of Windows (since Windows 3.1) use Virtual Memory. Windows 95 will run on 1 Gig, while Windows 7 would require at least 2 Gig.



Hard Disk:

Hard disk will need to be big enough for your OS, your program and the size of your .DAT file. In this case if you intend to store LOTS of data, then more space is better. That said, remember that older OS's have disk size restrictions and use older FAT systems (in some cases maximum file size is limited to just 4GB).



That's about it, any monitor, keyboard and mouse that will fit, etc.



**The difficult part of using older technology is matching up components so they work, since you can't buy PC components. Better to buy cheap old computers that already work.



na

Answer 2

I could be more specific if you had been. I can't imagine why you would compile it as a 16 bit DOS program but if you did, it will have to be configured to run inside the WOW.EXE shell. This is done with a PIF file and below is a link to Microsoft and it tells you how.



http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/windows_dos_configure.mspx?mfr=true



If it is compiled for windows it will have a default amount of memory allocated at startup based upon the size of the data base you defined. As far as minimums, whatever system you wrote it on should be fine since you say it is working.

Answer 3

It depends on what u worte. If its an simple program, it doesn't take much to run it.