You are talking about writing some file(s) to disk, you must mean floppy? Did you mount it as floppy?

[MOVED]

It might be that the game tries to "register" something of the c-drive or tries to write something to it that is not supported by Dosbox. I have a similar issue with the full floppy disk version of Inner Space. The game writes something on the floppy disk when you install it. Whatever it does, it is not working with normal Dosbox.
BUT you can try with an image disk with Dosbox. A guide to this is at Sample usage of a harddisc image in DOSBOX. There on step 6, instead of "boot -l c", just mount your floppy disk as well and try to install the game. If it still complains, make an image of your floppy disk, go to step 6 of that guide and imgmount that floppy image as well and then "boot -l c".

Yes, I mounted the floppy (A: drive) and then installed the program.

This sounds like it might work . . . I'll give it a try.

Or it could be that this registration file is supposed to be hidden, and when the application test for the hidden attribute it gets the wrong answer from DOSBox. AFAIK DOSBox does not honour these attributes.

Edit: Re: Can't Get Global Conquest to run, the horror!

This is EXACTLY what the program does. The reg file is a hidden file. Co you think if I zipped the file, put it in C:\Oldgames and then installed it from there that it would work? Or if I created an image file?

If you have a DOS file with the hidden attribute then DOSBox will still see it. The only way around this currently is to install MS-DOS in DOSBox.

Discussion about a TSR for fixing attributes:

Can't Get Global Conquest to run, the horror!

MiniMax wrote:

Discussion about a TSR for fixing attributes: Can't Get Global Conquest to run, the horror!

Unfortunately that TSR doesn't work for Dragon's Bane (or "Second Guess" for that matter). The TSR looks for the file "$$$steal.me", but after hex editing the TSR to point to Dragon's Bane registration file ("DRAGON.REG"), the game still was unregistered.

I'm not a programmer (so it all looks like 'greek' to me <G>), but (even after hex editing the TSR to point ot the correct file) I think the problem is that the TSR *also* sets the 'system' and 'read-only' file attributes. After testing Dragon's Bane and Second Guess on another (older) PC of mine that didn't require DOSBox to get them to run, I noticed that they also were still unregistered when settin the 'sys' and 'r/o' file attributes for their registration files.

BTW, for Second Guess the file is "GUESS.REG".

That TSR was rather specific to Global Conquest; another one for Elite is more suitable under the circumstances: "Elite" (1987) save/load problem request.

It applied attributes to files with a particular extension (.CDR), but can easily change it to .REG (it is case-sensitive, so might need different case depending on the program). It reported NO attributes (CX=0), but easy to change to hidden (CX=2).

The attached TSR looks for .reg extension, case doesn't matter, and hidden attribute only. Change the attribute bits as necessary if something else is needed.

EDIT: removed non-working version of TSR

Many thanks for the utility ripsaw8080! 😀 Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work. Dragon's Bane (as well as Second Guess) still say that they are unregistered when starting them.

Is there any way to confirm that the REG files are actually being set as 'hidden' under DOSBox? I have W98SE's ATTRIB.EXE in my DOSBox games directory (using DOSbox's "VER SET 7 10" command I can run W98SE's "Attrib" executable to check file attributes), but it still reports that the file is not hidden when viewed under DOSBox and with the TSR loaded.

When I use ATTRIB.EXE from MSDOS 5 or 6 to check the flags in DOSBox, any file with an extension of .REG shows as hidden when the TSR is loaded. Not sure why the one you're using would be any different.

As for it not working for the game, it was a shot in the dark. The game may look for more than just the hidden attribute, so it's a good idea to see what attributes are assigned to the file when installed in the NTVDM. Wouldn't be surprising if it was marked as read-only and archive, for instance. Also, the game may expect some other consequence of the file being hidden that I could only guess at.

rfnagel - you know that you have to run/load that REGFIX *immediately before* you run the game? In the same DOSBox session.

ripsaw8080 wrote:

When I use ATTRIB.EXE from MSDOS 5 or 6 to check the flags in DOSBox, any file with an extension of .REG shows as hidden when the TSR is loaded. Not sure why the one you're using would be any different.

That's really weird. I'll have to try one of the older versions of ATTRIB that I have on another PC.

(edit) Just tried MS-DOS's v6.22 ATTRIB.EXE, and it indeed shows the file having the Hidden attribute set when the TSR is running. A strange thing, Norton Commander (v5.0) doesn't show the file as being hidden (NC normally has a little ASCII checkerboard character next to any files that are tagged has hidden).

ripsaw8080 wrote:

As for it not working for the game, it was a shot in the dark. The game may look for more than just the hidden attribute, so it's a good idea to see what attributes are assigned to the file when installed in the NTVDM. Wouldn't be surprising if it was marked as read-only and archive, for instance.

I tried it under my W98SE PC shelled out of Windows. The file on the floppy is only has the hidden attribute set, and the same for when the game is actually running (I ALT+TABbed back to Windows and had a looksie at at). Actually, the file also has the archive attribute set, but during my experimenting on the W98SE PC, the only thing the game seemed to care about was having the hidden attribute set, and the system attribute not set (it seemed to ignore it if the read-only attribute was set).

MiniMax wrote:

rfnagel - you know that you have to run/load that REGFIX *immediately before* you run the game? In the same DOSBox session.

Yep yep 😀

I downloaded the game in shareware form (v1.2), and it's using FindFirst rather than getting the attributes directly. A bit twistier, but can still work around it. The game will open and read the reg file with the modified TSR that I've attached, but without valid contents, I can't say for sure if it will work 100%... but it's progress. 😀

ripsaw8080 wrote:

I downloaded the game in shareware form (v1.2), and it's using FindFirst rather than getting the attributes directly. A bit twistier, but can still work around it. The game will open and read the reg file with the modified TSR that I've attached, but without valid contents, I can't say for sure if it will work 100%... but it's progress. 😀

U da man, Ripsaw8080! Many thanks, it works like a champ! 😀

Piccy #2 😀

Offtopic:

Nice GIF images, but PNG compression is better than GIF one.

95,4 KB for image one (dragon), 69,7 KB for image two (kids).

BTW, duno if anyone is playing these gems, but I finally decided to get off my arse and upload some of my old creations for the two games ("Dragons Bane: Mah Jongg II" and "Second Guess")... layouts, tileset, background images, and such.

Surf here http://jasonwilliams400com.startlogic.com/sno … e_Mah_Jongg_II/ to snag what ever ya want 😀

Hehe, I remember some of the older DB stuff I had originally uploaded to Nels Anderson's original "Arcanum BBS" (long distance dialup), that was well before Al Gore 'invented the Internet' <G>.