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[The Fifth Horseman]

Originally Posted by JackOLantern

Then I must be doing something wrong, as 7-zip informed me on the first go that there was an error - CRC did not compute, or some such. I cannot imagine why a checksum error would have occurred, so I could use some advice.

Most likely culprit is a truncated download. The first archive should be 50 000 000 bytes long. The second should be 48 460 147 bytes long.
There seem to be issues with downloading the second archive; several attempts from me ended up frozen or truncated.

caveat: although I think I did it the first time, I believe I did not include a system information file this time. Should that be included?

No and no. That's mostly irrelevant to the issue at hand.

EDIT 2: tested the rar-open with all files present in a folder except for cluebook and manual. Used both 7-zip and Peazip; encountered the same error.

Only extract the RAR and ZIP files. NFO and SFV are not archives.

There are several possible explanations here - bad RAM (altough you'd probably experience random crashing in that case), failing hard drive (again, there are symptoms you'd notice) and faulty download. Try redownloading the files, perhaps using a different download tool (or browser, if you downloaded them through one).

[JackOLantern]

Kewl, re-downloaded, CRC appears to check out (har har), 7-zip works out. So, as a newb, I must ask two questions:

1) How do I install the patches?

2) For the img.ecm, do I just use that as my .ISO for mounting on Dosbox, then? What do the other files do?

Noob thanks in advance,

~Jack

[The Fifth Horseman]

Originally Posted by JackOLantern

1) How do I install the patches?

Depending on the game, there are two appproaches. One where the "patch" is actually a set of replacement files that need to be put in the same directory you installed the game to (obviously, you must confirm overwriting the originals). The other is something you're probably more used to - the patch is a separate program that needs to be ran in DOSBox and directed to the original files so that it can modify them.

2) For the img.ecm, do I just use that as my .ISO for mounting on Dosbox, then? What do the other files do?

Run UNECM.BAT and wait for it to finish - then you'll have a useable image. ECM extension indicates the image has been additionally compressed using that compression scheme.

[JackOLantern]

Quick question: Do I need both the RAR and R00 archive for this game, or are they just both potential ways to extract the .ecm to get the ISO?

~Jack

Originally Posted by The Fifth Horseman

Most likely culprit is a truncated download. The first archive should be 50 000 000 bytes long. The second should be 48 460 147 bytes long.
There seem to be issues with downloading the second archive; several attempts from me ended up frozen or truncated.
No and no. That's mostly irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Only extract the RAR and ZIP files. NFO and SFV are not archives.

There are several possible explanations here - bad RAM (altough you'd probably experience random crashing in that case), failing hard drive (again, there are symptoms you'd notice) and faulty download. Try redownloading the files, perhaps using a different download tool (or browser, if you downloaded them through one).

[JackOLantern]

My noobness continues - when I run ecm.bat, the command console flashes (I assume the .bat unecm command executing), but nothing happens. What error am I making?

EDIT: Never mind, After failing many times, I ran it again after posting, and it worked. Deep magic, man.

So, now I have a .img file. Do I use that as an .ISO, or do I convert it to a .ISO type?

~Jack

[The Fifth Horseman]

Originally Posted by JackOLantern

Quick question: Do I need both the RAR and R00 archive for this game, or are they just both potential ways to extract the .ecm to get the ISO?

When you extracted the files, the program treated the RAR and R00 as one item. Picture this as a cargo load divided between two transport trucks and you've more or less got the idea.

Originally Posted by JackOLantern

So, now I have a .img file. Do I use that as an .ISO, or do I convert it to a .ISO type?

As an ISO.

[JackOLantern]

Ok. So that makes sense. Any suggestions for converting the .img to an .iso file? I am not certain of open-source software that can accomplish a pure virtual to virtual conversion.

EDIT: I used Imgburner after looking around on Sourceforge and CNET. Quickly did a build and converted. For whatever reason, IMGtoISO did not work with the rloft image.

Now, I am going to go to the tutorial forums (http://www.abandonia.com/vbullet/forumdisplay.php?f=90) and figure out how to mount this image. Keep getting the "The image must be on a host or local drive" message

EDIT2: I realized logically I had to mount a drive as "my drive" (virtual drive) for C. Now, its time for the meat: using the CD for strahd.

~Jack

[JackOLantern]

Fascinating! Is there a wiki-link you know of on how that works? I am familiar with the basic math for RAID5 and whatnot for data backups, but I never thought about splitting file data into two archives for later reassembling, although its rather obvious in retrospect.

~Jack

Originally Posted by The Fifth Horseman

When you extracted the files, the program treated the RAR and R00 as one item. Picture this as a cargo load divided between two transport trucks and you've more or less got the idea.
As an ISO.

[DarthHelmet86]

You don't need to convert the .img file. It will work just like an ISO in any mounting program and dosbox's own mounting system will be able to use it.

[JackOLantern]

Alright,

so do I then just run it as -fs fat format? I got the .iso to work, but not the .img. Obviously, It will not mount it as .iso in .img format. Also, on a related note, will games automatically read from a imgdrive mounted as D, or do I need to do anything to ensure that files of D can be referenced by the ravenloft application?

~Jack

Originally Posted by DarthHelmet86

You don't need to convert the .img file. It will work just like an ISO in any mounting program and dosbox's own mounting system will be able to use it.