For instance, a legacy 3 GHz Pentium 4 with HT and 4 GB RAM and an SSD should be quite good for running a 16-bits Microsoft © COBOL 5.0 on top of a virtualized 32 MB RAM Microsoft © DOS 6.22 with minimal configuration.
If one disposes of a 32-bits Microsoft © Windows 7 (or even a Microsoft © Windows XP) on can also use Microsoft © Virtual PC 2004 or Microsoft © Virtual PC 2007 in order to get the convenience of a virtual environment. If Microsoft eventually retires the previous links, try checking at WinWorld.com. Furthermore, it can be quite convenient creating a Windows shortcut for launching the Virtual PC guest (called MS-DOS COBOL in my examples). The shortcut target field should contain at least the following particular parameters:
"...\Virtual PC.exe" -pc "MS-DOS COBOL" -singlepc -launch -usehostdiskcache
Note that older builds of VirtualBox may be an interesting alternative to Virtual PC for running a DOS guest, but it will be probably necessary to borrow the IDLE.COM file from the Virtual PC guest additions in order to pacify CPU issues.
By the way, instead of DOS on can use a 64 MB RAM Microsoft © Windows NT 4.0 (or perhaps even a Microsoft ® Windows NT 3.51 with a simple miniport display driver) guest. Just make sure that DPMI support is enabled from within its VDM (virtual DOS machine) configuration.
For the Microsoft (MicroFocus) 5.0 compiler, it will be probably necessary to setup (as a bare minimum) the following COBOL compiler & run-time environment variables. This is usually entered at the bottom of AUTOEXEC.BAT (DOS) or AUTOEXEC.NT (Windows NT). The contents should be somewhat similar to:
SET BASE=C:\COBOL
SET COBDIR=%BASE%\BIN
SET INIT=%BASE%\INIT
SET LIB=%BASE%\LIB
SET INCLUDE=%BASE%\SOURCE
SET HELPFILES=%BASE%\HELP
PATH=%BASE%\BIN;%PATH%
SET COBDIR=%BASE%\BIN
SET INIT=%BASE%\INIT
SET LIB=%BASE%\LIB
SET INCLUDE=%BASE%\SOURCE
SET HELPFILES=%BASE%\HELP
PATH=%BASE%\BIN;%PATH%
At this point one should be able to successfully invoke the compiler:
(at least under both DOS 6.22 or Windows NT)
P:\>xcobol
Microsoft (R) COBOL Optimizing Compiler Version 5.0
COBOL software by Micro Focus
Copyright (C) Microsoft ... 1984,1993. All rights reserved.
Copyright (C) Micro Focus Ltd. 1984,1993. All rights reserved.
...
Microsoft (R) COBOL Optimizing Compiler Version 5.0
COBOL software by Micro Focus
Copyright (C) Microsoft ... 1984,1993. All rights reserved.
Copyright (C) Micro Focus Ltd. 1984,1993. All rights reserved.
...
Of course using Microsoft © software licensed from MicroFocus © ISV on Intel © platforms isn't the only way of getting a quite reasonable lab environment up and running. At present, one can event count on an emerging open-source project, the GNU COBOL, which relies on GCC, ncurses and a few other libraries for advanced file handling operations. GNU gives a chance to anyone with a Linux or Unix host to also enjoy some COBOL programming.
By the way, one can even consider a 16-bits IBM ® OS/2 1.30.2 (or Microsoft ® OS/2 1.30.1) as interesting alternatives as well. In this case it will be necessary to use Microsoft © COBOL 4.5. Anyway, I won't get into further detail (as there may be too many) about these options because otherwise this post would become excessively long and I believe I've already made my point. But I'll just say that it seems easier to install OS/2 on top of VirtualBox than it may be on Virtual PC and that it may be a good idea to consider ArcaOS (a more up to date OS/2 derivative).
Naturally, for real business, things get quite more complicated. Fortunately, please(!), that's absolutely not the case here. And I mean no copyright infringements at all. I think it's important to state clear this disclaimer or safe harbour because these tools have been and still are cable of carrying out serious business. These software have always being a remarkable piece of engineering on their own.
