i have an old PC/DOS game i want to add to my retropie system however i cannot source a rom for it.
I do have the original package with its floppy disk, however i have no idea how to go about making this happen. besides the obvious initial problem of finding an IBM pc compatable computer with a working 3.5" floppy drive, i have no idea how to go about creating a rom. or maybe thats not even necessary with dosbox ?
maybe all is needed is to copy all the files over to a thumbdrive? or perhaps zip them and email it to myself? its only 1 floppy so not very big.
or perhaps someone has this...
its called "Freight Train" published by Abracadata in 1985. i cant even find a mention of it anywhere online, much less an image of the box or a rom file.
i purchaced this title from a retail outlet having a clearing house sale near st.louis mo. in the late 80's and played it alot!
I havent been able to enjoy it for many years due to "progress". Now with dosbox and a retropie equiped RPI3B+ at my disposal I hope to get it back again!
where do i start? what do i need exactly?
I have an old PC/dos game on floppy disk i want to add to my retropie
I have an old PC/dos game on floppy disk i want to add to my retropie
- Freight Train by Abricadata 1985
- Freight_Train_small_20220120_121533.jpg (166.11 KiB) Viewed 15125 times
I have an old PC/dos game on floppy disk i want to add to my retropie
I'm not familiar with the RetroPie hardware, a quick look at their webpage shows there are several such, but I guess you need to transfer the floppy image to a flash drive for use with the device. For this, either copy the image on an existing PC with 3.5" drive, or get a USB-attached external floppy drive.
If the RetroPie in question has the power to drive the floppy drive directly, you could hook it up to that, otherwise you need an image transferred to a more low-powered flashdrive or similar storage device.
It is also possible the floppy has some copy-protection, which makes this less successful, but in that case you could try to install it on a normal PC and clone the directory to your flashdrive, including whatever files the game might put in the root directory, if any.
(Also, if possible, maybe add this title to Mobygames documentation site?)
If the RetroPie in question has the power to drive the floppy drive directly, you could hook it up to that, otherwise you need an image transferred to a more low-powered flashdrive or similar storage device.
It is also possible the floppy has some copy-protection, which makes this less successful, but in that case you could try to install it on a normal PC and clone the directory to your flashdrive, including whatever files the game might put in the root directory, if any.
(Also, if possible, maybe add this title to Mobygames documentation site?)
I have an old PC/dos game on floppy disk i want to add to my retropie
thank you for the tutalage, yeah, first things first, I do have a "powered" USB hub and am using it to drive a WD 2TB Elements drive, (not SSD, and a bit power hungry for the SBC that the RPI3B+ is).
i am also using it to hold a temporary raid made from thumb drives, but intend to take it down soon.
Also a USB floppy drive I imaginge would have its own power supply needs because they typicaly ran on 12v motors. i think i have seen enclosures for converting legacy hardware and they contained a 12v supply.
until i can get one up and operational I wont know the contents of the floppy exactly. if i recall i think installation may be very basic in nature. its been too many years to really be sure.
i have dosbox up and operational on retropie already and have used it to "install" a title or two already that were much more complex.
so when it comes down to taking an "image" or the floppy, this is a track and sector duplicate i imagine ???
not just a file by file "clone" of the included directory tree and files ???
what software is recomended for this?
I have a win 10 pc (old and slow, and no floppy drive) available to me, and my raspberry pi3B+ running Bash linux shell and raspbian GUI.
its a Debian release of linux compiled for ARM processors. not the x86 like Ubuntu.
i have to use that win/10 PC from time to time to SSH into the Pi for one reason or another, usualy due to bluetooth keyboard/mouse issues, but not much more. its becoming more of a dinosaur each day.
wish i had never gotten rid of that old first XT i built years ago with a full height 5.25" form factor maxtor 100mb hard drive. that thing sounded like a jet powered heli starting up and would litteraly "shake" the desk as the hard drive spun up. (ahh...memories)
im sure i can find a debian-linux utillity that can take an "image" of a floppy since Unix, which Linux is based upon, has excelent legacy support, not something i trust microsoft for. Linux can read and write multiple files systems all day long, however it would be easier if someone already had this puzzle figured out before i go app hunting. thats the down side to Linux... there is so much Variety and non standardisation accross distributions it makes finding a compatable app difficult. however a pc ms/dos-windows environment boasts much easier product availability.
so just in case, do you reccomend a good and free windows/dos utility to do this???
as far as cloneing goes, I think a simple zip utillity can probably handle that. but i would rather preserve the uninstalled disk "image" if i could.
also...
I would be glad to add it to Mobygames doccumentation site. just tell me how.
i am also using it to hold a temporary raid made from thumb drives, but intend to take it down soon.
Also a USB floppy drive I imaginge would have its own power supply needs because they typicaly ran on 12v motors. i think i have seen enclosures for converting legacy hardware and they contained a 12v supply.
until i can get one up and operational I wont know the contents of the floppy exactly. if i recall i think installation may be very basic in nature. its been too many years to really be sure.
i have dosbox up and operational on retropie already and have used it to "install" a title or two already that were much more complex.
so when it comes down to taking an "image" or the floppy, this is a track and sector duplicate i imagine ???
not just a file by file "clone" of the included directory tree and files ???
what software is recomended for this?
I have a win 10 pc (old and slow, and no floppy drive) available to me, and my raspberry pi3B+ running Bash linux shell and raspbian GUI.
its a Debian release of linux compiled for ARM processors. not the x86 like Ubuntu.
i have to use that win/10 PC from time to time to SSH into the Pi for one reason or another, usualy due to bluetooth keyboard/mouse issues, but not much more. its becoming more of a dinosaur each day.
wish i had never gotten rid of that old first XT i built years ago with a full height 5.25" form factor maxtor 100mb hard drive. that thing sounded like a jet powered heli starting up and would litteraly "shake" the desk as the hard drive spun up. (ahh...memories)
im sure i can find a debian-linux utillity that can take an "image" of a floppy since Unix, which Linux is based upon, has excelent legacy support, not something i trust microsoft for. Linux can read and write multiple files systems all day long, however it would be easier if someone already had this puzzle figured out before i go app hunting. thats the down side to Linux... there is so much Variety and non standardisation accross distributions it makes finding a compatable app difficult. however a pc ms/dos-windows environment boasts much easier product availability.
so just in case, do you reccomend a good and free windows/dos utility to do this???
as far as cloneing goes, I think a simple zip utillity can probably handle that. but i would rather preserve the uninstalled disk "image" if i could.
also...
I would be glad to add it to Mobygames doccumentation site. just tell me how.
I have an old PC/dos game on floppy disk i want to add to my retropie
I haven't needed to create many floppy images so far, I still have my floppy drives intact; however it seems WinImage could do the trick.
As you mentioned your game is on 3.5" media, there are USB connected versions that can be used, I have an older IOmega model for use with some PC:s, and it only uses +5V, which is common with most, if not all internal 3.5" floppy drives; only the larger 5.25" drives also used +12V in the PC, and those are not available with USB interface, as far as I know. Anyway, the USB 3.5" floppy drives can be found in online shops, though nowadays the actual media type is less required. Make sure it is compatible with your PC, it seems some models are not recognized by Win10, according to some reviews I saw, unclear why?
Sometimes with very old games, the floppy needed to be present while playing, but normally they would only be used for installation, thus a copy of the installation directory from another PC might be sufficient if the directory structure is kept the same on the new flash drive. (Some files may not be copied, depending on your choices during installation, e.g. sound cards drivers etc. so select to install the same video & sound equipment as on your actual target if possible)
As you mentioned your game is on 3.5" media, there are USB connected versions that can be used, I have an older IOmega model for use with some PC:s, and it only uses +5V, which is common with most, if not all internal 3.5" floppy drives; only the larger 5.25" drives also used +12V in the PC, and those are not available with USB interface, as far as I know. Anyway, the USB 3.5" floppy drives can be found in online shops, though nowadays the actual media type is less required. Make sure it is compatible with your PC, it seems some models are not recognized by Win10, according to some reviews I saw, unclear why?
Sometimes with very old games, the floppy needed to be present while playing, but normally they would only be used for installation, thus a copy of the installation directory from another PC might be sufficient if the directory structure is kept the same on the new flash drive. (Some files may not be copied, depending on your choices during installation, e.g. sound cards drivers etc. so select to install the same video & sound equipment as on your actual target if possible)
I have an old PC/dos game on floppy disk i want to add to my retropie
i will be using Dosbox on a linux machine in order to run the game (hopefully)
i think it can give the software what it neeeds in the line of sound graphics and I/O for proper compatability.
i havent pushed the emulator to its limits but have installed much more complex packages onto it and ran them without any difficulty.
i have not tried to use disk access from within any of the programs i have installed onto dosbox, but for what i undertand this is possible either phisicaly or virtualy. having a USB-intefaced floppy drive may be all i need and dos box will provide the environment necessary for the install routine to work. I have done that before. dosbox actualy creates a "mount-point" in the existing file structure of linux and asigns it a drive letter to it. and since everything in linux is treated like a file someplace on a tree the program inside dossbox doesnt know if that actual device is /dev/null or something real.
i have read up on some of those USB drives and others have been successful in using them with a linux machine because they are seen as any other USB type device and automaticaly mounted as soon as its connected with readable media inserted.
something i intend to try. ans if that fails, i will try the imaging method on a PC and put it onto a thumbdrive. thanks for the app tip. hopefully i wont need it.
i think it can give the software what it neeeds in the line of sound graphics and I/O for proper compatability.
i havent pushed the emulator to its limits but have installed much more complex packages onto it and ran them without any difficulty.
i have not tried to use disk access from within any of the programs i have installed onto dosbox, but for what i undertand this is possible either phisicaly or virtualy. having a USB-intefaced floppy drive may be all i need and dos box will provide the environment necessary for the install routine to work. I have done that before. dosbox actualy creates a "mount-point" in the existing file structure of linux and asigns it a drive letter to it. and since everything in linux is treated like a file someplace on a tree the program inside dossbox doesnt know if that actual device is /dev/null or something real.
i have read up on some of those USB drives and others have been successful in using them with a linux machine because they are seen as any other USB type device and automaticaly mounted as soon as its connected with readable media inserted.
something i intend to try. ans if that fails, i will try the imaging method on a PC and put it onto a thumbdrive. thanks for the app tip. hopefully i wont need it.
I have an old PC/dos game on floppy disk i want to add to my retropie
OK, good luck! Make sure to have the floppy write protected to be safe.
I have an old PC/dos game on floppy disk i want to add to my retropie
I just found this forum and it's great to see a bunch of DOS lovers since I grew up with DOS.
I have a bunch of older systems with working floppy drives as well as usb floppy drives. I could make an image of the disk for you in whatever format you wanted. PM me and we'll figure it out.
I have a bunch of older systems with working floppy drives as well as usb floppy drives. I could make an image of the disk for you in whatever format you wanted. PM me and we'll figure it out.