Well, I tired copying the whole CD to an XP folder, and that got me a little farther. But dosbox doesn't seem to accept my mouse and besides, the first screen of the install is cut off in the middle so even if the mouse was available I wouldn't be able to click the appropriate button.

DosBOX does not support 486/Protected Mode games. Period. (uh, now. *cough,ahhem,Harekiet* 😉) I'm not sure what your problem is. You say "...MOM won't even install in XP" but there are a bunch of others that have been able to get it to install (and even work) fine in that OS. What is occurring? Does it give you an error? A warning? A black screen? ANYTHING? If you don't tell us the symptoms, we can't help you.

I have the floppy ver of the game which works fine in Dosbox for me.

It also works in 2K fine but in XP you'll have to remove DOSX for it to load.

I get half the installation scren in the dosbox window. The buttons that I need to click are not on the screen. Further, dosbox seems not to recognize my mouse. As soon as I click anywhere inside dosbox, the pointer goes away and doesn't come back until I hit Alt-Tab or Ctl-Escape to get back to XP.

hit ctrl F10
But I think the game relies on dosbox to draw the cursor and I'm not sure wether that was allready implemted on 0.56
it is in the current CVS

That gets the mouse pointer back for a moment.

Actually, I do get the mouse long enough to click <Install Game>. It desappears after that.

But since the window is too short to see the buttons that come in the next screen, I'd be stuck even if I had a pointer. Dragging the edge of the window will let me magnify what's on the screen, but dosbox is insisting on a fixed aspect ratio and show no more and no less of the install screen regardless of the size of the window.

That aspect ratio, BTW is not 4:3. It's almost 4:1. I don't have that problem before I start the install program. It's something about the interaction of dosbox with the program.

yeah more installers suffer from that problem
they set 40x25 instead of 80x25 somehow.

You could try to install it from xp and run from dosbox.

Unfortunately, I can't install it from XP. In XP I can't even click on the first button. The install screen comes up by my mouse will neither click nor move.

I tried runing the game without going through the install process. I had already copied the whole CD to directory on my hard drive, so I ran magic.com from that directory. I had already mouted the CD as D in dosbox. But when I ran magic, I got the message

File-> findcd.c, Line-> 56
Could not locate CD

So I think the copy protection (as well as the installer) is incompatable with dosbox.

Did you try going into a full-screen within XP? How about using the arrow keys on your keyboard and/or [TAB]?

Within XP the installer already comes up full screen. But no controls work. No mouse, no keyboard. So I guess the mouse freeze is just a symptom. Sorry I didn't realize that earlier.

The keyboard does work to Ctl-Escape or Alt-Tab out of the cmd window. It's only in the cmd/installer that I'm frozen.

Okay, conversely, did you try hitting Alt+Enter to put the installer in a WINDOW and then try using your keyboard?

I hadn't tried that. Didn't know about it. But it doesn't work.

Alt-Enter momentarily starts to create a window. Then it kicks me temporarily out of the cmd/installer application altogether. When I go back to the cmd/application 'window' it is still the same stuck full screen.

*uhh*...heh...there's a new one.

Anyone else care to take a stab at it? Someone that has it and has gotten it installed, preferably?

But this is really a side issue. If I recall correctly, all the Microprose installer does is copy files. I've copied them manually. The game still won't run because it can't find the CD. (Go up 6 posts). Dosbox has the CD in drive D, but the game running under dosbox doesn't. Unless we can get the copy protection to let me play the game in dosbox, worrying about the installer won't help me.

.cfg file, perhaps?

Okay I tried somethings.

The install screen is oke in dosbox 0.55 (you still can't do a thing but at least the ratio is allright)

The game can be run in dosbox 0.56 and 0.55. Only in 0.55 you can see the names of the game you save. In 0.56 they exist only the database is not updated. (you can load them if you know where you saved them).

The game is fully playable

I download this game from http://www.the-underdogs.org
at the letter M

Qbix

Ps: 0.56.2 has a working mousepointer in the install although screen is still halved. Guess that will be status of the cvs as well as the vga isn't updated lately.

Thank you. The downloaded version is much more friendly. The installer runs in XP (though I see what you mean that it doesn't do anything) and the game runs in dosbox. The CD version, which I bought on Ebay is obsolete, I guess.

Anyway thanks Qbix and Snover for getting me going.