# NQC on Windows

You can download the The "official" Win32 release of NQC posted on the original project website here.

The `nqc-win-3.1-r6.zip` contains the `nqc.exe` needed to compile and upload your programs and RCX firmware.

This is the note to Windows Users from the original README:

NQC is a command line based tool - normally you run it by typing an appropriate command into an MS-DOS window. There is no GUI for it and if you double-click the `nqc.exe` file an MS-DOS console will be created for you, NQC will run within it, then since NQC finishes almost immediately, the entire window will disappear.

Some people prefer command line based tools because they allow you to use the text editor of your choice, etc. It also makes for identical behavior under Windows, Mac, and Linux. In order to use the command line version of NQC you'll need to do two things:

1. Use some sort of text editor (such as Notepad) to edit and save a source file for NQC to compile.

2. From an MS-DOS window type the appropriate NQC command. Its usually best to either put all of your programs and `nqc.exe` in the same directory, or make sure the directory containing NQC is in your command path.

If any of the above seem either too confusing or too tedious, then you may want to try the BricxCC which provides a familiar Windows style GUI on top of the standard NQC compiler. You can download BricxCC here.