Ability 1.5 for Windows

System

Ability 1.5 for Windows

Originally released in 1984 by the Canadian company Xanaro that went

Read the full story here

Elmobay

Ability 1.5 Trial Edition will install on Win 3.11 in VirtualBox if you set the system date to the mid 1990s. Use a date similar to the timestamp of the installer. The software will work. It says you have 30 days to try the software. Be careful as VirtualBox will start up with the current date each time. There may be a setting to lock the date back into the 1990s. Was unable to get the full version (floppies) to work. Anyone have any ideas about that?

SomeGuy

I suspect it is one of those things that might be documented in a manual, but no manual. I tried it in a number of emulators, with about the same results. It keeps saying that it has detected some "change" to the system that will corrupt documents and will therefore exit. The fact that that specific error message is there makes me think they did something really screwpot. Then under 95 it insists share.exe be loaded. Ug. Really weird since this version was released about the same time as Win95.

Don't have time to dig out a real 486 with Win3.1 right now.

jafir

You could put the date command in your autoexec to set the date to the same thing each time it boots.

SomeGuy

Ug, just realized they are BOTH evaluation copies. Once they get much past the date they were created, they both stop running.

SomeGuy

Ok, it seems it is actually even more complicated than that. It uses a form of activation copy protection - you have to enter a registration code or it will remain in an evaluation mode that expires. But it doesn't tell you that anywhere. And it if sees a year of 2020 it thinks you are screwing with it.

Elmobay

Good suggestion @jafir Thanks!