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Discworld games - cannot locate CD

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First post, by Jiri

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Thanks for new version 0.60, it is really a big improvement of DOSBox and many games that did not work before run now. But I found strange problem with both Discworld games. Installation works but after that (on first run) they keep saying "Discworld cannot locate the Discworld CD". I tried "mount d e:\ -t cdrom" or "mount d e:\ -t cdrom -usecd 0 -ioctl" without a success (but some other CD-ROM games work flawlessly).

Reply 3 of 30, by Xerxes

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After further testing - System Shock Cd-Ver is actually runable under DosBox 0.60, but it crashes at the beginning of the game with an error. But... under current cvs - Stonekeep WORKS 😁 THANK YOU 😀 (Discworld and SS floppy doesn't).

Reply 5 of 30, by Jiri

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While Under a Killing Moon already works (although slowly) in DOSBox, Pandora Directive seems to be also affected by this. The game install works including sound setup, then "please insert CD 1 in drive" appears, even if CD is inserted in the correctly mounted drive. Can anybody (El-Pusher maybe 😀 ) confirm it?

Reply 6 of 30, by Xelasarg

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Have you tried the -aspi setting when mounting your CD-ROM? That helped with Realms of Arkania 2, which kept asking me for the correct CD before.

my setting: "mount d F:\ -t cdrom -aspi"

Reply 7 of 30, by Jiri

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Xelasarg wrote:

Have you tried the -aspi setting when mounting your CD-ROM?

With this I got "MSCDEX: Failure: path no valid" message. The CD-ROM is accesible (for example dir command and Pandora install works), but when starting Pandora "no CD-ROM available" appears. With Discworld there are no changes.

Reply 8 of 30, by eL_PuSHeR

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I will try installing Discworld 2 later, and will post back. I do not have the other mentioned games, so i cannot test them.

BTW: Did you try installing them first natively?
Sometimes you must install a game out of DOSBox and then using it for running the offending program/game.

Reply 9 of 30, by Jiri

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eL_PuSHeR wrote:

I will try installing Discworld 2 later, and will post back. I do not have the other mentioned games, so i cannot test them.

Good, I am interested in the result. 😀 The other games will maybe try somebody else.

eL_PuSHeR wrote:

Did you try installing them first natively?

Tried Discworld 1 and Pandora.

Reply 11 of 30, by Jiri

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So I´ve tried the HOTU NO-CD versions of Discworld 1 and 2. Both these games work in DOSBox 0.60 - Discworld 1 at perfect and Discworld 2 at reasonable speed. Seems that Discworld 2 rip is completely without sound. If true it is horrible, and I would not recommend playing it with missing music and speech to anybody. I could not get any sound in Discworld 1 but it is there since it works with VDMSound. In all, looks like CD versions of Discworld 1 and 2 should be playable in DOSBox, if "cannot locate CD" problem were solved.

UPDATE: Mount copied CD data as D: or E: drive also did not help with Discworld.

Last edited by Jiri on 2003-10-23, 19:52. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 12 of 30, by Ludomeister

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I too get the same problem trying to run Pandora Directive: the game loads okay (I loaded it both from DOSBox as well as from the command prompt that comes with XP), the configuration works, but when you go to run it you get the aforementioned looping of "Put Disc 1 in CD drive." No amount of -aspi or other arguments seems to help. The regular -t cdrom does work, because DOSBox tells me that the CD drive is loaded ... and the install wouldn't have worked if it hadn't been recognized. So there's something else at work here (or not working, as the case may be 😉 At any rate, it would be great to play this great adventure game again!

Reply 13 of 30, by Jiri

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I remember that FakeCD 1.0 utility for DOS (a program that simulates a CD-ROM drive) had problems with some games which also couldn't find their CD, and Pandora Directive was among them. Then author released a new version of FakeCD with InfoCD utility which solved the problem.
He writes: "This new version will make the emulated cd-drive unwritable so it will really be CD-ROM instead of CD-RAM as 1.0 was. Furthermore it will correctly report the volume label, the amount of free space on the drive (zero) and similiar status values. I hope that the volume label correction will now make those games run that stated they couldn't find their CD."
If anybody is interested in this for studying purposes or wants to play Pandora in DOS without annoying CD switching, I´ve attached FakeCD that works with Pandora. But it will not help in DOSBox since it is utility for pure DOS only. There is the "-label" command in DOSBox and I´ve tried to use it, but either it also cannot help or I´m doing something wrong.

Attachments

  • Filename
    fakecd13.zip
    File size
    12.73 KiB
    Downloads
    891 downloads
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 14 of 30, by eL_PuSHeR

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Tested it. It works without problem even natively (DOS version). Funny enough, windows version doesn't work for me. I think it's using DirectX 2.x and that pisses Direct-X 9 a lot.

EDIT: Forgot to add that i have the two original CDs and not a CD-RIP version.

Reply 15 of 30, by Jiri

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I´ve just tried both Discworld games in the current CVS and... They work!!!
Discworld 1 with Roland MT-32 for Midi music and Gravis for Digital audio works flawlesly (with v1.04 patch). Discworld 2 is rather slow even with increased frameskip/cycles and sound stutters - less with Sound Blaster, much more with Gravis (2.6GHz Celeron). But CD-ROM access problems are gone.

Reply 17 of 30, by Toinette

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Jiri wrote:

I´ve just tried both Discworld games in the current CVS and... They work!!!
Discworld 1 with Roland MT-32 for Midi music and Gravis for Digital audio works flawlesly (with v1.04 patch). Discworld 2 is rather slow even with increased frameskip/cycles and sound stutters - less with Sound Blaster, much more with Gravis (2.6GHz Celeron). But CD-ROM access problems are gone.

Please,please,tell me how did you make the "cannot locate CD" problem (for DW2) go away?

Reply 19 of 30, by Toinette

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No, unfortunately not. I have the HOTU version - music and sound ripped (big sigh!). Anyway, I have put up with that, if only I could make it run.
I have also tried VDMSound with enabled low-level CD-ROM support - and I see the same hateful, hateful sentence: "cannot locate Discworld CD".