Don't know those exact games but in my experience
The good thing for dos games is most don't have any copy protection. 9 times out of 10 if you copy the CD contents to your HDD and run the installer from there it maps back to the source files.
Sometimes it needs the same file structure as the CD (so files/folders need to be coped to c:\) sometimes it's smart enough that you can put it in a sub folder and make it more tidy.

I've also a game (megarace I think) that wants mscdex loaded, the fact that my 486 also doesn't have a CD drive doesn't matter, it just checks its loaded then goes off and uses the files on the HDD
But then have another game that will read off the HDD just fine as long as mscdex ISNT loaded.

a few dos games have NoCD cracks if you look. Need for Speed SE is the only game I have that I still haven't found a work around for.

oh, thank you so much for reply. Really helpful!

What is MSCdex, sorry?

chinny22 wrote on 2021-03-23, 10:15:

Don't know those exact games but in my experience The good thing for dos games is most don't have any copy protection. 9 times […]
Show full quote

Don't know those exact games but in my experience
The good thing for dos games is most don't have any copy protection. 9 times out of 10 if you copy the CD contents to your HDD and run the installer from there it maps back to the source files.
Sometimes it needs the same file structure as the CD (so files/folders need to be coped to c:\) sometimes it's smart enough that you can put it in a sub folder and make it more tidy.

I've also a game (megarace I think) that wants mscdex loaded, the fact that my 486 also doesn't have a CD drive doesn't matter, it just checks its loaded then goes off and uses the files on the HDD
But then have another game that will read off the HDD just fine as long as mscdex ISNT loaded.

a few dos games have NoCD cracks if you look. Need for Speed SE is the only game I have that I still haven't found a work around for.

With MegaRace, you can just copy the RACEPRG.EXE and MEGARACE.DAT files to the game's directory on your hard drive and modify the batch file that was created by the installer. Other Cryo games like Dune and Lost Eden work pretty similarly. Many DOS PC games that don't use CD audio can be made to run entirely from the hard drive with some tinkering of batch or configuration files. There's also a tool called FAKECD you can try for games that specifically look for MSCDEX, so far I tried it with the awful Zorro game by Capstone and it worked fine. I'm tempted to make a video tutorial on this topic someday...

An alternative to fakecd is SHSUCDHD, which emulates a CD-ROM drive using an image file (i.e. BIN/CUE). Of course, this requires you to have lots of hard drive space. And it still won't let you play redbook audio.

WazMeister wrote on 2021-03-23, 09:09:

I have sevenral games, CD ROM version but on HDD (free ware downloaded).
Example being BASS (searched on here but not much relative), DiscWorld etc...

DiscWorld is not freeware.

There is also not much reason to play these on a 486 when you can use ScummVM to play them on almost any device and have a nearly-indistinguishable experience.

WazMeister wrote on 2021-03-23, 10:51:

oh, thank you so much for reply. Really helpful!

What is MSCdex, sorry?

It a part of dos that lives in your autoexec.bat file used to load the CD-ROM driver, usually its something like
LH C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /D:mscd001 /l:D

Config.sys would also have something like the below (oakcdrom.sys been a fairly generic driver)
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\oakcdrom.sys /D:mscd001

thepirategamerboy12 wrote on 2021-03-23, 15:46:

With MegaRace, you can just copy the RACEPRG.EXE and MEGARACE.DAT files to the game's directory on your hard drive and modify the batch file that was created by the installer.

Maybe I got it the wrong way round and MegaRace didn't like mscdex loaded and that other game needed it. I cant for the life remember what the other game was, lucky I one had 1 game that needs it and 1 that cant have it, rest of my games don't care, of it they did I already had the No-CD for it.

WazMeister wrote on 2021-03-23, 10:51:

oh, thank you so much for reply. Really helpful!

What is MSCdex, sorry?

It's dos cd rom driver and cds don't work without it.

chinny22 wrote on 2021-03-23, 10:15:

Don't know those exact games but in my experience The good thing for dos games is most don't have any copy protection. 9 times […]
Show full quote

Don't know those exact games but in my experience
The good thing for dos games is most don't have any copy protection. 9 times out of 10 if you copy the CD contents to your HDD and run the installer from there it maps back to the source files.
Sometimes it needs the same file structure as the CD (so files/folders need to be coped to c:\) sometimes it's smart enough that you can put it in a sub folder and make it more tidy.

I've also a game (megarace I think) that wants mscdex loaded, the fact that my 486 also doesn't have a CD drive doesn't matter, it just checks its loaded then goes off and uses the files on the HDD
But then have another game that will read off the HDD just fine as long as mscdex ISNT loaded.

a few dos games have NoCD cracks if you look. Need for Speed SE is the only game I have that I still haven't found a work around for.

Does streaming data still work? Like redbook audio and FMV?

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-03-24, 19:50:

[Does streaming data still work? Like redbook audio and FMV?

FMV still works as it's just data files end of the day but redbook audio wont work.
Some games like Warcraft or Age of Empires have midi music to fall back on if the CD was missing, others like C&C dont actaully use redbook. but yeh quite a few games you'll loose the soundtrack

chinny22 wrote on 2021-03-24, 20:34:

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-03-24, 19:50:

[Does streaming data still work? Like redbook audio and FMV?

FMV still works as it's just data files end of the day but redbook audio wont work.
Some games like Warcraft or Age of Empires have midi music to fall back on if the CD was missing, others like C&C dont actaully use redbook. but yeh quite a few games you'll loose the soundtrack

You know, redbook audio is really rare. I'll have to give that a try. Since I have ripped all of my CD games anyway it is pretty easy to look at the cue sheet and see if there are any tracks or not. Thanks for the tip.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-03-24, 23:56:

You know, redbook audio is really rare.

Not really?
Old games that had CD Audio tracks?