WolverineDK wrote:

HunterZ: isn't it great to re-remember stuff ? It is no wonder why I want to have a triple boot on my minipc comprising of XP Home (English) already installed, and then I want Lubuntu and Freedos on the same little fellow.

Heh! Tell me about it! I once had a system with multiple OSs (though not as varied as yours) - Win95c + Win98SE + Win2k + MS-DOS 6.22 + MS-DOS 5 scattered between 2 hard drives. The worst part is the partitioning! It's a nightmare!

In my previous laptop, - Dell Inspiron 6400 - I even installed OSX Leopard beside Win Vista 64-bit - just tried since I read about this laptop being able to install without much hardware alteration (in fact, none). It was an adventure, but I'm more into Windows, mostly due to beng more familiar. 😀

I thought about installing OSX on my Dell XPS M1730 laptop because it has similar hardware to my wife's Macbook Pro, but I realized that I just don't have any use for OSX (other than as a development platform for my jailbroken 2nd-gen iPod Touch I guess).

ddrescue seems to have successfully pulled off everything but the copy protection sector for Arkanoid 2: Revenge of DoH. DOSBox is able to mount the image and install it to the mounted C drive, but of course the game refuses to run due to the copy protection. Unfortunately I can't find any old unprotecting software that knows about it; one of them thinks it knows what type of copy protection is in use but wants the original floppy to try to figure out how to unprotect it, so I have to decide whether to try running that under FreeDOS or just grabbing an abandonware copy for use with DOSBox.

Cabal also dumps straight back to the DOS prompt when I try to run it in DOSBox, although I haven't tested it under FreeDOS to verify that the original disks still work. This happens regardless of whether I try to run it from the mounted image of disk 1, or from a copy on the virtual C: drive. This one seems to be even more obscure as far as unprotecting software is concerned.

ddrescue is currently chunking loudly away at my Ms. Pac-Man booter disk. It has so far pulled 162816B from the 360KB floppy, but the "bad" areas seem to be evenly distributed across the disk. I'm not sure if booters can even be ripped by a standard drive, although it seems it should be possible since a standard drive can boot them? It's almost as if they only put half as many sectors on the disk, or only used one side or something.

I wish I could find my Rasterscan disk, because I distinctly remember it being a booter that showed up as a readable but "empty" floppy disk in MS-DOS, and I remember being able to make a working copy using the standard DOS disk copying tool (DISKCOPY or whatever). Maybe it will turn up in the two boxes of 5.25" non-commercial floppies I have in the garage.

Could you make a list of the games requiring copy protection? Would probably be good info for the compatibility list or for future copy protection support in DOSBox

Yeah, I'll make note of that.

Anyone know if there's some way to image only one side of a floppy disk? It really looks like Ms. Pac-Man is only using one side of the disk or something. I tried booting the ddrescue image in DOSBox and DOSBox just froze.

I also tried getting Hyperspeed to work from my floppy images, but ran into all the problems in this thread: Hyperspeed in DOSBox? - specifically, I have to run the installer in order for HYPERSPD.EXE (or .BAT or .COM or whatever it is) to be generated, but the installer freezes after requesting that I insert Disk A. I tried with both IMGMOUNT and ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver (which mounts it to a drive letter in Win7 x64; the disk's proper label shows up in the Windows command prompt's DIR command). I'm not sure if it's the label or something else that's causing the problem. I've also tried specifying a label to mount and imgmount via -label, but since DOSBox's DIR does not show labels I don't know if it's properly using the label I♥SPEED001A (that's a heart symbol between I and SPEED). Guess I should install it in FreeDOS on my PIII-550 and then copy the files over to my new desktop for use with DOSBox.

Edit: Was able to unprotect Arkanoid II using NOGUARD and the original disk in FreeDOS. Still need to try it in DOSBox. Also, Ms. Pac-Man booter and Cabal both work on my PIII-550 but not in DOSBox (due to problem imaging Ms. Pac-Man booter and some kind of copy protection on Cabal).

Got Hyperspeed working by copying a working install made from my original disks onto my PIII-550 in FreeDOS. The installer makes you choose between installing MCGA and CGA/EGA/Tandy so I did each separately and put them into separate ZIP archives. Played the MCGA version a bit and found that the MT-32 sound effects sound terrible compared to Adlib, and the music is also slightly worse (surprising). It doesn't use SysEx so it was probably composed for Adlib and ported to MT-32. It also froze reliably at one point both in DOSBox and on my PIII-500 in FreeDOS.

Arkanoid 2 works in DOSBox with the unprotected files. Tested all video modes and sound modes. Found that CMS (Creative Music System aka Game Blaster) mode only has music when using sbtype=gb, but I think someone may have mentioned this. Also runs too fast in some modes, except Tandy which seems a bit on the slow side (both gameplay and music).

Experimented with ripping Top Gun, but the disk is visibly damaged (some creases in and gunk on the disk surface). It was my brother's and he didn't treat it very well over the years. I also have my doubts as to whether the files on it are unmodified (I can't believe how many game disks have both write-enabling notches cut into them *and* no write-protect sticker installed!), so the data on it may no longer be worth saving anyhow. GNU ddrescue found 27 errors on the disk.

I switched to trying the Mitsubishi drive with Top Gun as an excuse to test the drive, as I haven't hooked it up yet since I dug it out of the closet with the Teac. The Mitsubishi is probably older (says 1987 I think) and has a lot more visible electronics and mechanical parts on it, which makes me think it is probably more fragile and potentially in worse condition. The BIOS initially complained that it was the wrong drive type (?) but after a couple of reboots it finally worked. GNU ddrescue was able to read one error that it wasn't able to with the Teac drive, leaving 26 disk errors. Top Gun is a write-off. Oh well, it's available via abandonware too. I'll probably switch back to the Teac drive before ripping any more games just to be safe.

Pole Position II has a sort of postcard-sized manual that I folded and tucked into the disk jacket alongside the disk. I was skimming over it and saw something really neat:

Backing Up Your Disk
We at Mindscape have always made it a point to listen very closely to your suggestions. You objected to copy protection, and we responded by using off-disk protection, passive protection, etc., in order to best address your concerns. Now, we have decided to go one step further: Your copy of MS-DOS Pole Position II is not copy protected in any way!

We feel that we have done our part in giving you, the Mindscape customer, what you've asked for -- high quality software without the inconvenience of copy protection. In return, we ask that you respect the rights of both Mindscape and the people who have worked to bring out this level of quality by not illegally copying and distributing this product. You may feel free to make as many backup copies as you wish for you own use, but you are restricted from passing on the contents of this diskette to another person. Before you use this program, make a backup copy of the disk, or copy the disk to your hard drive. Consult your DOS manual for instructions about how to copy disks. We hope you enjoy Pole Position II, and that you continue to look to Mindscape for the best in computer entertainment.

I also noticed that Hyperspeed has an apology on the in-game doc check screen. Interesting how some companies were more sensitive to customer frustrations with copy protection back then. I always thought that doc checks were annoying because you were screwed if you lost the manual (in fact I did misplace my Hyperspeed manual at least once, as well as my Starflight code wheel, preventing me from playing on multiple occasions), and because it could be defeated via photocopying or hand-copying (anyone remember those black-on-red codebooks that were meant to defeat photocopiers?).

HunterZ wrote:

anyone remember those black-on-red codebooks that were meant to defeat photocopiers?.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had one. As mentioned in the ADG episode half the codes weren't valid. I suggested that the eye strain induced by looking them up might have been an attempt to improve the graphics by contrast. I think the original Terminator game had something similar with square shaped symbols.

Funny you should mention TMNT, as just after I posted that I ripped my original disks for it and TMNT: The Arcade Game. Both of them used that type of doc check, and I lost my manuals so I had to unprotect them using Neverlock. Interestingly, there's only one "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" entry in Neverlock, but it was able to unprotect *both* games when I selected that entry and then pointed it to the corresponding directories!

Also ripped the special 256-color VGA version of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I think my aunt got it bundled with a video card or something; shortly after she gave them to me they ended up getting soaked in rainwater, but they suffered no lasting damage from it other than wrinkles in the labels. As far as running it in DOSBox, I've found that it needs a low cycle count (at least with Adlib), and that its Game Blaster / CMS soundtrack is in stereo. Edit: Looks like LucasArts still has a "486 upgrade" patch for Indy256 on their web site to address the high cycle count crashing, and of course SCUMMVM would not be affected.

I think I've now ripped all of my 5.25" non-Sierra original game disks (other than Rasterscan), including Starflight 1 & 2 which I had forgotten were still in their boxes.

SKARDAVNELNATE wrote:

I think the original Terminator game had something similar with square shaped symbols.

I have a vague memory of this as well. Wish I had kept that game. 😒

Okay, finished ripping the 5.25" original game disks that I have on-hand. List of images attached.

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Remembered some interesting tidbits about my Sierra games:

I had purchased A-10 v1.5, SQ1VGA and QfG1VGA remakes and I think QfG2 directly from Sierra via mail order offers. SQ1VGA was notable for arriving in the box from the original AGI version of SQ1.

I then bought the "EGA" version of the SQ1/SQ2/SQ3 combo pack via retail; the only thing different between the EGA and VGA versions was the SQ1 remake, so I figured it would be better to have both EGA and VGA versions than two copies of the VGA version.

I also noticed that for SQ3 in that combo pack, they used the older beige label style for disks 3-6 and the newer white style for all other SQ game disks in the package.

QfG2 is notable for coming on 10 (ten!) 360KB 5.25" disks. It also supports Sound Blaster for digitized sounds, and I was able to use its Sound Blaster driver files with SQ3 to hear a digitized voice sample of Roger Wilco saying "Where am I?" during the SQ3 intro (something not possible with SQ3's default OPL2-only SB/Adlib drivers). Unfortunately it doesn't come with a driver that allows MT-32 for music and Sound Blaster for digitized sounds at the same time, but such drivers from other games of the same generation will work.

QfG3 is notable for being the first Sierra game I owned that had both EGA and VGA support on the game disks. The EGA driver used Thexder-style high-resolution dithering to simulate greater color depth.

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Spent some time playing with Starflight 1 last night and today. Starflight is special for me because it's the first commercial IBM PC game I owned and the first real RPG I ever played. It's also just a damn good game.

I found that the PC speaker sounds pretty much disappear in DOSBox as the cycle count increases, as the game has a lot of timing issues. I've found that a fixed cycle count of 800-1000 actually runs the game slightly faster than I remember on my 8MHz 286.

I also found that one of the good Starflight web sites has a slick installer package that installs multiple versions of Starflight 1 & 2 integrated with an old version of DOSBox and D-Fend. The most interesting part of that for me was that it includes both the original CGA/Tandy/Hercules version and the CGA/Tandy/Hercules/EGA re-release that I have. I found that neither version has a special Tandy option, but that both will run in Tandy 16 color modes if you pick any of the CGA options (black & white, RGB, composite).

I've heard that the EGA version has some minor bugs, and that it doesn't render fractal terrain the same way (anyone know what people are referring to)? The main thing I've noticed between running in EGA versus any of the other video modes in either of the two game release versions is that the EGA mode is missing a lot of animations; specifically, the comet on the Binary Systems logo screen, the spinning moon/planet on the Starflight title screen, and the Arth spaceport's docking bay doors opening/closing on launch/dock.

I guess this means the best way to play is Tandy mode on the original release version? I can understand the addition of EGA being sub-par, but it's strange that they would add bugs to the game data in the process. At least my EGA version has a cool album-style folding cover 😜

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I plan to go through the non-game/non-original 5.25" disks over Xmas vacation in a couple weeks and do file-level copies of interesting stuff.

Floppy rips and various interesting files are adding up to about 120MB of data so far.

Hehe the SQ3 Soundblaster bug is cute. Still amazed how this never got patched, even in the Steam release of Space Quest Collection...

Back in Germany / Austria there was a computer magazine which at some stage gave you the VGA version of Indiana Jones and the last Crusade. It was the German version though.

I got hanging notes with the CMS version under DOSBox during the catacombs level. Haven't played on my real CMS card yet, just the intro and that works fine.

It's a tough call choosing between adlib and CMS. The nice stereo of CMS is certainly very appealing.

What is the SQ3 Sound Blaster bug?

I tried finding the driver that lets you use MT-32 and Sound Blaster at the same time in QfG2 and SQ3, but I can't seem to locate it (found 2 MTBLAST.DRV drivers that don't work with QfG2; seems they're for newer SCI games). Maybe the QfG or SQ collection/anthology CDs have them, I'll have to check at some point.

Someday I need to run a single character through all of the QfG games, as I've so far only finished QFG1VGA, QFG2EGA and QFG3 with 3 separate ones. I might do QFG1EGA (aka Hero's Quest), then QFG2VGA (the AGD remake), then the rest.

Edit: Forgot to put in my readme.txt that I also ripped a Sierra / Dynamix 1991 demo disk that's basically just a looping slideshow of ads for Willy Beamish, PQ3, LSL5, NOVA 9, Heart of China, Conquests of the Longbow, and Castle of Dr. Brain. I don't think I've ever gotten around to playing a single one of those.