Software and hardware requirements

Microsoft .NET requires Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008.

Microsoft Visual Studio requires various operating systems depending on the version of Visual Studio in use. Silverfrost FTN95 Express requires Windows XP or Windows Vista.

Before working through this section you should install the latest version of Microsoft .NET and the latest version of Silverfrost's FTN95 which includes a Fortran 95 compiler, an integrated debugger and a Microsoft Visual Studio integration package or FTN95 Express.

Microsoft Visual Studio is a substantial application that runs very slowly on old hardware. A minimum of a 50 GB hard drive is recommended together with a modern processor and at least 1024 MB of RAM. Your display must be set to a minimum of 800x600 pixels.

After installing FTN95, the Silverfrost logo should be visible on the splash screen when starting Visual Studio. You should also ensure that there is an entry for FTN95 for .NET in the About Microsoft Development Environment dialog obtained from the main Help menu. Part of this dialog is shown below. Depending on the version of Visual Studio in usage or if using FTN95 Express then this dialog may look different.

If integrating with Visual Studio then the 'standard' version of any version is required. FTN95 does not integrate with any of the Microsoft 'Express' line of products, but does come in its own Express version, with Fortran as the only language supported in the environment.

Please note that in the .NET architecture Microsoft configure the CPU to operate at 64-bit precision. This can result in slight numerical differences when FTN95 .NET calculations are compared with Win32 calculations.