5.25" to 3.5" Backup doesn't install!

[Bert]

This may sound strange, but I bought U7:SI in Korea back in my sophomore year of highschool in 1993 under a version licensed for Korean distribution by SKC Softland. The game came on 9 5.25" disks. At the time, my 386DX 40mhz was too slow to run the game adequately, preventing me from getting very far into the plot. So, I have kept the disks with me all through highschool, college, and law school hoping one day to have the time to beat the game on a faster computer. Now, married with a kid and a steady job, I got myself an Athlon X2 3800+. That should do it in terms of cpu specs.

5.25" drives are hard to come by these days. But, I got lucky and a coworker had an old 486sx 25mhz machine in his attic. We took the 5.25" drive out and hooked it up to a win98 machine at work. Luckily, the disks were still good and I copied the game files to 3.5" disks to use at home. Except, when I tried to install the game on my WinXp computer, the install program refuses to recognize disk one!

Is there some kind of copy protection on the original disks? I can't imagine it being too difficult to defeat. Are there some hidden files or something I have to copy over to the 3.5" backups to make the install program work? I vaguely remember having problems back in 1993 when I tried to make a working backup copy, but my DOS skillz were rudimentary at best. Anyone have a clue?

In the worst case, I'll have to borrow the 5.25" drive from my coworker, install that in my home computer, and install it from there.... eck.

[Kyle]

Honestly Bert, I'd just suggest that you get a copy of the Ultima Collection on PC CD-ROM. Not only will you get U7 the Black gate but you also get the forge of virtue expansion and Ultima 7 pt 2 Serpent Isle and its expansion the Silver Seed. All of those games can be played with the Exult engine. You also get all the ultima games ever made excluding: Ultima IX, the underworlds, savage empire, martian dreams, and UO. Anyway its a worthwhile investment.

[Bert]

At the risk of exposing my lack of self-control, I guess I should add that I want to stay married. LOL. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

[esw]

Years ago I remember trying to copy the data from the 5.25" disks of BG to blank 3.5" ones, and also finding it didn't work.

Just an idea, but perhaps you could try making images of the disks with rawwrite, then take them back to your computer, and perhaps mount them somehow to do the install:
http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/rawwrite.htm

On the other hand, it might just be less hassle to borrow the drive..

[Gradilla Dragon_]

Or maybe a better idea is to install the game on the 486, zip the directory, transfer the disk to another PC and copy the zip file, then burn it on a CD. There it is! Now you have the game on modern media, and ready for you to just unzip it.

[wjp]

It's possible the files on the disks are simply parts of a zip or arj archive that you can extract with winzip or winrar or some other archiver.

[Darkstar]

wjp is right, the files are just standard ZIP archives which only need to be copied together again.
I did this once to get the data without "installing" the game.

An easier option would probably be to make sure the disks have the correct volume label. IIRC they must be labeled "SIDISK1" to "SIDISK" where "n" is the number of disks. You should check with the original disks again and use the DOS command "label" to name the 3,5" disks the same as the 5,25" disks.

--Darkstar

[Bert]

I think I remember trying the labeling thing to no avail. I'll try it again, though.

How do you combine the files (numbered "sidisk??") into one zip archive?

[Dominus]

with copy /b I think. And I'm pretty sure it are not zip but arj files, but most modern day archive programs don't care either way when unarchiving.

[Bert]

Thank you all for your advice. All it took to get the 3.5" backups to work was to label the disks "1, 2, 3...." Quite formidable copy protection, lol!

[Dominus]

he he, good enough protection to make you ask for help