16-bit windows games on a 64-bit system

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Akira110
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16-bit windows games on a 64-bit system

#1 Post by Akira110 »

I recently bought Earthsiege 2 off of Amazon and I got it yesterday, and I've been trying to get it to work, however very unsuccessfully, I've also tried using Wine to play it, but that too has been unsuccessful(Same with Installing 32-bit Linux, but that's a different story altogether), I'm wondering if there is any chance I could possibly get this game to work because I've been waiting since 96 to actually get to play it, and now that I own it, I can't play it.
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Re: 16-bit windows games on a 64-bit system

#2 Post by Tygron »

I don't know anything about Linux. But I hear most games don't play well with Linux. I'm assuming the game is made for a windows machine, so if at all possible try that.
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Re: 16-bit windows games on a 64-bit system

#3 Post by Akira110 »

The only windows machines I have are 64-bit Windows 7 and 64-bit Vista. Neither of which will run the game. When I try to run the game directly from the disc without installing it, I get this an error that I honestly have no clue as to what it means. And if I try to install the game, it just doesn't work at all, telling me that its incompatible.
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Re: 16-bit windows games on a 64-bit system

#4 Post by RobbieThe1st »

Basically, you've got three choices:
1, Wine and Linux. Wine should be able to run it, thanks to being able to use a Windows 95 compatibility mode; Wine's actually pretty good for old stuff, because it's designed to support such things, versus modern Windows, where there's no incentive to make old stuff work, and every incentive not to(if you can't run an old game, you'll buy a new one).

2, VirtualBox/machine emulator - Grab a Windows 95/98 Virtualbox harddisk image, set it up and install ES2 in it. There's a good chance of it working, only issues will be with making sure the mouse works right; there have been issues in older Windows OSes on Virtualbox in the past.

3, This method: https://sites.google.com/site/es2reveng/run for running directly on 64-bit modern Windows. Requires some definite skills and a lot of hacking, it seems.

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Re: 16-bit windows games on a 64-bit system

#5 Post by Akira110 »

I've already tried Wine and Linux, The game doesn't want to work using Wine, and when I try to install it on Linux, it can't install half the game and when I try to run it directly from the CD, it gives me some sort of error and shuts down immediately.
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Re: 16-bit windows games on a 64-bit system

#6 Post by RobbieThe1st »

Akira110 wrote:I've already tried Wine and Linux, The game doesn't want to work using Wine, and when I try to install it on Linux, it can't install half the game and when I try to run it directly from the CD, it gives me some sort of error and shuts down immediately.
Well, you'd have to use winecfg to configure it to emulating a Windows 95/98 system first... And likely do some funky configuration stuff to make it work - here are some instructions that could help: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.p ... ingId=8601 - Looks like it's a similar-vintage Sierra game, and I'd be willing to bet that those would work.

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Re: 16-bit windows games on a 64-bit system

#7 Post by XanderK9 »

I hope I am not too late to post in this thread. :oops:

I have done some tests myself about how to make Earthsiege 2 working on modern operating systems and I can confirm RobbieThe1st's suggestion about running the game on a virtual machine.

What I am currently using is the latest version of Virtualbox with Windows 98 SE and since VirtualBox does not support Win98, which means lack of drivers, I use SciTech Display Doctor for the graphic adapter and set the virtual sound card to SoundBlaster 16, which didn't required drivers (at least, with my copy of Windows 98 SE). There may have some other drivers missing, but they aren't causing any problems this far. If you have to transfer files to the virtual machine and since there is no guest additions, simply put them into an ISO and mount it into VirtualBox.

Running Windows updates are recommended, but since Windows Updates for 98 is no longer available, I would suggest using an auto-patcher (I recommend Soporific's 2007 and 2008 Auto-Patcher) and running the updates at default settings. The Virtual Machine will restart several times during the updates.

Installing EarthSiege 2 may be a little tricky, but not by much. If you have a CD, just make VirtualBox to host your physical drive, load Setup.exe in the Virtual Machine and select "No" when it is asking about doing the system test. If you do the system test, setup will crash with an "Integer Divide by 0" error because it was unable to detect the hardware properly. Even if it says that your system does not meet the minimum requirements, just click "Yes" to continue the installation.

Finally, set the display to 256 colors and load the game. In my virtual machine, it was running very nicely.

I hope it helps. :D
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Re: 16-bit windows games on a 64-bit system

#8 Post by RobbieThe1st »

Perfect. Zip it up, upload it to a file host, and the OP's problem will be solved. ;P

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Re: 16-bit windows games on a 64-bit system

#9 Post by XanderK9 »

The patch files are fairly big and my virtual drive is way to big to share. You can try this image, but I am not sure if it's compatible with virtualbox: http://digiex.net/downloads/download-ce ... games.html

You can find the auto-patcher I have recommended at the following link. You should download both 2007 and 2008 versions, install 2007 then 2008 and start the auto-patcher. http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/80800-a ... e-english/

For the SciTech Display Doctor, you can find it at the following link. It is an odd one because it's a universal and commercial driver. The company was gone a long time ago and the only available versions is the shareware with a 21 days limit, but I believe it's still not wise for me to provide the serial number, though it cannot be purchased anymore. :|

That's too bad, because that's the best VM-compatible graphic driver I could find for Windows 98 and the other ones I have found were buggier. Also, don't waste your time with the SciTech GLDirect feature, it does not work on VM environment. http://majorgeeks.com/download382.html

Here's my settings for the VM. You can configure the hard drive the way you see fit.

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