Gramcord use in Windows 10

Duane Erstad, Ph.D. said:

Does anyone still use Gramcord (successfully, with a recent Windows system) or can suggest a source to get around this problem? Again, I've tried the Gramcord site and what they suggest either doesn't work or would cost more money than it would be worth.

Judging by the help on Gramcord's website, I don't think you'll have much joy on 64-bit Windows. http://www.gramcord.org/download.htm#Win7 

Even for 64-bit Windows 7 it requires XP mode, which won't run on Windows 8 or Windows 10. A VM, or Windows 10 32-bit would be only options, I would say.

I used Gramcord up through Windows 7 and then also sadly said goodbye. It served me well.

I use Gramcord in ‌Win 7 Pro. Install Virtual Box.
See:http://www.pcworld.com/article/2139983/compatibility-with-security-how-to-run-windows-xp-in-
a-virtual-machine.html.
Then install XP in Virtual Box. Then install Gramcord in XP. You will need your XP product ID and
also your Gramcord passwords.

It also works for Win 10. So, Gramcord lives on . Paul Miller told me the whole sad story a few years ago as to why the program was never updated after Win XP.

David Griffin said:

Mr. Hahne,

Thanks for your input. I recently began looking into purchasing Gramcord, but I am having no luck with the phone number or email. Then after reading the posts on this page, it almost sounds like Gramcord is at worst defunct or at least incompatible with later versions of windows (I have Windows 10). Then I came upon your post. I guess my question to you is... do you have any idea where one might purchase Gramcord? If I could implement the fix you've described I'd like to find the software. Just asking... Thanks, David

While waiting for Mr Hahne, when you say 'Gramcord', are you looking for the old software per se, or the morphology? (given that Logos has 2 products with Gramcord morphs from GBS)?  

And for a bigger picture:

https://wiki.logos.com/Logos_Morphologies 

Denise said:

While waiting for Mr Hahne, when you say 'Gramcord', are you looking for the old software per se, or the morphology? (given that Logos has 2 products with Gramcord morphs from GBS)?

I assume he wants the Gramcord search software. The only way I know to get Gramcord is through the Gramcord Institute website (gramcord.org). It has been perhaps 3 years since I purchased a group order for an Advanced Greek Grammar class. Keep trying if you get no reply to email or phone. Paul Miller was always slow to respond to inquiries.

An older version of the Gramcord New Testament Greek database was included in some Logos 2 and 3 base packages and is still available on the Logos website.

However, the key to Gramcord is the search engine. The Gramcord software allows the design of searches for complex grammatical constructions much more quickly than a Logos Syntax search. It also searches much more quickly.

The Gramcord Greek NT package with the Gramcord search software costs about the same as the morphologically tagged Gramcord Greek New Testament alone that is available through Logos. If you get the whole Gramcord package, it also allows grammatical searches in the Septuagint and Hebrew Bible.

The closest thing in Logos to the Gramcord search engine is the Morphological Query Editor, which is only available with the Logos Now subscription. It can do perhaps 75% of what Gramcord can do and it has a similar table-based interface for designing searches.

You can successfully run Gramcord on Windows 7 Professional using the XP mode which is built into that version.  It will not run on Win 7 Home.  If you have Win 7 you can upgrade to Professional for a very small amount (I paid about $14 just this month, April 2018) and it works fine.  I had my original Gramcord disk which had all their available Bibles at that time. The download from Gramcord's site only includes the basics with just the AV English version. If you get an "out of memory" type error it is easily fixed. 

Using Gramcord with Win 10 is possible I understand but a whole lot more complex. 

There are some things the Gramcord does extremely well, like complex searches, etc. that I found very usefull.  Also their BDB/Thayers lexicon is more complete than most others. I only wish their USB GNT was current, but tell me which reasonably priced program is?  

Btw, I use the Pro edition of Windows.

BEFORE STARTING THESE INSTRUCTIONS, BE SURE YOU HAVE A LICENSE FOR AT LEAST ONE OF THE GRAMCORD MODULES.

I've been able to get Gramcord up and running under Wine. It complained of not having enough space on my main installation which is Linux Mint 19.1, so I run it in a virtual machine with MX Linux, a lighter distro. If you have an extra computer available which can run Linux, you may want to install MX Linux or a similar light distro on that without the virtual machine. There are a few adjustments one must make to the Gramcord installation to do this. 

Install Wine on your system. In a terminal enter these commands:

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get install wine

Next, create the directory where your Gramcord installation will reside on your Wine drive.

$ mkdir ~/.wine/drive_c/bcs

It will be necessary to establish an environment just big enough to accomodate Gramcord, but not so big as to overtax its capacities. Using an open terminal window create a directory called bin in your user directory (/home/yourusername/). For this, you can use the following commands:

$ cd ~

$ mkdir bin

$ cd bin

Create the file which will initiate your installation of Gramcord under Wine. You may use the following commands in a terminal:

$ featherpad Gramcord           

(Featherpad comes with MX Linux. But you may use any light Notepad-type editor.)

Enter the following three lines (or copy and paste them) in the featherpad or other editor window:

     # Launcher for Gramcord

     cd /home/virtual/.wine/drive_c/bcs

     env -i HOME=$HOME DISPLAY=$DISPLAY WINEPREFIX="/home/yourusername/.wine" wine bcs.exe    #This creates an environment sufficient for BCS-Gramcord, but not so populated that the program runs out of space.

Save the contents of your text editor. The file Gramcord should appear in the directory /home/yourusername/bin . 

Open a terminal window, and enter the following commands which will make the Gramcord file you created in the ~/bin directory executable:

$ cd ~/bin

$ chmod ug+x Gramcord

Have or get a license for any of the Gramcord databases you wish to use. Go to http://www.gramcord.org/download.htm and download the modules which your license entitles you to. (Contacting personnel at Gramcord Org is sometimes difficult, which may be a problem for those wanting to buy a license.) 

Also download bcs.exe . Then go to the folder where the downloads reside (probably /home/yourusername/Downloads). Use the flollowing command in a terminal:

$ cd ~/Downloads

Copy bcs.exe to the bcs directory on your Wine drive.

$ cp bcs.exe ~/.wine/drive_c/bcs/

Make bcs.exe executable on your Linux system by entering the following command in a terminal.

$ chmod ug+x ~/.wine/drive_c/bcs/bcs.exe

Now open your Downloads folder with the Files Manager, and left click on one of the modules you downloaded to start its install procedure as a Wine application. Follow the instructions, entering the password that was provided with your Gramcord license when required. Repeat until all modules have been installed. To get the installer  to complete its work, you may have to change the file ~/.wine/drive_c/bcs/dirchg.exe to Dirchg.exe (try this in a terminal: $ mv ~/.wine/drive_c/bcs/dirchg.exe ~/.wine/drive_c/bcs/Dirchg.exe). Now open a terminal and enter the following:

$ cd ~/bin

$ ./Gramcord

Your Bible Companion Series program should come up, but the windows for some of the modules may be empty. This happens because the databases of the modules are called by the program as having names consisting of all caps whereas the database filenames in the ~/.wine/drive_c/bcs/ directory have only their first letter capitalized. This is no problem with Windows, but in Wine under Linux, the calling name and the name of the file called must coincide in their capitalization. The fix for this is a bit tedious, but effective. Go through the names of the files in the ~/.wine/drive_c/bcs directory, and do the following to all the files which have to do with the databases for the modules (not files which have .exe, .doc. .txt, etc.). Don't worry nothing will be hurt if you add an all-caps link for some non-database file. The following is an example:

First, using the terminal, go the the bcs working directory.

$ cd ~/.wine/drive_c/bcs

Then begin linking the flies in question to be called by a filename in all caps. The ln (link) command makes the original file available through a call for the all caps filename.

 $ ln Asv.dat ASV.DAT

$ ln Bcs.hlp BCS.HLP

$ ln Bdb.dat BDB.DAT

... and so on until all the database files in the directory are linked to be called by names in all caps.

Now, it should work.

You can set the BCS-Gramcord program to be called from a desktop icon. Be sure your link references the Gramcord program in the /home/yourusername/bin directory (i.e. ~/bin) and that it includes no other information.

I don't know if this will post, but I will try. This is more than a year older than the most recent post, but I teach Greek in Pakistan (Forman Christian College)--have been using Gramcord since 1988.  Am still using it, running Oracle VM with Windows XP on a Windows 8.1 system.  It still works fine, so I'm keeping the old laptop just for that.

I tried putting Oracle with Win Xp on my new laptop (Windows 10) for Gramcord--and it worked for a while, but then my new laptop system kept crashing.  I don't know if that was the reason, or not, but after Dell did a factory defaults reset-up, I of course lost all of that.  So I'm keeping that old laptop just for Gramcord purposes. I live and teach in Lahore, Pakistan, at Forman Christian College, and I still love the easy functionality of Gramcord. 

Older than dirt?  No you aren't!  I was at TEDS before D.A. Carson arrived--thesis advisor was Murray Harris, and I graduated in 1973. D. Min. from Columbia Biblical Seminary many years later, but they let me teach Greek here in spite of the lack of a PhD in NT, and I love it (Greek, that is).

I agree that the Logos NA27 with Gramcord module is workable, but complicated, like everything else on Logos (is it just because I'm old?).  Probably it's just that, once you learn to use a program, you don't want to change.  Wish that the Gramcord boys had been able to keep this one going, but Paul Miller should be encouraged that there's probably still a lot of us around, especially in some far-flung corners of the earth!  Blessings