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[Sebatianos]

Our member Ermuli contributed a game named Prince to the site. As far as I can tell it seems to be abandoned. The problem is, I can not get it to run (seems it has some problems, since it's a disk image and should probably be booted from a floppy).

Can anybody get the game running?

[Japo]

It's not a bootable disk. To make the game run you need to call PRINCE.EXE from a floppy labelled "PRINCE PC". (If the label isn't correct you'll be told "Key disk not found".)

However trying to run the game causes but a severe crash in DOSBox and also in a Win98 virtual machine, and in DOS 6.22 in the same virtual machine (booting from a DOSv6 floppy). Other devices could be tried, but anyway this doesn't look very playable in practice for the average abandoneer. I have no idea whether this is supposed to run well in some system from Stone Age or the file is corrupt. Can Ermuli himself play it?

[Sebatianos]

That's the problem, he hasn't been able to play it either. He provided the manual and box scans as well (some screenshots on the box) and the game looks OK, but all the manual says abou tit is to start the floppy.

I know it's not a straight forward boot image, but I thought (since there's also a scan of an old 5'25'' floppy) that once you get all the three files you still need to boot it. Never got it to run (haven't got the old machine here with me, to try in real DOS, so thanks for trying that one as well).

Hopefully the file isn't corrupt and the game can be played, but just has compatibility issues.

[Japo]

There's no way you can boot that disk since it lacks the DOS system files (MSDOS.SYS, IO.SYS, COMMAND.COM) to start with. I think that the 5.5'' disk would most likely have the exact same content and was only for other computers that had that floppy drive instead of the 3.25'' one. I think that what I did and caused crashes was the right way to run it back in the day, but I'd bet this is a severe compatibility issue as you said.

[jg007]

QUOTE(Japofran @ Sep 2 2007, 07:25 PM) [snapback]308413[/snapback]

There's no way you can boot that disk since it lacks the DOS system files (MSDOS.SYS, IO.SYS, COMMAND.COM) to start with. I think that the 5.5'' disk would most likely have the exact same content and was only for other computers that had that floppy drive instead of the 3.25'' one. I think that what I did and caused crashes was the right way to run it back in the day, but I'd bet this is a severe compatibility issue as you said.
[/b]

what is the name of the game???, I have extracted out the 3 files but still get the keydisk error but as I haven't a clue of the name it makes it hard to search for stuff

[Japo]

You must do what I said above, the program must see the original floppy (some kind of copy protection I guess); but in DOSBox it doesn't work well. Mounting the image directly with IMGMOUNT and then running the game, sometimes the keydisk error appears, sometimes it doesn't, even if I do exactly the same.

In Virtual PC it's easy, you only have to mount the image file as floppy drive of the virtual machine and it's like the real deal. The keydisk error never appears and there's a crash when PRINCE.EXE is run. Win98 warns about it attempting an illegal operation and kills it; if run from DOS a severe crash happens and I've got to hard reset the machine because even Ctrl+Alt+Supr won't do anything.

[jg007]

This program utilises ' copylock ' protcetion -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Northen_copylock

I would guess that unless you can crack it it will not work even if you make a disk image, as the wikipedia articles explains it is actually quite a solid disk protection and was quite hard for hackers to crack

[Japo]

Maybe (I remeber Lemmings couldn't be pirated with the DISKCOPY command). But even in that case, even if you can't write the image to a real floppy without specialized hardware, you don't need to if you mount the image as a virtual floppy. Images are equal bit by bit to the original disk. Even if these long tracks can't be written with ordinary hardware, they can be read (otherwise they would serve no purpose), so the disk imaging software should have got the disk image right.

The copy protection gives you a keydisk warning and returns you to the command prompt. I've managed past that so I don't think the subsequent crash is due to the same copy protection, but most likely to understandable compatibility problems.

[jg007]

I am only trying to start through windows / dosbox but I have not yet managed to get past the stupid keydisk thing! so that is why I am looking at that as the issue at present and if I knew the game I could look for an old crack to check this.

[Japo]

In DOSBox it's worked sometimes with IMGMOUNT, sometimes not, which is very odd. I think it's faulty disk label support, what I don't understand is why it works sometimes. Anyways.

You can download VPC, it's a very handy dandy piece of software and extremely easy to use (it's by Microsoft, duh). You don't even have to install an OS into the virtual machine to test this game, just download a DOS boot floppy from anywhere, mount it and boot the machine with it (without need of any OS in the hard drive). Then when it's booted and you're at the command prompt ("A:\>" instead of "C:\>"), mount the game floppy instead of the boot one, and then finally enter PRINCE. And lo, the catastrophic crash. :wallbash: