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Do you play games off of their CDs?

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First post, by clueless1

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For those games that require the CD to be in the drive, do you attempt "no CD" modifications, or do you just deal with it?

One great thing about GOG.com is that the CD image is often in the game install folder. This lets us install the games to our retro PCs. But this then requires burning to CDs, maintaining multiple CDs, and swapping disks in and out as we change games. Are there tips (assuming you have HDD space) for playing these games entirely from the HDD?

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Reply 2 of 70, by PhilsComputerLab

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I burn pretty much every GOG game that has ISO or BIN/CUE and gives a full installation CD/DVD. Many games run straight from a folder, like Unreal or UT for example. Getting the CD Audio is part of the reason, but also the experience of installing the game.

I have many originals as well and don't mind inserting the CDs. I don't really game that much, it's mostly benchmarks and demos, and I have them all ready to go on a network share as well as a USB flash drive.

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Reply 3 of 70, by clueless1

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PhilsComputerLab wrote:

I burn pretty much every GOG game that has ISO or BIN/CUE and gives a full installation CD/DVD. Many games run straight from a folder, like Unreal or UT for example. Getting the CD Audio is part of the reason, but also the experience of installing the game.

I have many originals as well and don't mind inserting the CDs. I don't really game that much, it's mostly benchmarks and demos, and I have them all ready to go on a network share as well as a USB flash drive.

Is there a list somewhere of GOG games that are installable to retro DOS PCs? Or do they all pretty much have this ability (assuming they were originally for the MS-DOS platform)? I'd buy off of GOG every time if I knew the game would be installable to pure DOS.

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Reply 4 of 70, by JayCeeBee64

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Generally I do, and for one good reason: CD music. Some games you can play without it (Quake comes to mind), but it doesn't feel quite the same. Sometimes a game can never be fully installed on a hard drive (Creature Shock, Rise of the Robots are two examples) and you have no choice but to use the CD.

For me inserting a CD to play a game has become second nature; it's how it was done back then and doesn't feel like a waste of time IMO.

Ooohh, the pain......

Reply 5 of 70, by PhilsComputerLab

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clueless1 wrote:

[

Is there a list somewhere of GOG games that are installable to retro DOS PCs? Or do they all pretty much have this ability (assuming they were originally for the MS-DOS platform)? I'd buy off of GOG every time if I knew the game would be installable to pure DOS.

Nope.

You can ask in the forums, or take a gamble.

Not every game works, and each game requires a different level of work to get going. Some are super easy, just copy the folder, or burn the CD, others require you to create a custom Audio CD.

In most cases it is cheaper / easier to buy the game on eBay. Especially coming from the UK. Not sure why, but the UK has super cheap shipping to Australia and a LOT of games. I like the Sold Out Software label a lot.

You should get your feet wet. Grab a few games and see how you go.

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Reply 6 of 70, by dr_st

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I use no-CD cracks where possible, but as was said - in some cases you still have to have the CD, either for CD audio, or for content that the game only looks for on the CD.

Here there are two possible situations - if I am on an old PC with limited hard drive space - I use the CD, but then I usually make a copy and use that, while keeping the original safe and unused. If I am on a modern PC with ample drive space, I make a CD image, mount it using DOSBOX (for DOS games) or Daemon tools (for Windows games), and play like this.

There are some "hybrid" cases where the game looks for certain files on the CD, but can be tricked using FakeCD or similar tools, which work in pure DOS and make a local directory on the hard drive look like the CD drive. It's good if the CD content does not take too much space.

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Reply 7 of 70, by Harekiet

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I hate the noise cd drives make so I'm pretty much only using cd images
SHSUCDHD allows you to mount cdrom images under DOS, quite liking that on my old dos machine that just has a bunch of iso images on a secondary drive.
Mounting images under win9x allows cd audio as well and that runs most of the games that use cd audio tracks.

Reply 8 of 70, by keropi

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Same here, if there are no audio tracks then fakecd/fakedr is what I use under DOS. Win9x is easier with Daemon Tools. That's what I use...

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Reply 9 of 70, by clueless1

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It's one thing to have a stack of jewel cases with beautiful retro cover art and keyboard commands on the back, it's another to have a stack of silver CD-Rs with Sharpied game titles. Then again, I don't normally jump around between more than a few games at a time, so it's not that much trouble, plus with GOG games, you get them in a format that can be played on any modern PC too. Interesting debate. 😀

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Reply 10 of 70, by Sutekh94

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Harekiet wrote:

I hate the noise cd drives make so I'm pretty much only using cd images

Oddly enough, I actually kinda like CD drive noises. So yes, I do play games off the CD whenever possible. It's part of the retro experience in my mind. 😀

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Reply 11 of 70, by brassicGamer

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I would echo pretty much everything already said. Having played games back in the day, I have a stack of CDs I have accumulated. I have imaged them all for backup purposes. For Windows games, I use Daemon Tools if I can't find a no-CD patch, but always use CDs for DOS (as patches are less common). CD audio is the thing I miss the most when not playing with the disc e.g. Swiv 3D is (almost) pointless without the soundtrack because it's so good and contributes so much to the atmosphere (á la Quake, mentioned by JayCeeBee64). Saying that, I would consider these DOS virtual CD programs people mention. Should be much easier to copy and mount oldskool games, those that came before all the SecureROM crap came along.

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Reply 12 of 70, by PhilsComputerLab

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I want a hardware CD/DVD emulator! Something that takes a notebook hard-drive full of images and a selector at the front. Like the GOTEK, just for CDs/DVDs.

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Reply 14 of 70, by PhilsComputerLab

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Harekiet wrote:

I think you can get a sata dvd emulator thing with usb for the xbox 360, ofcourse only to run your legal copies, but should try hooking it up to a pc sata port.

That's neat, nice find.

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Reply 15 of 70, by brassicGamer

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After a bit of research:

iodd Portable Virtual ROM

So all we need now is DOS support for e-SATA. I've seen other external e-SATA drive cite DOS support in their documentation but, presumably, this relies on the interface. PCI support in DOS is flaky enough - I sincerely someone has created an e-SATA card that retroactively supports DOS but I'm obviously hoping to be surprised!

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Reply 16 of 70, by dexter311

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brassicGamer wrote:

So all we need now is DOS support for e-SATA.

Couldn't you use an IDE to SATA converter? Or would you need something that presents the port with an ATAPI device?

After all, eSATA is just SATA with power in it. A simple passive adapter gives you a normal SATA port.

Reply 17 of 70, by brassicGamer

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dexter311 wrote:
brassicGamer wrote:

So all we need now is DOS support for e-SATA.

Couldn't you use an IDE to SATA converter?

I skipped that part of the process in my mind because it would have to be an e-SATA to SATA to IDE converter. I know SATA is meant to be backwards compatible (while ignoring advanced features SATA brings) so yes, with the right cables and gcdrom.sys in place it might just work with some chipsets.

EDIT: apparently it only supports optical drive virtualisation via USB 🙁

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Reply 19 of 70, by gdjacobs

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PhilsComputerLab wrote:

I'd really want a proper IDE interface and compatibility BIN/CUE, not just ISO files.

BIN/CUE is important, otherwise SHSUCDHD is all you need.

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