Opry99er Posted August 12, 2016 Share Posted August 12, 2016 Weird title, I know... But this is a weird subject. I have a Win7 Enterprise machine, 64 bit. It has (believe it or not) a beautiful, internal floppy drive (3.5") that works flawlessly. I want to play games with it... Like the old days. I have a problem, however, as Carmen Sandiego and the like will not run in Win7(64). I know... I can download emulators or play in DOSBox. But then my 3.5" drive is useless. Is there any way to get old school legit with my flippy floppy, or am I just wishing in one hand, so to speak? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted August 12, 2016 Author Share Posted August 12, 2016 Looks like I can access the A:/ drive via DOSBox... That's cool... I'll have to give it a try, even though it is still emulation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted August 12, 2016 Author Share Posted August 12, 2016 I am currently running Oregon Trail off floppy in DOSBox. Kinda cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted August 12, 2016 Share Posted August 12, 2016 Go on Ebay and buy an old ThinkPad or something. They're built like tanks and are usually in like-new condition as long as they're complete (it's pretty obvious if they're not; many have been cannibalized for hard drives, batteries, power supplies or other parts). Best part is you can get them for literally like 20 bucks. You can't even buy a copy of Windows 98 by itself for that. While you're at it, buy something like a 40GB 2.5" drive there for like $8 - the one bad thing about old ThinkPads is that their drives are annoyingly whiny. I have a ThinkPad 600X that I bought at a thrift store for $20. I use it for old CD games I have that require a 32 bit OS. Mine doesn't have a floppy drive (though it has an Ultrabay, so I could give it one for like $10), but you can easily find ThinkPads that come with one. There is no real way I know of to run 32 bit software on a 64 bit OS without using emulation. If you want the real experience, you're going to either need to dual boot, or you're going to need a second machine. A 32 bit copy of any version of Windows is probably going to cost more than the $30 or so it would be for a fully usable second machine capable of running old software, though. And laptops don't take up a lot of space. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carlsson Posted August 12, 2016 Share Posted August 12, 2016 It is not even given that MS-DOS 6.22 or whatever would run as intended on your machine. I suppose it is old enough to have a BIOS, otherwise you might be stuck with a more newer 3rd party DOS. Also consider that many DOS games were timed towards the CPU so they'd run much too fast even on a Pentium 133, much less whatever power house you have in that Enterprise machine. You seem to have found emulation, which probably is your best bet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted August 12, 2016 Share Posted August 12, 2016 The only proper use of a floppy drive (yuck) in 2016, in my humble opinion Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted August 12, 2016 Author Share Posted August 12, 2016 Tried again to load the game up from floppy today. This time, lots of loading and whirring sounds but no game. WTF? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted August 12, 2016 Author Share Posted August 12, 2016 For disclosure, my floppy drive is A:\ Commands, in order: mount c a:\oregon c: dir oregon Then spinnies and whirs... The dir command shows me the file contents in the Oregon folder, as they should appear. OREGON is the exe that runs the game. I have a clone file in my C:\DOSGAMES folder that works just fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CatPix Posted August 12, 2016 Share Posted August 12, 2016 (edited) Why do you mount the floppy drive as C:/ ? I think that DOSBOX try to access your drive as a hard drive and is confused because it isn't. Mount A:/ as A:/ and see if it goes better. I acessed floppies and CD on DosBox so I'm sure it works fine if you mount them as the standard A, B and D. Edited August 12, 2016 by CatPix Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted August 12, 2016 Author Share Posted August 12, 2016 Thinking back on it, I did make.one modification last night, but it shouldn't affect the ability to run. I used the in-game prompt to erase the user-high scores. Could that affect the game launch sequence?! Wouldn't think so... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sinphaltimus Posted August 23, 2016 Share Posted August 23, 2016 You can always dual boot with another partition or hard drive. Easy method = easy bcd. http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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