P.B. Bear's Birthday Party (DK Multimedia, 1995) \ VOGONS

P.B. Bear's Birthday Party (DK Multimedia, 1995)

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First post, by ec5778

Posted on 2018-01-28, 22:35

ec5778 Offline

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Hello

I've been trying very hard to get a very old Dorling Kindersley title working. It's called P.B. Bear's Birthday Party although there is a series of similar titles and it's likely that they all use similar technology and will be equally difficult to get working. Was published in 1995 for Windows 3.1 and also works on Windows 95 as far as I recall.

A few pointers and information on what I've tried. I have Windows 10 and Ubuntu 17.10 available to me.

1. Although it's not Windows - Wine. Installs beautifully in a 32-bit wine environment (even on a 64-bit host OS) but couldn't get it to work and have filed a bug report.

2. Windows 10. No chance because 64-bit versions of Windows don't support 16-bit Windows applications.

3. Dosbox + Windows 3.1/3.11. In theory this should work but fails to install

4. Windows Vista/7 [presumably it would have to be 32-bit]. Tried briefly under a Windows 7 virtual machine and failed, but that was before I found out about the patch mentioned below. (Nevertheless, according to the publishers of the patch it is only for XP and doesn't work under Windows 7).

5. Windows XP (32-bit, inside Oracle VirtualBox VM). Works with a patch

6. Windows 95/98/ME - I'd guess it would work but haven't tried.

Hope this saves someone the time I've spent figuring all this out.

Reply 1 of 5, by squiggly

Posted on 2018-01-28, 22:55

squiggly Offline

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> 6. Windows 95/98/ME - I'd guess it would work but haven't tried.

You realize this is a forum where this would have been the first option to try? Retro computing means playing old games on retro computers, not friggin Wine.

Reply 2 of 5, by DosFreak

Posted on 2018-01-28, 23:14

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If you think it's a filesystem issue then you can install your game in an image and boot in it DOSBox.
Also it's unclear if you tested with DOSBox or DOSBox-x. We only accept bugs reports for DOSBox.

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Reply 3 of 5, by ec5778

Posted on 2018-01-28, 23:58

ec5778 Offline

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squiggly wrote:
> 6. Windows 95/98/ME - I'd guess it would work but haven't tried.

You realize this is a forum where this would have been the first option to try? Retro computing means playing old games on retro computers, not friggin Wine.

I came here because I had tried it in Dosbox and thought this was a Dosbox forum. Then before I posted my message I saw this section which was more generic than just Dosbox so I thought I'd list everything I'd tried. I just listed it in the order I tried it because that was what was most convenient for me at the time. Plus having it on a forum - any forum - is useful as it means it can be found by Google, though I accept that's not an excuse for random irrelevant/off-topic posts.

As for Win9x being the first option to try - I didn't try it because I didn't have it available. I don't have any computers available which are running Windows 9x hence I tried the path of least resistance which for me meant emulation options first.

Please accept my apologies if I've misunderstood the nature of this forum. Maybe I misunderstood what the sticky post meant? I thought this was about trying to get old games to run on new computers/OSes. I don't have any retro hardware accessible unfortunately.

DosFreak wrote:
If you think it's a filesystem issue then you can install your game in an image and boot in it DOSBox.
Also it's unclear if you tested with DOSBox or DOSBox-x. We only accept bugs reports for DOSBox.

I tested in the original Dosbox. It just so happens that the only way I discovered that Dosbox doesn't support file attributes was because of that link which happened to be at Dosbox-x's site but I assume that the actual issue (i.e. lack of support for file attributes) is equally valid in both cases.

Not sure how I would install the game "in an image"? What sort of image?

Reply 4 of 5, by gdjacobs

Posted on 2018-01-29, 00:48

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squiggly wrote:
> 6. Windows 95/98/ME - I'd guess it would work but haven't tried.

You realize this is a forum where this would have been the first option to try? Retro computing means playing old games on retro computers, not friggin Wine.

Actually, this is VOGONS which stands for Very Old Games on New Systems. It was originally for people who want to improve the compatibility of their current hardware. If Wine is a good pathway to compatibility, it's absolutely in bounds.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 5 of 5, by collector

Posted on 2018-01-29, 01:23

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squiggly wrote:
> 6. Windows 95/98/ME - I'd guess it would work but haven't tried.

You realize this is a forum where this would have been the first option to try? Retro computing means playing old games on retro computers, not friggin Wine.

Read Qbix's stickied post at the top of this forum.

This forum is for running old windows games on NEW (supported) versions of Windows

Marvin is for using old hardware.

The Sierra Help Pages -- New Sierra Game Installers -- Sierra Game Patches -- New Non-Sierra Game Installers

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