Dungeon Master Forum

Proof:
http://www.freewebs.com/andyboy_uk/dm2xp.JPG

And the How:
Ok, it wasnt easy and I still dont have the sound working, but that is next (also it is not the fastest thing to try and do but it does work). It involves going back down the time tunnel a bit as well with some of those old dos commands.

Also, Im afraid I have to say, USE THIS GUIDE AT YOU'RE OWN RISK. There are some steps in here that need to be done carefully or you risk loosing a partition (and that means all the data on it). If you

What you need:
Bochs for Windows (a freeware open source PC emulator for windows that supports protected mode games - like DM2) : http://bochs.sourceforge.net

WinImage: http://www.winimage.com (for editing disk files)

A copy of MSDOS in IMG format (Im afraid this is copyright so I cant give out my copy, but you can use win image to create images from you're disks. Call them something like dos1.img, dos2.img and dos3.img when you read them in.

All teh files for DMII, Mouse drivers for DOS (cutemouse works ok), SOUND drivers for dos (havent done that bit yet) unzipped and in a temp folder on you're machine somewhere.

The How To:
This can get a little complicated and confusing sometimes so please feel free to ask questions if Ive not been clear enough.

This is the jist of the process, I am happy to answer questions as it can get a bit messy in those BOCHSSRC files.

Quick Note: Bochs seems to be setup with an American Keyboard. For UK people, the \ key is actually the # key

1. Install BOCHS,
2. Install WINIMAGE,
3. Use WINIMAGE to create IMG files of you're original DOS 6.22 disks
4. Create a new HDD Image in BOCHS and enter the correct details into the BOCHSSRC.TXT file (the details will be given to you after creation and you should rem out all other lines in the ATA section. TO create a virtual hard disk for use in BOCHS you need to use a utlility provided called BXImage.EXE
5. Edit the bochssrc.txt file to use that as the C Drive of the Virtual Machine, also edit the FLOPPYA entry to be the first dos disk and the BOOT section so that the machine boots from the a drive (BOOT=A)
6. Fire up the BOCHS machine (now this may take a while to get working and you are bound to come into terms with the PANIC problems. These are mostly caused by errors in the BOCHSSRC.TXT file or having a hard disk or floppy disk open in another program while trying to run.
7. It should boot to dos setup - certainly for DOS 6.22 anyway. Also you should exit the setup first time and get to a prompt and run SETUP /G to stop the backup disks being created - they suck ass and I couldnt get it to install with them enabled in setup.


This bit now gets a little scarier

8. Use FDISK and FORMAT /S (for system bootable drive) on the hard disk within BOCHS. It will need to reboot probably to get access to the "drive"
Warning: DO NOT DO THIS OUTSIDE OF BOCHS, use the FDISK display partition information to confirm that you are FDISK'ing the virtual hard disk that BOCHS is using - the image you created earlier with BXImage.exe.


9. Install DOS on the virtual hard disk (to change diskettes, hit the config button and switch over to the other window and use option 1 to change the disk image.

10. When the install finishes, restart the machine and then switch off BOCHs.

11. Go into the BOCHSSRC and change the boot section back to BOOT=disk rather than BOOT=A.

12. Restart BOCHS.

This should bring you up to a nice dos session yay. If it is 6.22 then you will get HIMEM running and be dropped at a prompt.

Ok, now shutdown bochs again and open up the image file for the hard disk you created for BOCHS in WINIMAGE.

Note: You need to start WinImage and then do a file/open on big images, for some reason it crashed for me when I just double clicked the image.

Once it is open, open an explorer window and drag all the DM2 files/mouse driver/sound driver over to the image file. It will prompt you for INjection of files (make sure it doesnt push teh IMG file over the limits of its capcaity, otherwise BOCHS will not be able to read it.

Once its all there close WINIMAGE and restart BOCHS.

You should now have all the folders on youre virtual C drive that you just dragged in.

I recommend putting the mouse driver in youre \dos folder and also throwing it into the autoexec.bat.

Once the mouse drivers are loaded, run DM2 setup utility, select no sound but make sure that the config file is saved and then try and run it

That should be it..

Voilla.. Not easy, but hey, it works

I might have a go at the sound drivers now .. THat should be fun

wow.... that's a few pages of work. I have but one question after reading only part of that loooong process. Is it worth it?

Kudos to you for having the drive to do it at all and not only that but actually doing it.

moo

Well, Im running it on a Twin P3 - 700 and it isn't what I would call fast I have to be honest, but if you were running it on some 2.4ghz P4, I have no idea what the speed would be like.

>>Is it worth it?
I really did it for all the people who did think it is worth it (not really for me) If anyone does attempt it, can you let me know you're machine specs and how fast the game runs?

I may have a go at getting the speed up a bit later, maybe use something like VMWare, see if it is any faster, but as BOCHS is constantly in development at sourceforge, the faster they tweak the engine, the faster the game will run.


Im tryingt to get FRONTIER: Elite II to work as well at the moment. Another challenge, this one needs EMS


have fun all,

heck man, you want the speed? Go get Amiga in a box and then grab the amiga version and you will get speed and sound. There is not good reason why a pc emulator on a pc should be that friggen slow for you. Hell I ran amiga and ST emulators on my 200MMX with a glorius 32 megs of ram and an 8 meg card. they all ran at full speed.

at any rate. If you want to see if it's winXP slowing you down check this out. It's written for mainly people who want to gain speed when using software like photoshop and 3D apps. But it applies to everyone. Its just that mainly people who use it for work always want more speed.

http://www.3dluvr.com/content/article/123

check it out.

moo

Hmm, good answer, I have AIAB at home, might just have to do that

Anyone tryed DosBox I know it runs alot of old dos games i used to play

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1

Really easy to use also

have fun

Munky: Log in you lazy git

j/kidding.

Bochs is very similar to boxdos or dosbox or whatever its called. Should work the same.

just a lil note... dosBox cannot run protected mode games... sorry... I've tried...

I will have to try bochs...

*waves*
hey guys.

when i saw how much work you did to get DM2 to run in windows xp, i was very much surprised.

there is a -much- simpler way, if you don't mind not having windows running: get a DOS bootdisk.

i mean, the game was meant for dos, right? just download a bootdisk for MS-Dos (even if it was designed for windows 95/98 or anything like that, it'll still work), install it in windows, then reboot off the disk.

i have to play without sound, though. if i try any of the soundblaster options in the setup, it crashes, but hey, silent DM2 is still DM2.

Yeah it is easier to do it that way but I dont have a FAT partition to put the game on, and dont have Partition Magic or something similar to sort it out. Emulation runs pretty well on modern systems. Something like VMWare would do this a treat

DM2 is DM2 but sound is sound.

Regards, PitD

Yeah I use Virtual PC and Windows 98 that worked fine.