leileilol wrote:

Anyone know of any? Preferably free to use or freeware and with a disk spanning feature and interface...

If you can dig up a copy of id Software's old "DeIce" installer, someone many years ago created a small 'packager' for it simply called "Ice". id Software's installers were nothing but a spanned self-extracting ZIP file (for their old DOS games such as DOOM, Hexen, Heretic, etc.), so's all you have to do is to ZIP the files up, convert to a self-extracting EXE, and then split it up (if it requires more than one floppy).

IIRC, the "Ice" utility wouldn't ZIP or created the self-extracting EXE, bit it would split it up to floppy size. Been a while, so my memory may be hazy though.

(edit) Just dug 'em up from on old hard drive of mine, ZIP attached 😀

Just curious - I have the original Emergency Room PC Game (DOS) that comes on a CD and everytime I try to install it into DOSbox, it freezes up when the installer gets to the CD Speed Check - might this DOS-based install creators get me past this game's CD Speed Check, and thus I'll get the game installed successfully in DOSbox?

Kelly Stiver wrote:

Just curious - I have the original Emergency Room PC Game (DOS) that comes on a CD and everytime I try to install it into DOSbox, it freezes up when the installer gets to the CD Speed Check - might this DOS-based install creators get me past this game's CD Speed Check, and thus I'll get the game installed successfully in DOSbox?

Dunno about any of the others, but I kind of doubt that what I posted would do the trick. DE-Ice (and Ice) simply use a self-extracting ZIP file to do it's magic, and the original ZIP simply contains all of the original files for the game/program... basically it's copying files from one location to another (unzipping them from a floppy to your hard drive), and one could just as easily copy files from a CD over to their hard drive... which I don't think would work for the game you mentioned (especially if it does some sort of CD speed check).

ICE requires inserting of ACTUAL FLOPPIES to make installers? I don't even have a floppy drive (or any clean floppies)!

@leileilol:

I was searching for something similar back in the days, all I could find was some shareware installers... I did also try to hack De-Ice myself 🤣!
Alas, nothing of value was found ...

@rfnagel: ICE eh? seems good... 😁

You could always just do a multi-part RAR or ARJ archive and put the dearchiver program and a BAT file on the first disk.

leileilol wrote:

ICE requires inserting of ACTUAL FLOPPIES to make installers? I don't even have a floppy drive (or any clean floppies)!

Apparently so. I didnt' remember that it required an actual floopy drive to do it's thing. Nevertheless, you can still create a DOS self-extracting archive (e.g. using PKWare's ZIP2EXE), and then manually create the ".DAT" file for DeIce (based on the info in DeIce's readme).

What is the source media that you wish to create the DOS installer for (I assumed that you were targeting floppies, as you requested a spanning feature)?

P.S. For creating De-Ice's ".DAT" files; if you have any of the original install floppies for any of id Software's older stuff (DOOM/Heretic/Hexen/Quake 1/etc...), you can have a look at their install ".DAT" files for an example. :doh: I just remembered that you said you didn't have a floppy drive 'tho.

Has it not been established at this point that Virtual Floppy Drive is the best solution for the floppyless?
http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html