I prefer disc images, as they're more convenient, plus my laptop no longer has an optical drive (though my desktop still has) because I swapped the DVD drive out for a second hard drive.

Mind you, I always buy the GOG version of a game I want, if it's on GOG.COM, as their total lack of DRM is a policy I heartily endorse, and offhand I can't remember many of their games containing disc images (I think Carmageddon and The Splat Pack do).

Kerr you could always get an external USB DVD drive

ISO mounting for me, unless you get a title that refuses to work that way and wont even start from a physical CD if daemon is present.

Also use them for playing with various OS in a VM which takes up far less space that a room full of machines with random retro operating systems installed on them (but not as much fun).

oeuvre wrote:

Kerr you could always get an external USB DVD drive

Yes, that's a good idea, thanks. But ISO images mounted from a USB stick are more convenient, I find.

Daemon tools for games that work with that. I just had to burn Tiberian Sun to CDs yesterday because that game wouldn't work with DT. I used to burn most of the games, but you just end up with a huge spindle of CD-R disks that you can't possibly keep track of. Not to mention that it takes more time.

However, my favourite process is with floppy-based games. I just install them on a modern machine using Boxer (a DOSBox frontend for OS X) and then transfer the installation folder to my 486 over FTP. I sometimes even prefer floppy-based games to their CD rereleases for that reason.

I only burn games on cd-r that have CDDA audio tracks and refuse to play under Daemon 3.47/w9x

The last version with the fast, classic interface and no spyware or useless junk unrelated to CD mounting 😎

I tried WinCDEmu for a change, but it couldn't handle RedBook audio for "mixed" CD's like Blood or Quake, so I quickly went back to what's always worked best for me.