Pkzipfix
Paz Warsager
I'm about to attempt something odd, and before I wasted time going down the wrong paths, I thought I'd see if anyone here has done this before. I have a zip file created in DOS (in 1997?) with pkzip that is spanning several old floppy disks. As expected, some of these disks aren't in the best shape, and I get read errors when trying to copy contents off some of the disks. Is there a pkzipfix equivalent that I can use to restore some of the content of this zip file?
PKZipFix is highly overrated. It doesn't do much. If I remember right, it simply repairs the Zip file header, so if you have data corruption in the first bytes then it can try to find a data stream and make a valid Zip file again. But if you have a data error in the middle of the compressed data stream, then your out of luck. I might have that slightly wrong: what I do remember clearly is that when I learned what it really does, I was rather disappointed with how little good it was ever likely to do.
Be very wary of the zip files: watch the extraction results carefully. I think some more recent efforts have tried to merge things a bit so that there is more compatibility, but if you may be using different software, then know that Zip file spanning isn't necessarily something where all implementations have always been compatible.
Are there any DOSBox installers for Origin games? (the way there are installers for Sierra games)
So far my experience installing floppy versions of Origin games has been terrible.
The only way I could install from Wing Commander 1 floppies was to create a floppy drive B:, mount both A: and B: (B: was actually a folder) in DOSBox, and install from A: to B:. I also needed some files from the DOS 6.22 supplemental floppy copied over to DOSBox (join.exe or append.exe or something like that in the DOSBox C: folder). For some reason installing from A: to B: worked, while installing from A: to C: did not. Further testing showed installing from B: to A: in DOSBox also worked (provided DOSBox had the supplemental files). I did not try mounting my DOSBox C: folder as a floppy drive.
I never figured out how to install Privateer on DOSBox at all. Concatenating the privater.zip files on all 6 floppies into a single .zip file and then unzipping them did not work -- some problem with offsets and most of the files could not be extracted. Eventually I had to locate a computer with Windows 98SE and USB capability, install on that computer, then transfer the install folder to the computer with DOSBox. Once "installed" in this roundabout manner, the game seems to run OK in DOSBox, though I haven't played very far into it.
So are there any DOSBox-approved installers for Origin games?
Or am I stuck figuring out whatever works for each separate case, which may or may not involve access to a vintage computer and/or supplemental DOS files? The install instructions I've found using Google have been unhelpful, stating only how to mount folders and type in the word "install" which does not work (at least not in DOSBox 0.74)
The Wing Commander 1 floppy version I have is on three 1.2MB disks. There are no batch files and no external programs needed, only have to run INSTALL.EXE on the first disk. A floppy-mounted folder as the A: drive and copying in the files from each disk as prompted works fine for installing to the C: drive.
If you need to switch floppies halfway through an installation and don't have an actual floppy drive, then you can either use Virtual Floppy Drive in Windows or do a simultaneous mount of multiple floppy images using IMGMOUNT (though this requires an SVN version of DOSBox).
Wing Commander 1 is on three 3.5" floppies.
It has no box, but came with the paper manual, pictures and descriptions of the ships, etc.
I have no reason to believe the floppies are not original.
At least they "look" official and have official-looking files on them.
Unfortunately the CD version had the same problem installing in DOSBox as the floppy version -- and wouldn't install on my 486 with DOS 6.22 either. It also created useless subfolders without files in them, so I went back to working on installing the floppy version, and as I said in my first post I eventually found out I could install it by installing from A: to a B: drive on DOSBox after copying over files from the DOS 6.22 supplemental disk. Installing to B: gave error messages that were a clue to what files the installer wanted (I think it was join.exe and maybe another file but I don't remember anymore since I did all this some months ago).
You run the installer, and it makes a configuration file and then starts pkzip. Pkzip chews on disk one, then asks for the "last" disk, which is disk 6. It chews on disk 6 for a bit, then asks for disk 1. Only it doesn't recognize disk 1. Nor does it recognize any of the other disks as disk 1. On a "real" DOS or Windows 95/98 computer, pkzip will recognize disk 1 at this point and go through the process of asking for disks 1 through 6 until the install is completed. On DOSBox it is stuck asking for disk 1 forever. Running pkzip by itself has the same effect. Apparently it needs something in real DOS (or Win95/98) that is not in DOSBox 0.74.
Of course one of the extracted files is over 8 MB, which makes it inconvenient to copy the game to the computer with DOSBox via floppies -- which is why the best solution was to install on a computer with Windows 98SE and USB capability.
If the above games were not legitimate versions I could understand better why they wouldn't install properly.
But they sure look legitimate -- and come with the paper manuals and other documentation that look legitimate.
The Privateer floppies have weird zip files, but unless someone who owns the same purple-labelled black disks says they have different files on their disks, I have no reason to believe Origin didn't use pkzip to cut down on the number of floppies needed.
A few of the WC1 files are on different disks, but probably explained by 3.5" vs 5.25". It seems unlikely the installer would be significantly different, so maybe there's something about your process of installing that is giving you trouble. Try copying all of the files on disk 1 into a folder, then mount that folder as the A: drive in DOSBox.
The installer defaults to C:\WING as the install location, there should be no mention of B: at all. Choose the option to save time (unpack data files) or save space (don't unpack data files), either works. When the installer prompts for the next disk, delete all the files in the floppy folder and copy in the files from that disk, then press a key to continue the installation. It's really a very simple game to install compared to some others, so I'm perplexed why you're finding it problematic.
Well, I think you can manually unzip spanned zip archives using IZArc or other relatively recent unzipping programs. The trick is to rename the disk 2 version of privater.zip to privater.z01, then rename the disk 3 version to privater.z02, and so on, then put all the files in the same directory and open privater.zip. (Ancient zip archives are getting to be a dicey proposition, though, as PKZip used several different algorithms and some unzipping programs are dropping support for the oldest ones.)
Thanks for the tip, Jorpho. Maybe it will work for other games.
Unfortunately it didn't work for Privateer using either 7-zip in Windows, Ark in Linux, or the command line utility "unzip" in Linux. Unlike 7-zip and Ark, "unzip" produced error messages to tell what was wrong.
Renaming the disk 2 privater.zip to privater.z01, the disk 3 privater.zip to privater.z02, etc., produced this error:
Archive: PRIVATER.zip
End-of-central-directory signature not found. Either this file is not
a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive. In the
latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on
the last disk(s) of this archive.
unzip: cannot find zipfile directory in one of PRIVATER.zip or
PRIVATER.zip.zip, and cannot find PRIVATER.zip.ZIP, period.
Since it mentioned "the last disk of the archive," I tried using the PRIVATER.zip on disk 6 as the zip and renaming the PRIVATER.zip on disk 1 to PRIVATER.z01, the PRIVATER.zip on disk 2 to PRIVATER.z02, etc., and got this error
I think the version of pkzip Origin used for this game (at least on the version I have) did something proprietary and weird.
The manual installs at
_manual
tell you to concatenate to more than one file instead of a single file before extracting. But without specific instructions for Privateer, it would be a process of elimination which sets of 2 or 3 files to combine -- and no assurance it even works the same way. We tried a binary search for an "end of file" on the PRIVATER.ZIP files on the different disks, but only found one in disk 6.
WC1 would ONLY install to a second floppy drive, which in my case was only possible by mounting a second floppy drive as B: DOSBox because I don't have a computer with two floppy drives that I have floppies for. I have a computer with two floppy drives, but one is a 5.25" and I have no 5.25" floppies to install on.
Apparently it's not able to create the configuration file in C:\WING, though it can create the C:\WING folder.
I checked permissions and read-only-ness of the files and folders and that didn't seem to be the problem.
I had the same problem trying to install on the 486 with DOS 6.22, which as far as I know has no permissions restrictions.
Tried different IRQ's for sound, tried no sound, etc. Made no difference. Wouldn't create the config file in either DOSBox or on my 486.
Wouldn't install from the floppies, wouldn't install from files in a folder mounted as a floppy.