Having given up on the gcc 2.95.2, I tried xlC

>xlC -v
exec: /usr/bin/pg(/usr/bin/pg,/usr/lib/nls/msg/en_US/vacpp.help,NULL)
VisualAge C++ Professional / C for AIX Compiler, Version 5

surprisingly, most of the code actually compiled except for the following:

ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: TypeBase::MAXLINELENGTH
ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: TypeBase::BLANKSPACE

however, it is defined in the .h file. As a work around, I put the actual values in place of the constant names and sure enough, it compiled.

regarding static variables definitions in the .h file, am I using something that was not ansi standard back then?

#ifndef CARDTYPES_H_
#define CARDTYPES_H_

using namespace std;

class TypeBase
{
private:
bool shortFormat;
string entireLine;
long fieldWidth;
int dataFieldSortingIndex;
public:
void setFieldWidth(string & data);
string mergeLines(list<string> &);
string name;
static const long MAXLINELENGTH = 80;
static const long BLANKSPACE = -99999;
friend class TypeCELAS1;