I have to redo an app written in gwbasic. I would like to view the old
code.
I have tried to load it into gwbasic and type "List" it say ok but
nothing appears.

I thought I would try to open it in qbasic. From what I have read to
read the file it needs to be saved from binary format to ascii. I have
tried to load the file into GwBasic and then save the file like this

save "filename.bas",a <press enter key>

All this does it clear the contents. The 33kb file is now 1kb.

The only other option I can find is to open it in Visual Basic Version
2.0 or 3.0. But I do not have access to an older version of Visual
Basic.

Any suggestions?

Having just done this for a friend, redirect your GWBASIC output to a
textfile and then use "list". Exit with "system". Edit your textfile
to remove the top and bottom commands and you have left the line
numbered GWBASIC program. Most of the GW commands also run in QBASIC.
You can run the program to see what needs to be changed. I was lucky,
no command changes were needed.

  ----------------------------------------

  Your program may have been saved in "protected"
mode. If so, the following will un-protect it.

  Caution - Copy the program to another name in case
                   something goes wrong.

 1. run GWBASIC.
 2. LOAD the protected program.
 3. Type NEW and hit return.
 4. Type 0'* (The * should actually be ALT-15). So that's
       zero, apostrophe, ALT-15) and hit return.
 5. You can now LIST and SAVE the file normally.

 I got this a long time ago from somebody else. Thanks to him.

      Jack

First two related BASIC knowhow articles written by myself:

Migrating old programs to newer BASIC versions:
http://dreael.catty.ch/Deutsch/BASIC-Knowhow-Ecke/MigrationProgramme....

Save an old BASIC program as ASCII:
http://dreael.catty.ch/Deutsch/BASIC-Knowhow-Ecke/VerwendungCompiler....

The program is probably stored in the protected file format, i.e.

SAVE "myprog",p

was used early. There are several tools and documented ways in the Internet
to unprotect a GWBASIC program, so I would do a search in the Usenet
archives at http://groups.google.com/

Another possibility could be the use of QB45's binary file format. Note: You
need the QuickBASIC compiler, not the QBasic interpreter shipped with MS-DOS
5.x/6.x and \TOOLS\OLDMSDOS on the Windows 95/98 installation CD-ROM.

How to get QB45: Legal way: http://www.ebay.com/ and buy a licence as second
hand. Illegal way: Use a search engine like http://www.altavista.com and
type "qb45.zip" as term. This question was discussed here very often in the
past (very large threads!)... A German Web site author I know declares QB45
as abandoned software so he put a download link on his page at
http://www.qbasic.de but the law sticklers have a very different opinion...
;-) Note: I don't hope that these discussions will start again like a fire
after this posting... ;-)

       Andreas