Thank you for taking this on. I don't have many games on floppy, but I do have some. Mainly replying so this topic stays on my radar and reminds me to get this info to you.

Here are Kings Quest IV and Falcon A.T. from 3.5"

My floppy collection isn't vast, but I'm trying to go through my storage and should have some more somewhere. When I find them I'll post. I Also have 5.25" disks, but no way to currently read them. I plan on fixing this, but it may not be super quick.

I really like this idea. A Lot of my older games are later cd re-releases, and just a couple of days ago i was thinking it would be cool to be able to set them up on floppies.

That's a fine idea. I like it! 😁
Do you need folder/file structures only from english game disks or can they be from other languages, too ?
I'm just asking, because they may differ slightly (different date stamps, additional files).

Anyway, I comb through my collection!

Hi, I'm done for now! Sorry, it took so long..
Have fun! ^^

Just seen this. I have a number including the Dooms, F117A, F1GP etc so will upload as soon as I get the chance.

I have quite a few as well. Will post as and when I have the time.

Have you set up what you've received in a public repository yet?

Hi, sounds like a cool project.
Will try to find my USB Floppy drive and help you out with the games I have this weekend.

May I suggest that you include MD5/SHA1 sums? This way you can know if you try to rebuild the floppies with original content or not.
Will of course not count for floppy boot sector etc. so copy protection will fail.

Will contribute once I have moved in about 2 months.

Here's one entry. I have more, will get them to you another time! Thanks for doing this, friend.

Here's one you asked for -- Ultima VI. The disks are not numbered, so it's not obvious which order to use them in without reading the reference card, then reading along during the install.

edit: adding Ultima V. Disk 2 has two savegame files from 1997. The rest of the files are dated 1988. I bought this used, so I'm not sure if the disk originally came with these save files (with a 1988 date) or if the previous owner did not have a hard drive so saved them to the floppy.

edit: adding Knights of the Sky (1990) Microprose.

edit: adding Tie Fighter.

Here is the rest of my floppy collection. It doesn't take long, so I just grabbed them all out of storage and did them in one fell swoop. 😀

Kinda sad I only have the speech pack for Privateer. 🙁 Last summer I visited my mom and went through my old bedroom and these were all the floppies I found.

First 5 of 9

Last 4 of 9

I have a lot of Sierra games on 5.25 inch floppy I will get to you soon. The only problem is I have no way to transfer the txt file from my XT to the new computer to get it to you, so I will have to make the txt files manually. It wont be too bad though as the directories are only small anyway.

If anyone has Rise of The Robots disk 2 directory I would be greatly interested. I have all 14 disks but I am missing disk 2 so knowing which files I need would be great.

I have one question, by having the disk directories, is it possible to recreate the disks with just that info, the reason I ask is because I have the CD version (rerelease) of Ultima VII and the directories are very different from the original disk compared to the cd. It seems they compressed a lot of the files and as it is being installed they get expanded. I could be way off and not understanding what the directory listings are for, but some clarification would be nice. Thanks in advance.

Tommaso72

Hi Tommaso72, thank you for your assistance!
I think the idea behind keenerb's project is to gather information about the original state of those games.
As we know, in the course of time, games were re-relased time and time again, changing slighlty every time.
Be it because of compression utilities like PKLite or LZEXE, or cra.. ahem patches.
And now, after several decades, this reached a point were we know very little about how their condition once was.

The original media, be it 8" floppies from the CP/M era or 5.25" floppies from the times of DOS are almost gone,
with only a few copies left in the hands of collectors or getting dusty in the attics.
So even though younger people and the public have a growing interest in gaming history, they lack the necessary
equipment to read this old media. This dilemma is comparable to VHS and DVD in several ways.

There are a lot of video tapes for sale, but only a few have a VCR at home. So why not using a DVD or Blue-Ray instead ?
Well, that answer is quite simple. Some of these re-releases are only available as "digital remastered",
meaning that the original special effects are long gone and replaced by digital stuff (Star-Trek movies, for example).
And some people don't like that so much. They prefer to experience the original atmosphere, in all it's glory.
Another example would be those material arts movies from the 80s, where the calm and balanced colouring
of the composite recording (NTSC palette) was replaced with vivid, almost garish colours.

And like this, similiar situations occured in the gaming scene. Sometimes a specific version of a game had an unusal feature
(innovation sound, hercules in-colour) or a difference people liked.
So how is this related to simple text files ? Aren't images much better ?
Images are great, no question. But the problem is you can't get them on Steam or GoG.
Besides, some people already have those games but don't know which version they have got
(such information is usually written on the original disc they don't have) or want to play them on vintage hardware,
which is -ironically- lacking the media or drives of that time (they use floppy emulators as a substitute, for example).

And this is the where these text files come into play..
These directory listings can help to understand how these games once were played, installed, when they were released
and whether they were modified or not.

While listings are better than nothing, I feel this project would be a lot more useful with CRCs for the files and disk image.

Yes, absolutely, this would be a good idea. So why not both ?
What I like about the listings is that they also mention the labels, though.
Some installation routines are checking for a specific string ("DISK1","DISK2")
and sometimes they also look for empty files in the same manner (DISK1.,DISK2.)

Or in case of Starflight, someone has to have separate disk sets, one for the game and one for the save state.:
Hints for Floppy Disk Users: You must copy the Starflight disks before you
begin playing a game. You will need four blank disks. Use the DOS DISKCOPY
command to make copies of both the Starflight A disk and the Starflight B
Disks. Label these disks PLAYA and PLAYB. Label the remaining two disks
SAVEA and SAVEB.
But which files belong to PLAYA and PLAYB ? If I have the original disks or an image, that's no problem.
However, what todo when I got that game from GoG as a re-release and want to play it on my original hardware instead,
like a 5150, a Tandy, a Euro PC or a very old laptop which only has a floppy drive by default ?
That game can also be played from a fixed disk, so its unlikely they bothered to separate the content of both disks.
Thanks to those directory listings I know where each file has to be..
- Of course, that's a little bit far-fetched. There are only a few files in Starflight, so anyone can figure out himself quickly..

But I agree, some CRC data would also be cool. For certain games this could be quite useful.
Like Lemmings, for example. It has a file (russell.dat) which acts as some kind of protection.
It tries to modify that file on every start and then checks whether that file has changed.
If it has, the game won't start. A workaround was to set a read-only attribute, as discussed here.
And a CRC could definitely help to know in which state that file is.

bjt wrote:

While listings are better than nothing, I feel this project would be a lot more useful with CRCs for the files and disk image.

This issue with this is copyright. If someone were to decide to include disk images in such a project, it couldn't happen on Vogons, unless the game was verifiably released as freeware.

Not the disk image itself, just the CRC/hash of it - to enable people to verify if their disks are unaltered.