Okay, I poked around WORLD.FST in the GRIPEN version and identified one missing file called FIFUEL.FSD. Since I downloaded a few other ZIPs from mcnett.org I actually found this one (or at least the file has the same name) in an incomplete archive called ff.zip from Darryl Lewis's area:
http://www.mcnett.org/fst/users/dlewis/

The archive was supposedly some 6.5 MiB in size, of which only the first 1,024 KiB are preserved, but nevermind, the file is there. The problem? It's password-protected. I'm not sure if this is intentional or a side-effect of the archive being badly broken, but this is borderline frustrating.

MrFlibble wrote on 2021-03-28, 16:28:

Okay, I poked around WORLD.FST in the GRIPEN version and identified one missing file called FIFUEL.FSD. Since I downloaded a few other ZIPs from mcnett.org I actually found this one (or at least the file has the same name) in an incomplete archive called ff.zip from Darryl Lewis's area:
http://www.mcnett.org/fst/users/dlewis/

The archive was supposedly some 6.5 MiB in size, of which only the first 1,024 KiB are preserved, but nevermind, the file is there. The problem? It's password-protected. I'm not sure if this is intentional or a side-effect of the archive being badly broken, but this is borderline frustrating.

It’s probably a missing fuel truck off the runway apron. Just copy the bog standard box.FSD to fifuel.FSD, or delete the reference off that world.FST file. It’s just missing art assets that can be substituted out.

ragefury32 wrote on 2021-03-28, 16:55:

It’s probably a missing fuel truck off the runway apron. Just copy the bog standard box.FSD to fifuel.FSD, or delete the reference off that world.FST file. It’s just missing art assets that can be substituted out.

I thought it should be possible to rename a different model file as a replacement, but the completist in me is severely annoyed. Do you know if Darryl Lewis indeed instated a password in that resource archive - I haven't found any info on it (there are some pages preserved by the same user too, with some projects and links) but it looks like a community (?) resource stockpile to me.

Anyway, supplying FIFUEL.FSD as a copy of BOX.FSD did not help, I get the same File not found error with the same address 01AE:0718. Maybe I misunderstood something and this is a different kind of missing file?

Personally I find it very regrettable that while back in the day, people were spending some serious creative effort to make these flight sims, even if as a pastime or out of a passing whim, now these works are almost completely lost and forgotten just a few decades later. Information on the Internet is so scant that it's almost as if they never existed at all. They're all still perfectly playable, if only for a while, and it's not like the past twentysomething years have produced new games such that these oldies have become irreparably obsolete.

Here is the archived home page for Gripen:
http://web.archive.org/web/19991110201637/htt … fst/GRiPEN.html

The download isn't available there, but it does show that 0.96a was the newest version and the "Upgr096a.zip" is available from the same archived site you got Gripen.zip from.

Edit: 7-Zip is able to open Gripen.zip as well. Fly.exe is the only file that shows an error when extracting. the file sizes look more or less correct for all the files that do extract.

The .WAV files seem to be intact as they play fine.

The .PCX files are fine as well. Maybe you need a specific version of Fly.exe

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-03-29, 18:14:

Here is the archived home page for Gripen: http://web.archive.org/web/19991110201637/htt … fst/GRiPEN.html […]
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Here is the archived home page for Gripen:
http://web.archive.org/web/19991110201637/htt … fst/GRiPEN.html

The download isn't available there, but it does show that 0.96a was the newest version and the "Upgr096a.zip" is available from the same archived site you got Gripen.zip from.

Edit: 7-Zip is able to open Gripen.zip as well. Fly.exe is the only file that shows an error when extracting. the file sizes look more or less correct for all the files that do extract.

The .WAV files seem to be intact as they play fine.

The .PCX files are fine as well. Maybe you need a specific version of Fly.exe

Probably 1.47 or 1.52. Just replace fly.exe / dos4gw and it should work.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-03-29, 18:14:

The download isn't available there, but it does show that 0.96a was the newest version and the "Upgr096a.zip" is available from the same archived site you got Gripen.zip from.

Yup, I got that one. It has no binaries, just new cockpit art. I installed it BTW, no effect on the error.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-03-29, 18:14:

Edit: 7-Zip is able to open Gripen.zip as well. Fly.exe is the only file that shows an error when extracting. the file sizes look more or less correct for all the files that do extract.

As I understand it, when a ZIP file is cut off due to corruption like what we have with the early 2000 stuff via the Wayback Machine, everything from the missing part is lost, including file names. So technically there is no way to tell how many files, if any, there were originally that are missing. We only know there were other files because the archive is reported to have been between 1.2-1.5 MiB. That FLY.EXE is corrupted only means that it is the point at which the rest of the ZIP was cut off.

IIRC it would be different with RAR archives which have a contents list somewhere at the start f the file, at least if you enable the archive protection option. Sadly not so with ZIP archives.

ragefury32 wrote on 2021-03-29, 19:26:

Probably 1.47 or 1.52. Just replace fly.exe / dos4gw and it should work.

I tried a different FLY.EXE (initially I supplied an intact version with the same reported file size in bytes as the one originally in the archive, which I retrieved from elsewhere). Same error but I think the hexadecimal offset is a bit different. Maybe this means it's some hardcoded file FLY.EXE relies upon.

But, I also unpacked the earlier demo of Gripen (gripen.zip) and threw its entire contents (without overwriting the files that is) into the broken version folder, without any success either.

The McNett archive has several intact ZIPs with official updates from Domark, perhaps if I find the same version as the one used by the sim, or maybe an earlier version, some extra files from there will do the trick.

On another note, anyone have any experience with repairing ARJ archives? The demo of Great Air Battles (gab-d15a.arj) appears to have some different sort of corruption because the file size is below 1,024 KiB.

7-Zip shows only one file inside, GAB-DEMO.ARJ which is 751,792 bytes in size, and gives an error while testing. When I use the test file command in ARJ for DOS it gives the "Bad file data, CRC error!" message, followed by "Bad header". Using the -jr suffix I can extract everything from gab-d15a.arj, which also includes the files ORDER.FRM, README.NOW and FILE_ID.DIZ (they are stored after GAB-DEMO.ARJ so 7-Zip does not see them). ARJ also gives the message "Can't read file or unexpected end of file" after extracting. The recovered GAB-DEMO.ARJ is only 53 248 bytes in size. The rest of it is still inside gab-d15a.arj, but somehow it does not come out, possibly due to "bad header" mentioned above. Any ideas?

All-righty, I did some further digging.

First off, I checked the earlier demo. It works (only in VGA 320x200 mode) and it looks very nice:

I also think I know what the problem with the latter version is. GRIPEN.EXE is a nice frontend program, which in the earlier demo shows the world map and allows to view models of "vehicles":

The list of corresponding FSD files is hard-coded in the binary, and I guess this is what causes the above error.

I also ran through WORLD.FST of the broken later demo and compiled a list of FSD files. Quite a lot is missing from the incomplete archive (I'm attaching the list with all files mentioned in WORLD.FST sorted alphabetically by name). Some are available from the earlier demo, and I guess the rest could be replaced by BOX.FSD, unless we figure out how to crack that FF.ZIP from Darryl Lewis' archive.

I looked into the new demo's GRIPEN.EXE and identified possible missing PCX files: CREDITS.PCX, P004.PCX. However, adding these via copies of available PCX files has not affected the error.

Apologies for triple posting. I tired of trying to get the broken archives to work so I decided to do some more Wayback Machine digging for a change. And I found a better preserved version of Adrian E. Brown's catalogue:
http://www.adrianebrown.co.uk/flightsimtoolkit/frc/simulations/civilian/index.html

This one has individual pages intact, mostly. The files themselves seem to point to the Kuju/Simis FTP which has not been preserved of course, but author profiles also give links to their own pages, which is how I found Project Kursk. The sim itself comes in two parts: data.zip contains the actual FST game, and graphics.zip is the GUI mission launcher.

Another project gave me a file name that I found here, somehow this is an FTP mirror of stuff related to Acorn Archimedes.

I just realised that the Mic Healey's site also has a downloadable archive of FST stuff, including the entire CD contents of the original FST release, models, tools and projects. I found there what appears to be the original ZIP files with shareware versions of Viper Software's Aces of WW1 and Vietnam Flight Simulator, as well as an unpacked version of the Battle of Britain.

Nice. I actually have the CD by itself and recently ordered a complete in box copy.

I finally got one of Ron Walker's sims, Jaguar, to work (I had to copy some BAT files from a sub-directory to run in SVGA mode). It looks very impressive so far, with one oddity: if I switch to external camera view (by pressing V) during or after taking off, and then back to cockpit view (Alt + V) when in the air, sometimes the view is lowered so that the targeting reticle is in the centre of the screen, but the top part of the cockpit is cut off because the cockpit is simply a 640x480 PCX image:


Otherwise, the game looks simply amazing.

Rwolf at MobyGames tipped me off to a couple more sims by a certain Fergal Monaghan:
Gyroplane 2000
Cruz

Of course the download links provided for both don't work. I can't find these two listed in Adrian Brown's catalogue either.

Can't really contribute so much more, but I have to commend you for giving this much effort in trying to preserve all this content.

Thanks! I have a soft spot for the early to mid 90s style flight sims, without being very versed in actual flying 😀 Besides, most of these look outright awesome, even if in part due to the underlying Simis engine.

There's a lot of effort and love put into many of these FST sims, and since they all work well in DOSBox, it's a shame they go forgotten or lost.

Since I found no contact details at Ferg's blog I just left a comment on the Gyroplane 2000 page asking to re-upload both projects. Hopefully this will get the attention.

Edit: Here's a page mentioning a couple more sims for the RISC OS:
http://www.apdl.org.uk/riscworld/volumes/volu … games/index.htm

It appears that there are a bunch of RISC OS FST sims as well, which are not outright compatible with the PC version.

Edit 2: And here's a page with two working RISC OS downloads, aren't they cute:
https://www.oocities.org/timessquare/alley/75 … riscos/fst.html

MrFlibble wrote on 2021-04-07, 12:51:

Rwolf at MobyGames tipped me off to a couple more sims by a certain Fergal Monaghan: Gyroplane 2000 Cruz […]
Show full quote

Rwolf at MobyGames tipped me off to a couple more sims by a certain Fergal Monaghan:
Gyroplane 2000
Cruz

Of course the download links provided for both don't work. I can't find these two listed in Adrian Brown's catalogue either.

Well, his name doesn't seem familiar. My guess is that he never checked in with us back in the days. Oh well, if you haven't already, leave a comment on the Wordpress and see if he'll respond.

Did you check out the SHADO UFO sim?

ragefury32 wrote on 2021-04-07, 15:43:

Did you check out the SHADO UFO sim?

I just took a look; it's pretty cool but the mission is kinda short - fend off a swarm of flying saucers and that's it?

Can you tell what's happening with the cockpit view getting lowered in Jaguar I mentioned earlier? I noticed that with other sims as well, e.g. Wings of Thunder, but it does not look wrong there because the cockpit art does not have any details at the top that might get cut off the same way as in Jaguar.

MrFlibble wrote on 2021-04-06, 15:44:

I finally got one of Ron Walker's sims, Jaguar, to work (I had to copy some BAT files from a sub-directory to run in SVGA mode). […]
Show full quote

I finally got one of Ron Walker's sims, Jaguar, to work (I had to copy some BAT files from a sub-directory to run in SVGA mode). It looks very impressive so far, with one oddity: if I switch to external camera view (by pressing V) during or after taking off, and then back to cockpit view (Alt + V) when in the air, sometimes the view is lowered so that the targeting reticle is in the centre of the screen, but the top part of the cockpit is cut off because the cockpit is simply a 640x480 PCX image:


Otherwise, the game looks simply amazing.

That viewport issue more of a bug with fly v1.46 as used on Jaguar. Fly 1.47 shouldn't have that issue.

ragefury32 wrote on 2021-04-07, 16:21:

That viewport issue more of a bug with fly v1.46 as used on Jaguar. Fly 1.47 shouldn't have that issue.

Thanks! Should the simple replacement of FLY.EXE to 1.47 do the trick? (no need to edit other files, right?)

MrFlibble wrote on 2021-04-07, 16:39:

ragefury32 wrote on 2021-04-07, 16:21:

That viewport issue more of a bug with fly v1.46 as used on Jaguar. Fly 1.47 shouldn't have that issue.

Thanks! Should the simple replacement of FLY.EXE to 1.47 do the trick? (no need to edit other files, right?)

Probably....?

Using Google Images I found the pages of Florian Dietrich who created Battle of France and Battle over Germany:
http://private.freepage.de/flodietrich/

Unfortunately, some files are missing as well, including the German version of Battle of France, I could only get the English translation add-on.

Edit: Found another obscure page, this one has a sim and a WORLD.FST analyser tool:
http://daniel.plassart.free.fr/icare.htm