(of computer hardware or software) able to be used with an older piece of hardware or software without special adaptation or modification.
Example sentencesExamples
The new specification is backward-compatible with FireWire 400, though it will need a special adapter to connect.
The handheld is also backward-compatible with approximately 1,000 games released for the 14-year-old platform.
Is it important that your documents be backward-compatible with older or specialized browsing environments?
Even if there wasn't the demand for games to be backwards-compatible, it sends out a strong message: ‘We don't care about Japan’.
Technically the only thing harder than making a new optical storage device is making it backward-compatible with something else.
All of the major tape suppliers have committed to standards and backward-compatible roadmaps that will ensure devices and software will be available that can read the tapes that are created today.
Be backward-compatible with all existing user-defined classes and extension objects that emulate sequences and mappings.
While all these standards are backward-compatible, your speed will be that of the slowest component.
Storage customers understand that pure speed and the latest features are worth little if these new technologies are too difficult to implement or are not backward-compatible with legacy products.
A book is guaranteed to be backwards-compatible.
We do make every attempt to fix security vulnerabilities as soon as possible, but some problems are harder than others to address, and harder to address in such a way that the fix is backwards-compatible.
It doesn't try to do everything - just the most important - and its backward-compatible language and scalable format give us net-centric value at a reasonable cost.
We announced 12 more we're going to put up on the cluster of satellites where all the other services are, thus making it backward-compatible to our installed base.
So, until such time as they can field a backwards-compatible fix, they're going to hope no one else discovers it.
Each new standard has been fully backward-compatible.
Derivatives
backwards compatibility
noun
The backwards compatibility and mature interoperability make this easy to implement.
Example sentencesExamples
A lack of backwards compatibility also angered thousands of users and many vowed to use competing products.
We want to continue to provide one generation of backwards compatibility, but at some point you are going to hit the limit of the technology.
The backwards compatibility is another winning feature for this machine.
In addition to DVD-R and DVD-RW, it can write CD-R and CD-RW discs, providing backwards compatibility.