I'll check if I have access to it when I get home.

As for removing and putting the sticker on a new floppy, a hair dryer used to remelt the adhesive works very well for removing tape and stickers.

Oh, that is great advice! I think I'll try it on some disks with lower nostalgic value first!

Also you can try Roadkil's Unstoppable Copier. http://www.roadkil.net/program.php/P29/Unstoppable%20Copier

If you haven't already, you might want to inspect the surface of the disc for any visible dirt, scratches, etc. I've returned a number of old games to readable by cleaning detritus off the disk surface. IMO it's a good idea to check out old disks anyway; dirt + read heads = a potential bad day.

EA did release SimCity 2000 Special Edition for free in 2014.
http://www.highpants.net/free-game-alert-ea-g … r-simcity-2000/

Edit - removed the links just in case since the OP got the files needed.

@collector, I tried it, but it sadly didn't make any difference. Then I what what Silanda suggested and indeed found a tiny spot on the surface that looks quite suspicious, I tried to remove it with alcohol and a cotton swab, but didn't have success. It looks like a tiny damaged spot on the disk. I wonder if that is some kind of copy protection which has degraded and now made the whole file unreadable.

I also tried a second floppy drive, same result.

I confirmed that it's only the one file. Unstoppable Copier just reported everything after that first read error as unreadable. In the installer I was able to just ignore the error 5 times and the installation succeeded. I am not confident that it'll run correctly, though. (Edit: no, it makes my computer reboot!)

Thanks for the disk images, cyclone3d, They seem to be my best bet, sadly. At least I found some other floppy disks with the same color and markings as the original one. So if I can get this working and can replace the label, it'll look like new.

Thanks for all the help, guys. I already like this place! 😀

rnlf wrote:

I tried to remove it with alcohol and a cotton swab, but didn't have success. It looks like a tiny damaged spot on the disk. I wonder if that is some kind of copy protection which has degraded and now made the whole file unreadable.

While copy protection methods along those lines are not unknown, they are very rare, especially in a game as "new" and as common as SimCity 2000. I expect such methods would be difficult to replicate reliably and would tend to degrade. See http://www.oldskool.org/shrines/lbd/ .

Going after the surface of a floppy disk with alcohol and a cotton swab, or indeed pretty much anything, is probably a very bad idea.

cyclone3d wrote:

I am guessing it is ok since EA gave it away for free.

Not really. That was a limited-time giveaway and it is still very much for sale on GOG and elsewhere.

Jorpho wrote:

Going after the surface of a floppy disk with alcohol and a cotton swab, or indeed pretty much anything, is probably a very bad idea.

It was kinda my last resort. The disk was unreadable anyway. 😵

Success! By making a copy of the broken disk and replacing the one unreadable file with the one I got from cyclone3d I was able to recreate the correct version of the game. Even the menus and all are still in the correct language. Not that I wouldn't like to play in English, but it says "German" on the box, so the content should be German, too.

Thanks so much for your help!

Edit: It does indeed work, except for one thing: The text encoding in the menu and newspaper are wrong. German special characters are not displayed correctly and the newspaper articles are completely unreadable junk. So if someone can provide the sc2dat._ from the original German release, I'd be super thrilled!

Jorpho wrote:

rnlf wrote:

Going after the surface of a floppy disk with alcohol and a cotton swab, or indeed pretty much anything, is probably a very bad idea.

I personally use breath and a soft lint free cloth, and it's worked fine every time. I'm more cautious about using any solvents unless the disk is worthless. You may initially get extra read errors, so you have to be somewhat persistent as you can move dirt around while cleaning through the small window, but getting all the contamination off can revive disks. There's nothing to lose if you can't read a disk any other way, and IMO a bigger risk is transferring crud from a dirty disk to the read head, which could go on to be transferred to, or even scratch, other disks.

I think I'll retry with a cloth. I might be have more luck with that. So far I've mostly given up on that floppy, so even trying more dangerous things are an option for me...

The only thing I'd be careful of is if the spot looks like some of the magnetic coating is missing. In that case, cleaning probably won't help.

I cannot believe it!

I tried it with a cloth, rubbed the suspicious spot with a bit more pressure - I thought the disk was dead anyway, so I didn't have anything to loose. Suddenly, the spot is gone. I put the disk into the drive,

1A:\>copy sc2dat._ c:
2        1 file(s) copied
3
4A:\>_

😲 😲 😲

Copied the file to a copy of the original disk (in which I had used the English sc2dat._), tried to install and ... WORKS!

Let me tell you something, today was the first day I had to work after my vacation and it's still officially the best day of the week!

Thanks so much for all your suggestions. <3

rnlf wrote:

I cannot believe it! […]
Show full quote

I cannot believe it!

I tried it with a cloth, rubbed the suspicious spot with a bit more pressure - I thought the disk was dead anyway, so I didn't have anything to loose. Suddenly, the spot is gone. I put the disk into the drive,

Copy code to clipboard

1A:\>copy sc2dat._ c:
2        1 file(s) copied
3
4A:\>_

😲 😲 😲

Copied the file to a copy of the original disk (in which I had used the English sc2dat._), tried to install and ... WORKS!

Let me tell you something, today was the first day I had to work after my vacation and it's still officially the best day of the week!

Thanks so much for all your suggestions. <3

Awesome! Make images of those disks right away!

And you can probably get access to the Betaarchive.com ftp if you upload and submit for ftp access. (They don't just have betas). They basically archive all kinds of old software. That way, if you ever have something like that happen again to another piece of software, you can get a backup image from them.

cyclone3d wrote:

rnlf wrote:

I cannot believe it! […]
Show full quote

I cannot believe it!

I tried it with a cloth, rubbed the suspicious spot with a bit more pressure - I thought the disk was dead anyway, so I didn't have anything to loose. Suddenly, the spot is gone. I put the disk into the drive,

Copy code to clipboard

1A:\>copy sc2dat._ c:
2        1 file(s) copied
3
4A:\>_

😲 😲 😲

Copied the file to a copy of the original disk (in which I had used the English sc2dat._), tried to install and ... WORKS!

Let me tell you something, today was the first day I had to work after my vacation and it's still officially the best day of the week!

Thanks so much for all your suggestions. <3

Awesome! Make images of those disks right away!

And you can probably get access to the Betaarchive.com ftp if you upload and submit for ftp access. (They don't just have betas). They basically archive all kinds of old software. That way, if you ever have something like that happen again to another piece of software, you can get a backup image from them.

Please keep this kind of talk outside of VOGONS.

Thread closed.