Managing MICRODEM

• Update MICRODEM program.  
• For key support databases files, the program will now prompt you to automatically download them when it opens after they have changed.  If you do not download them, you are likely to get a program failure if you run that option, since the name of the file will change because its structure has changed.

If you download the current version of the program  you will undoubtedly encounter bugs (some really severe, but most fairly benign).  You can minimize this by only using the full installs at the USNA site, but even these will have bugs from time to time, and the full install might not be updated very often.  

Update the program backs up the old EXE, so you can restore if the newer version breaks something you need.

Hints to help manage multiple copies of  MICRODEM:

• The program needs essentially every file installed into the directory with the executable.  Some files may be needed only for certain esoteric options, but failure to find files will eventually cause problems if you try putting new EXE files in different directories without copying all the support files.  
• The key version number is the build number like 2016.5.9.x which will change with every build. The build number is the date of compilation, and a sequential number which is probably not very usefule.
• The EXE can be renamed, and multiple EXEs can coexist in the same directory (but each will have its own INI file and default settings). 
• We do not keep backup copies of old EXE files.  We archive the source code daily, so theoretically we could recompile something close to what you have, but to date we have never done that, and are very unlikely to do it.  We have, on occasion, retrieved the source code of a particular module to try to help debug a problem, but normally we cannot just go back to old working code because the bug normally appears with an enhancement and we do not want to throw out all that effort. We will  try to fix any bugs, but it will be only in the current version of the program, with whatever other warts it might have.

Last revision 9/29/2019