It will be hard. You can boot real DOS inside DOSBox. then you will have all the utilities.

I remember that the LUCAS ARTS game "Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe" SWOTL had this requirement. So I put a copy of the DOS 6.22 utilities APPEND.EXE, JOIN.EXE, and SUBST.EXE in the \DOSUTILS sub-directory in the directory structure listed below:

1C:\DOSGAMES\LUCAS\
2                 \DOSUTILS\
3                 \SWOTL\
4                       \AC
5                       \AIRWARID
6                       \CM
7                       \CP
8                       \EMPTY\
9                             \TEST
10                       \FE
11                       \FX
12                       \HF
13                       \MIS

The SWOTL game batch files or executables never used the utilities under DOSBOX, however they did wish them there in that dedicated sub-directory "DOSUTILS".

Hope this is similar,

dvwjr

Freedos executables might work as well then.

*scratches head*

Sooooooo confused right now. If I boot to real DOS or FreeDOS in DOSBox, install the games, then boot to a normal DOSBox prompt, do you think that'll get things to work?

Thanks for your help, folks. 😀

No, judging dvwjr's info you just put those .exe files into that directory, so no dos booting needed.

Placing the files in C:\, C:\DOS or C:\DOSUTILS doesn't work. Well, the FreeDOS Append.exe, it doesn't seem to have join.exe or subst.exe...

(I downloaded the 8MB iso from the site, extracted Append.exe and placed it in those folders, nothing seemed to work.)

Kit - you need to put those extra utilities in a directory that is mentioned in your (DOSBox) PATH (which usually only contains Z:\). So

mkdir C:\DOSUTILS
PATH=%PATH%;C:\DOSUTILS

and then re-try the install.

Just replicate that append.exe and name it subst.exe and join.exe so you
"have" those three available, hope that the game doesn't use them.

Kit Silva wrote:

*scratches head*

Sooooooo confused right now. If I boot to real DOS or FreeDOS in DOSBox, install the games, then boot to a normal DOSBox prompt, do you think that'll get things to work?

Thanks for your help, folks. 😀

In the SWOTL case above, the '\DOSUTILS' sub-directory had to be UNDER the \LUCAS sub-directory. The game code was hard-coded in the DOSSPATH.DAT file located in the .\LUCAS sub-directory to find those three DOS utilities in the '.\LUCAS\DOSUTILS\' sub-directory. The code did not care that they existed on the PATH or in the DOS sub-directory itself; just that those three DOS utilities were where the Lucas Arts game SWOTL expected them to be...

Contents of DOSSPATH.DAT:

1C:\LUCAS\DOSUTILS
26.22

This is for DOSBOX with C:\DOSGAMES mounted as C:\

May not be the same in your case...

dvwjr

I would recommend KGB Utility for inspecting what files programs/games actually expect and where.

I tried KGB (it took me a while to find, Firefox kept saying all those sites were attack sites... gah) so here's the log:

Exec : kgb.EXE /on
Exec : cdshell.EXE PROPER INSTALL
OpenFile-R : \RAMDRIVE.TST
CreateFile : \RAMDRIVE.TST
OpenFile-R : F:\CDGAMES\CDSHELL\2100.BAT
CreateFile : C:\CDGAMES\2100.BAT
OpenFile-R : F:\CDGAMES\CDSHELL\CDGAMES.BAT
CreateFile : C:\CDGAMES\CDGAMES.BAT
OpenFile-R : F:\CDGAMES\CDSHELL\CDSHELL.EXE
CreateFile : C:\CDGAMES\CDSHELL.EXE
OpenFile-R : F:\CDGAMES\CDSHELL\DGEN.BAT
CreateFile : C:\CDGAMES\DGEN.BAT
OpenFile-R : F:\CDGAMES\CDSHELL\EPIC.BAT
CreateFile : C:\CDGAMES\EPIC.BAT
OpenFile-R : F:\CDGAMES\CDSHELL\INSTALL.BAT
CreateFile : C:\CDGAMES\INSTALL.BAT
OpenFile-R : F:\CDGAMES\CDSHELL\LD2.BAT
CreateFile : C:\CDGAMES\LD2.BAT
OpenFile-R : F:\CDGAMES\CDSHELL\MM2.BAT
CreateFile : C:\CDGAMES\MM2.BAT
OpenFile-R : F:\CDGAMES\CDSHELL\PUSH.BAT
CreateFile : C:\CDGAMES\PUSH.BAT
OpenFile-R : F:\CDGAMES\CDSHELL\ROBO3.BAT
CreateFile : C:\CDGAMES\ROBO3.BAT
OpenFile-R : F:\CDGAMES\CDSHELL\ZACK.BAT
CreateFile : C:\CDGAMES\ZACK.BAT
DeleteFile : C:\CDGAMES\M2.QXB
DeleteFile : C:\CDGAMES\CZ.QXB
DeleteFile : C:\CDGAMES\DG.QXB
DeleteFile : C:\CDGAMES\L2.QXB
DeleteFile : C:\CDGAMES\CM.QXB
DeleteFile : C:\CDGAMES\PO.QXB
DeleteFile : C:\CDGAMES\EP.QXB
DeleteFile : C:\CDGAMES\R3.QXB
Exec : CDGAMES.BAT\..\cdshell.EXE PROPER INSTALL
OpenFile-R : \RAMDRIVE.TST
CreateFile : \RAMDRIVE.TST
OpenFile-R : C:\CDGAMES\DOSSPATH.DAT

It stops and asks for the files after that. I tried opening the executable in a hex editor but the thing's compressed! (I saw some PKWare info in the file header.) Ugh.

I'm stumped. 🙁

Edit:
I tried tricking the install program into believing the files were there... and it worked! I played D/Generation for a bit and it's fun... but Robocop 3D has copy protection "Get letter A from page X". Blargh. Guess I'm stuck with that one.

Thanks though. 😀

Offtopic: Where can I download the KGB 1.04 utility?

www.hackpalace.com/programming/(dis)ass ... gbutil.zip

i cant add url tags 😖 maybe coz the parenthesis?

Thanks. Much appreciated. 😎