First post, by pleonard
If I understand them correctly, the structure of the original hard drive installation for Police Quest 1 is:
INSTALLH.BAT
1) test for a drive letter (usually c:)
2) test that the user has run this batch file from the right directory
If both of these conditions are met:
1) create the /SIERRA/PQ directory
2) copy _INSTALL.BAT to the hard drive (presumably so that the script can be referenced regardless of what disk is in the floppy drive)
3) execute _INSTALL.BAT
(Doesn't this leave _INSTALL.BAT lying around on the root level of the hard drive...?)
_INSTALL.BAT
1) copy and rename _PQ.BAT to \SIERRA\PQ.BAT
2) copy the relevant game files into \SIERRA\PQ, including:
2a) renaming the SIERRA.EXE to \SIERRA\PQ\PQ.EXE
3) prompt for more disks, if needed (probably to account for different capacities and file locations between 5.25"/3.5")
4) Tell the user to start by executing PQ.BAT from the top level of the SIERRA directory
The user can then run:
PQ.BAT
1) change directories into \SIERRA\PQ
2) execute PQ.EXE (the renamed SIERRA.EXE from the floppy) with up to five command line parameters: %1 %2 etc
(Presumably so that you can force the game in to tandy mode, etc, by passing arguments through the batch file to the executable?)
Everything above is the "official" way of doing things, as far as I can tell. My original 5.25 PQ disks are in another state, so I can't easily check, but a number of copies of Police Quest 1 floating around include a batch file called sierra.bat:
SIERRA.BAT
echo off
cls
monitor [sic]
start
The executable moniter.com is included in the files, however it's not successfully invoked because of the typo in SIERRA.BAT. This makes me suspect that one or both files could be artifacts of some wares distribution? (There wasn't any disk-based copy protection in PQ1, correct?) There's no moniter/monitor.com mentioned in the DOS 2, 3, or 4 references, so it must be either something that Sierra wrote, or something added later? Running it seems to have no effect on a PS/2 Model 25 with MCGA graphics...