Never say never... Most of the original people who probably bought games on GOG were DOS game players. I don't see why it would not be something they might consider. It's much harder to port a Windows 3.1, 95/98 game to XP then it would for a DOS game. They'll get a taste of the best if I did it for them. If not I might open up my own site to do it right.

Typed on a High quality Mechanical DAS Keyboard. Yes just like the old IBM mechanical keyboards except with a USB port instead of DIN plug. :(

Actually what I'm proposing now is a fully installed DOS program with the original configuration program all PKZIPPED into one nice file 8 characters.ZIP format.

One download link for original OS.

As for Windows 3.1, 95, and 98 programs depending if it is CDrom based or multiple floppies. If they are CDrom I think they could combine it into one large Winrar file but just separate the ISO files by name as I structured. If they are floppies then they must separate each disk into a subfolder. As for DOS games they are relatively tiny. It would be nice to see some Windows 3.1 AfterDark Screensavers updated for XP, 7, and 8. The Star Trek: TOS one was of their best. Used the regular internal PC speaker to play the digitized sound effects, voices, and theme music.

Running Windows 95 on 16MB of memory. I've done that before and yes it super slow. I wouldn't recommend less than 64MB. I used to open multiple browsers tabs and switch between windows. Played some Starcraft 1 on one of those Pentiums. But that kind of CPU would be perfect for old DOS games running in pure DOS but not running DOSBOX inside Windows. It would crawl slower than a real Commodore 64 loading the next level of Gauntlet 1.

And don't get me started on Windows 95. I hated it. I hate to bug test for Sega and their Windows 95 software crashed left and right. Another reason why I hated Windows over DOS. It wasn't until Windows 2000 that you finally had a pretty stable operating system. But as far as DOS compatibility I think their Windows 98SE MS-DOS is the best thing they came up with for old school gaming.

I also own a Commodore 128 and Amiga 500 and 1000 in case you're into those.

Still got old stuff out in the garage,too lazy to do anything with them.
Win98 was the best,as Win2000 was a bit of a pain.XP was the best of the one's on
market,even nowadays.

And I thought skeletonbow wrote some long posts....

It's not, though.

Preservation and archiving have never been part of GOG's mission, and they aren't now. Maybe sometime in the future GOG could decide to add it to their mission. But until then, you are asking GOG to add a new service, whereas you seem to think you are asking them to do their current job better.

I understand what you are saying but what they have said that in the past doesn't mean they can't change their policy if it benefits them and call it a feature. If they decide to actually go ahead and support real DOS users or hire people to do that for them that's also a possibility. If they are already using DOSBOX it would be same to assume that they have people who actually use and understand DOS enough to create the Windows installers.

If someone sees a DOS game on eBay who is charging $50 to $500 (yes there are some very expensive games) for it just to get access to the original disks and GOG puts it up for $5, who do they think is going to get paid? DOS games are very tiny in comparison to some of their new releases that might be 16GB and most DOS games might be 2MB or less. It's probably more of a headache for them to deal with Windows support issues than would a DOS support issue. There are so many different components to troubleshoot in the Windows era as compared to the DOS era. You're also not having to navigate your customer through the various different versions of Windows and Microsoft moving the location of their icons around or driver issues causing incompatibility or stability issues. DOS simply works and most people today would find that it's pretty efficient and takes less than one second to boot to DOS whereas XP takes at least 2 minutes and the other newer operating systems might be slightly more as they constantly bloat each new version.

Again adding a download link of just the original DOS game fully installed and configured with the original configuration manager all compressed into a single Winrar file takes no effort. In fact a lot of their custom DOSbox installers can easily be modified back to its original form by deleting some extra files they've added. But only certain GOG releases I've noticed didn't tamper with the original form much except add their own dosbox.conf, some Windows icons, and a small Windows installer for where the program will reside.

I'm on an Ivy Bridge system running XP. It's still a modern system and definitely way overpowered and most people on GOG probably are familiar with DOS and most of their DOS games are already using DOSBOX. And if GOG wants to cover their butts they can just put up a disclaimer saying no technical support for the DOS extractable link to protect themselves. Most people using real DOS or DOSBOX know what they are doing. It is highly doubtful someone who has never used DOS would try and attempt get it to work over instead of choosing the Windows installer version. They would probably not know how to extract the file or where to put it. And if someone does complain they can't get it to work in real DOS or DOSBOX then GOG can just tell them to go download the Windows installer version. No harm no foul. I'm just using the game either in DOSBOX or real DOS which the game was meant for so whatever compatibility problems you are referring to probably don't exist because it was meant for that operating system. If there are any compatibility problems it would most likely stem from running the program inside the DOSBOX emulator which isn't real 100% real DOS but emulated DOS running in a Windows Operating System.

Windows 98 is the best for old school gaming meaning DOS and Windows 3.1/95/98 software.
But as far as stability Windows 98SE isn't as stable as Windows 2000 Professional and has issues when installing over 1GB of memory. Windows 2000 actually is one of the fastest OS interfaces and XP is actually Windows 2000 but they dumbed it down for consumers and made it cartoony. However, XP SP3 is the best OS for me and what I use on my Ivy Bridge to type this message. It was one of the first to add the Internet Connection Sharing and connecting to my Broadband ISP without a router an all in one solution and great USB 2.0 support. Windows 2000 has its limitations in that department and XP will probably be the mainstay of this system for as long as I can. Vista 64bit SP2 with DirectX 11.0 is for my newer 64-bit games in my multiOS boot setup. I also have a 28GB Ramdrive out of my 32GB of installed memory. If I run anything on DOSBOX off the Ramdrive it runs like silk and no delay but even off a regular hard drive the delay is still quite minimal.

O.O
(_)

It made me laugh. That was my first serious GOG concerning post that I wanted to put up 2 years ago but never had the time to put it into words until today. Glad it had an impact although not in the intended way for you.

I'll have to look for some skeletonbow posts. I doubt I broke any records but thanks for the vote of confidence.

Archiving it was a thought specific to certain DOS programs that exclude the configuration manager after it has been installed thereby limiting the ability to change the hardware configuration file. Thankfully most DOS games don't suffer from this if they come with the original DOS hardware configuration manager.

If GOG does offer the fully installed program it would be easier to test it on newer Windows operating systems that GOG hasn't released the Windows installer yet or haven't tested it maybe due to lack of time or staff resources which the GOG community could help. For example if someone in the future had Windows 10 installed and currently the Windows installer is only available for XP, 7, and 8, they could go and download Dosbox and then download the fully installed DOS version off of GOG. They could then immediately attempt to run it and see if it works instead of wait around for GOG to release an updated Windows installer to support Windows 10.

There are advantages of accessing a fully installed copy. GOG's mission is to allow users to play their old games on modern systems is it not? So in effect this will help preserve the game for the future. Otherwise if GOG decides never to create a Windows installer for Windows 10 or they go out of business then you would be out of luck when some future operating system comes out preventing you from playing that old DOS game. End of story.

They do, otherwise how would they be used to create them back in the dos days? They may be a pain to find, but Dos versions are available. Directory structure can be preserved, though not sure about including the volume name in the archive, since I don't recall any archiving software being able to do that. You could always just include a label.txt or label.bat to do that for you though.

Haven't had the need to use any, so I can't offer recommendations. But any software that can create a 1:1 copy should also have the option of creating an image, so you don't need to do the read multiple times if you want to create multiple copies. No idea if Copy ][ PC offered that option though.

What about games that require the floppy to be in the drive to play? Wouldn't those benefit from a mounting option as well, or do you think that pure floppies are a better option for everyone?

No worries, I'll be waiting.

True, if you were using the supplied fonts. Not sure how easy it was to modify the fonts, but in a world where the firmware of a mouse can be used as malware, I assume one could change the sound font of a PCI card and use the font of an ISA card instead.

But I'm using a Roland-MT32 sound font with Dosbox with an onboard sound card, and checking it with youtube videos of how Roland sounded, it sounds the same. Do I have a physical Roland connected that I don't know about? Or could it be that the sound fonts are enough and the hardware isn't needed?

Just as easy to do. Also unsure of any Windows games that used a manual lookup protection, but the idea remains the same.

You are aware that you can skip the desktop icons when installing, right?

As I've said before, yes, I do agree that the configuration utilities should be included with the game files. I don't see a reason for the original media to be included though. Copy the files to the dos machine, run the configuration, play.

My knowledge of Dos protection schemes is limited, since I wasn't really paying that much attention during that time. But are you sure the manuals are required for GOG versions, or have the answers being nulled as well? Will have to check, though you may be correct.

What happened if the disk was write protected? At what point would the install fail?

The Ancient Art of War didn't need the disk to play. I know because I had it on the first computer I recall, along with a lot of other games, but no disks that I can recall. That could of course mean that the game was cracked, as I suspect quite a lot on that computer were, but the disk check could be bypassed. And I do recall you could use the drive to save and load scenarios and formations as well, so they disk may have been required only to launch, not to play.

As always, legal and licensing reasons.

To each his own of course, but I retired my oldest retrogaming MS-DOS PC when I realized how well it can be emulated nowadays (DOSBox + nGlide + Munt + VirtualMIDISynth), giving even a better experience than the original.

If anything, I'm having a much better success rate running old DOS games in an emulated environment, than on that old PC. Many old DOS games were quite finicky about the exact machine configuration, and with DOSBox it is much easier to make needed changes to the configuration, rather than having several DOS PCs with different configurations.

I don't really feel I am missing anything anymore from the real thing, I'm experiencing the games the same way or even better than back then. I love being able to hear authentic Roland MT-32 music on my laptop (running DOSbox + Munt), rather than having to use the clunky old desktop PC with my Roland CM-32L connected to an external analog mixer with Soundblaster.

The only PC games for which I still have old retro-gaming PCs are the old Win9x and XP games, which have real issues running on more modern hardware or Windows versions. If someone ever came with an emulated environment being able to run those games as well as DOSBox runs DOS games, I'd retire those machines too.

Heck, even WinUAE is so much superior to a real Amiga 500. I never had four diskette drives, with WinUAE I can easily have that for those pesky multi-diskette games.

I hope you're right, but, even if GOG agreed, they should redo and test again all the catalog for no real gain.. it's basically impossible.
The only solution is to legally buy what we can find and then fix the missing versions through other ways *winks*.

Anyway, TDS, your nostalgia purism is too hardcore O_o
Also.. *cuts that keyboard's cable* :P

For some reason GOG's stuck with the Please wait. Processing when trying to post this message.

Here's what you said last JMich:

They do, otherwise how would they be used to create them back in the DOS days? They may be a pain to find, but DOS versions are available. Directory structure can be preserved, though not sure about including the volume name in the archive, since I don't recall any archiving software being able to do that. You could always just include a label.txt or label.bat to do that for you though.

My response:
I took another look for IMG. This wasn't around in the 1989 time period. Maybe you can comment on when you first saw IMG in use and when you used it for DOS or what software you saw using it. If it was around in 1989 then it might have been proprietary meaning companies were the only ones who could use the program to compress the file but the consumer only had the decompression program or the installation program would automate the decompression of the files for you. I think ARC was one of those proprietary programs that sparked the creation of PKZIP and ARJ which became the dominant file compressors for consumers at the time. It was used during the BBS days and early Internet days to transfer files. Before the Internet you could only use the X, Y, or Zmodem protocols to transfer files between two computers over the analog phone line. Zmodem was the best if you wanted to be able to resume the file where it left off. Imagine downloading a 100GB file of today and getting to 99.9GB and the DSL or Cable cuts out. You'd have to start all over. That's how look it took to transfer a diskette over the land line. I think it took like a day or two. That's how frustrating it was to transfer files back then before the Zmodem protocol arrived. It also had bidirectional capability which meant one user could download and upload simultaneously. The other modem protocols were one way and didn't have any resume capability. Ymodem protocol was a bit faster than Zmodem protocol which was its only advantage. Most of my tremendous collection of old games still exist compressed using PKZIP and stored on CD-Rs that were previously stored on Colorado 120MB tapes. Magnetic backup tapes were known to eventually fail which is why I decided to preserve them onto CD-Rs which are now easily accessible today thanks to backward compatibility and the longevity of CDs, DVDs, and now Blu-rays. The fact that they are nonlinear, digital, and not vulnerable to magnetic fluctuations is a big plus.

Another added bonus is PKUNZIP decompression is built into Windows XP. If you see an older PKZIP file you can see the contents of the .ZIP file and even copy the contents to a folder in its decompressed state. If you have a RAR, IMG, or ARJ file you are going to need a 3rd party program to decompress or read it. That's why I'm maintaining using the older PKZIP DOS version 2.04g to compress the DOS zipped file instead of WinRar and yes WinRar can read PKZIP files if you're worried but I believe Windows XP and higher OS all have PKUNZIP built-indecompression. But avoid using a WINZIP version too new to compress or you will need to download their latest WINZIP version to decompress it defeating that built-in feature.

Here's a quick wiki link about PKZIP. Unfortunately, I have removed the actual link address cause I think that is causing my post not to go through. You will see it was very important and had a high reputation back in the day.
wiki PKZIP

This it the guy who made it:
wiki Phil_Katz

As for IMG I couldn't locate a DOS version for IMG file creation. It does look like there are some Linux IMG programs out there. As for true preservation I agree that something like IMG would be more suitable. But for the purposes of archiving just standard DOS files which don't care about the actual raw structure since it is not copy protected PKZIP and ARJ reigned supreme. Also both programs were made for DOS and quite popular. As for how to create a PKZIP or ZIP file as it was known back then you just use the pkzip -$ parameter to save the volume label on the disk within the ZIP file.

My suggestion was if you were creating multiple subdirectories contained in one zip file then you could just create a master file called volumes.txt and type in plain ascii something like:

DISK 1 = WIN95_01
DISK 2 = WIN95_02
,,,
DISK 18 = WIN95_18

You get the picture. Text files are tiny and then you'd avoid having to create single zips of each disk to preserve the VOLUME LABEL. After copying the contents of each disk to an actual floppy disk you can them LABEL A: with the appropriate VOLUME LABEL listed in volumes.txt. Your idea of making a batch file to label could done creating batch files of 1.bat, 2.bat, et cetera for each disk. This would save time in typing each disk label when the proper disk is inserted. Inside the batch file would be as follows:

1.bat
LABEL A:DISK1

2.bat
LABEL A:DISK2

et cetera

In my case if I can I use the SUBST command and use my RAMDRIVE as the fake A: and not only is it faster doing it like this it is almost instantaneous when copying and reading compared to a physical floppy and no wear and tear or need for real physical floppy drive. But there are some very picky DOS installers that don't like this and you are forced to use physical diskettes or if you use Desqview-X you can multitask the DOS sessions and switch DOS windows and relabel the diskette at the DOS PROMPT so you reuse the same diskette over and over again and also for pkunzipping the contents of each disk to the same diskette. This skips the need for having more than one physical diskette but you'll still need to either delete *.* or format a:/q to wipe it fast for the next diskette contents to be written to it.

I have seen the IMG format before and it looks like it was made from WinImage to create RAW disk images. But I didn't see a DOS version of IMG at the time so I never looked further. Also IMG is not necessary for regular DOS based diskettes but might be useful for bootable diskettes if it is NOT copy protected. Something like archiving an older bootable operating system like PC-DOS 1.0 or the 98SE / XP bootloader would be useful if it can be transferred from the hard drive to a floppy disk to fit. My guess is for copy protected disks once it starts reading any copy protected area I am sure it will freak out with errors and not be able to rip the image successfully. If you attempt use the final IMG and transfer for it to a new floppy diskette my thought is the copy protection was successful and the disk will not work. The only hardcore way to create images would be using the CopyIIPC Option Board and last time I saw one of the se it was in the $200 range possibly. Fortunately, I had a bunch left over still in my possession. Creation of the image file can then be compressed but in order to create the disk image I would need to have the CopyIIPC Option Board installed. That is the only problem since it is hardware dependent on the CopyIIPC Option board. I don't think there are any hardcore software based RAW IMG programs out that can handle these high level copy protected disks even today. If you know of any I'm interested in hearing about them and can test it out.

Just a quick Q for the OP,do you talk under water with a mouth full of marbles?:-)

Why was Windows 2000 such a pain for you?

Windows 2000 was very similar to Windows 98 if you chose the classic desktop theme and the interface was fast like 98. In XP they added menu delay times to slow it down so it didn't look so snappy.

The only problem was W98 games were not compatible on W2000 but later on most companies made their games run on both W98 and W2000 and later XP which was built on the same NT architecture. The reason I eventually switched over from 2000 to XP was software support. Too many software started requiring XP in order to work and later the Service Packs became a requirement.

What's sitting in your garage? Old software or hardware? If you don't want it, I might take it off your hands. :)

Well, first there was making sure you got all the new hardware set up correctly. Once you got one of those original clam-shell 1x CD-ROM drives with proprietary card, your sound card, etc. It was all sorts of "guess and try" fun in order to make sure you selected IRQ and DMA jumpers so that you actually had sound or the sound didn't get interrupted by moving the mouse from one of the serial ports.

As games started using DOS extenders and getting larger, there was lots of tweaking with using HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE, combining that command line switches to use free memory areas and then using LOADHIGH to load your drivers and whatnot into those spaces, trying to eek out as much of that 640k of lower memory that you can.

MEMMAKER helped with later versions of DOS, but it still came out better if you re-arranged the load order and tweaked by hand.

I still found that to play several different games, I created a few menu options in my AUTOEXEC.BAT in order to load with or without expanded memory, certain drivers (i.e. with/without CD/ROM or mouse), just to be able to play certain games properly.

I remember Ultima VII (The Black Gate & Serpent's Isle) being one of the most finicky if I didn't have that 2k of memory freed up in just the right place.

Those were nostalgic days, but as you say, extremely frustrating when you just want to jump right in and play!