With a single xampp installation, you have 2 options:
Run an older PHP version for only the directory of your old project: This will serve the purpose most of the time. You may have one or two old projects that you intend to run with an older PHP version. Just configure xampp to run an older PHP version for only those project directories.
Run an older PHP version on a separate port of xampp: Sometimes you may be upgrading an old project to the latest PHP version and at the same time you need to run the same project back and forth between the new PHP version and the old PHP version. To do this you can set an older PHP version on a different port (say 8056) so when you go to http://localhost/any_project/, xampp runs PHP 7 and when you go to http://localhost:8056/any_project/ xampp runs PHP 5.6.
Run an older PHP version on a virtualhost: You can create a virtualhost like localhost56 to run PHP 5.6 while you can use PHP 7 on localhost.
