Funky 😀
See if the file is readonly/hidden or something. Do other .exes work?

Other .exe's do work interestingly enough. I don't assume this is a fault with the .exe, however, I could be wrong.

No this is before the .exe is loaded. Did you have a look at the attributes
or file permissions of that .exe file?

Coming from UNIX I'm not entirely sure how DOS checks/modifies file permmisions/attributes from a file.

Is there a chmod, ls -l, or stat equivalent for DOS?

Not inside dosbox, in your host system.

What you could additionally try: in dosbox copy the files into a
different directory, something like
md test
copy *.* test\
and then try running the executable.

1wireless-199-246:~/games/1paga Pavel$ stat -l INSTALL.EXE 
2---x-wsrwt 1 Pavel Pavel 142122 Dec  1 13:02:00 1991 INSTALL.EXE

I did a

1 chmod 777 * 

on the install.exe in the 1paga file, and it seems to work now. My memory is somewhat fuzzy, so I don't particularly know whether or not permissions get preserved through zip files, but according to the stat, I still had permission to run the file....

Thanks,

Pavel

dosbox needs read acces (as it open the executable so it can run the code inside)