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check out Daemon Tools which lets you do precisely that. (iirc) you can mount .bin, .iso, .ccd (clone cd), .nrg (nero), and a bunch of other formats.

hope this helps

-fren

> it still requires you to keep the CD in the drive every time you want to play a game.

Two words: Daemon Tools

Daemon Tools is a Virtual CD-ROM that works wonderfully with copy-protected discs. My personal experience is that getting a game to run with an ISO + Daemon is much easier then making a perfect copy of the disc.

Also, if you need a good image creation software I recommend Blindwrite.

[]s Badaro

> I can wander and get the no-cd 'fix' for the game, but you end up looking for a fresh crack every time the game does a service pack.

Why not use Daemon-Tools ? Rip the CD to an .ISO, mount the game image, and you're all set. You never have to worry about cracks or no-cd fixes again :)

I use it for D2 and it works great. Most no-cd fixes don't work as the code does a CRC on the executables. Every patch breaks the latest no-cd fix.

And before you start complaing about taking up 640 Megs of diskspace per game ... Answer this, first: How many different games do you usually play in a week? 2 or 3 ? That's only 2 - 3 Gigs of drive space your sacrificing for ease of use !

Cheers

I also failed to copy diablo.

However i managed to copy it to my HD with 2 tools:

- clone cd
- daemon tools

just make an image with clone cd and mount that image with deamon tools in a virual cd-rom. If you have a big HD you can have a lot of cd's ready to play.

Don't enable "securom" emulation in daemon tools. deamon tools already delivers sub-data correctly and make it a good copy.

I made a couple of coasters trying to burn this image to cd.

Maybe I should make that clearer: Some laptops don't have CDROM drives, or they are external and have to be lugged around and connected to use them.

With tools like CD Space or I think daemon tools you don't have to deal with this hassle.

These tools are CDROM emulators. You can scan in the image to a hard disk file on your desktop, then transfer the file to your laptop's hard disk. Then your laptop can mount the file as a "virtual cdrom" and you can install and play the game while traveling without a physical cdrom drive or the game CD. No lugging.

There is one totaly legit way of doing the same thing without having to use a NoCD patch.

Juste install Daemon-Tools. It's a wonderfull little program that lets you mount an ISO file as if it was a standard CDDrive. It's free (as in beer), tiny ( ~400Kb), and works like a charme on Win2k/98/XP.
It can even emulate some form of copyprotection like Safedisc, SecureRom and LaserLock.

All you have to do to play your favorite game is create a RAW (1:1 image) copy of your original game CD, and then mount the image as a CD drive.

Really a brilliant little program.

Murphy

Do you have the hard drive space to keep the CD images on it? If you do, Daemon Tools lets Windows look at them as CDs - essentially, it lets you mount them. It's free as in beer.
I used this to identify some unknown bin/cue files without wasting a CDR.

Daemon Tools allows you to mount a 1 to 1 copy of a CD (an ISO image, not a file copy) as a virtual CD. It also emulates most (if not all) of the current "copy protection" schemes in use.

Note that you must keep the ISO around if you want to continue to use the CD. With the files ranging in size from 50 or so Meg to 700 Meg or more, this can quickly eat up space. With disk prices being as cheap as they are, this isn't as big of a problem as it was in years past.

You'll also need a good duplication package for that 1 to 1 copy mentioned above. I have had very limited success with Adaptec's Easy CD Creator and no success at all with Veritas' CD Pro software.

The one package I've yet to have a problem with is CloneCD. This product also seems to be able to copy most "copy protected" discs with the schemes intact on the duplicate; a nice bonus.

Daemon Tools is fairly intuitive for the stuff it's doing and it's also the only software I've used that loaded a Windows VXD and didn't require a reboot after doing it. It is not, however, 4-year-old intuitive, so you'll probably have to either mount the ISO images as separate drive letters or mount them for your kid yourself.

Hope that helps.

There is a program called Daemon Tools.

It runs on Win95/98/ME, and NT4/W2K/XP.

It'll mount .iso images, cdrwin, clonecd, and other cd and dvd images. It also emulates various cd copy protection schemes.

Programs/apps/games think its a real CD in a real CD-Rom drive, because it installs a 'virtual SCSI card', and 'virtual SCSI CDrom/DVDrom'. Its as real as it can get. But the driver doesn't talk to actual physical hardware, it just talks to a file on your local or remote filesystem.

So. Use CloneCD (or whatever, but clonecd is definitely best) and image all your kids' CDs onto the linux server. And use daemon tools to mount the cd images over samba.

I hardly use any CDs anymore. I have literally 100s of CloneCD image's on my fileserver, and just mount them using Daemon-Tools over Samba.

You will LOVE this program!

D.

You know, I was really hoping this was going to take off. The only reason why I still have Windows on my computer is for games. Everything else I can do under Linux or Wine.

It's true that Transgaming was making a huge contribution to Linux, in an area where Linux was very poor. They were not that expensive with what they asked for their efforts. (Subscription based; $5 per month, $50 for a year)

However, they stated on their website that after 20.000 people became a member they will GPL all their code. Now Wine is LGPL they complain that it is too restrictive, while LGPL is less restrictive then GPL.

Another thing, the place where they mentioned the 20.000 people limit (Business Model), has suddenly been changed in the past 2 days. I know because I was looking into subscribing to them. I was even planning on mailing them to ask them how many people they already had. So is it a lie? Were they ever going to GPL their code? We had only that statement that disappeared without a trace.

So presumably no. Why? Because in their CEO's rant about Wine's license change to GPL, he states that it is impossible due to DMCA issues with the copyright protection they implemented. Also, they would for some reason be 'locked' into supporting Wine even if their business model would not pay what they want it to pay.

I can agree a little with the copy protection bit. However their claim that it contains highly sensitive information is nonsense. Advanced copy protections like SafeDisc and Securom have been reversed completely. Look up any reverser's webboard and you'll be smacked around the ears with all the little tricks that they use. With that you could even easily emulate the protection (which is already done in programs like Daemon-Tools).

So that can't be it. Did I mention that programs like InstallShield and Wise have been completely reversed too? Again, with this info around that can be found on any reversers board, anyone could write his own InstallShield installer.
The DMCA threat is overrated, although the DMCA has been abused for more ridiculous things already.

Then secondly, being locked in for support. I write some crappy OpenSource tools. I do this under an Artistic License. But with this, or even the GPL, there is NO obligation mentioned anywhere that I have to give support on it. Better still, it is explicitly stated that NO LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY is given with this software.

So what do they complain about? Maybe they claim that they have to keep up to date with the Wine tree? Also not true. They can take any copy of Wine, and work on it, as long as they publish their changes. No other obligation then that.

So where does this leave us? Remember SSH? The original author (Klonen if I recall correctly) had SSH as a GPL package, but later on changed it to a pay-for-commercial license. A group of people took the last GPL'd version and coded on it until they got OpenSSH, which is a perfectly fine SSH client and 100% GPL. This is a GOOD thing.

Now Transgaming is pushing Rewind, which is pretty much the same coupe as OpenSSH, except they do it so that the X11 license can be kept. Now you can argue that Transgaming deserves money for the work they do. Well I agree with that, but how far should we support that? Is Transgaming just putting up a friendly OpenSource front so they can get people to work for them for free? Or is it to get people to like them?

In short, by pushing the Rewind branch, they take away time and resources from the main Wine tree. This hurts us normal users. They put up a false front to attract coders and clients. If they were honest about their work, and it would help the Linux community then I'd gladly pay them for their efforts, but now I'm pretty much disillusioned.

1. DAEMON Tools (currently v2.88)

2. FarStone Tech's Virtual Drive (currently v6.2)

My recommendation is DAEMON Tools. It is a quick and dirty freeware solution which has proven rock solid on my systems. It mounts ISO and a variety of other CD image file types as lettered drives. It's really built for use on a workstation but once the drives are mounted they can be shared like any other normal drive. (Tools to create CD images are not included.)

Virtual Drive (Network Edition) is commercial software and comes in a variety of languages. It has a prettier interface and includes CD management tools (ISO creation). Personally it didn't impress me but YMMV.

Reader Rabbit's Toddler is not too bad (unfortunately our cd had been kidified, so my 22-month-old comes in regularly, tugging on my finger to get tech support when it tried to read a scrated area of the disk and crashes).

I'll second the vote for Reader Rabbit's Toddler. My kid loved it when he was that age. Also the Disney Interactive Storybooks (especially the Pooh titles) are enjoyable. Beware the newer ones, though, which are based on Shockwave rather than Quicktime. You cannot abort the long explanatory animations in the Shockwave titles. You can in the older Quicktime titles (like "Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree.")

Stay as far away as you can from Teletubbies! I have nothing against the show, really, but the game stinks to high heaven. It too suffers from frequent, long, uninterruptable animation sequences. It uses a clickless (point-and-hover) interface, but provides only a very subtle cue when you've hovered long enough to activate something. And, of course, the activation starts a long non-interactive sequence... Oh, and to exit the game you let the mouse hover in one of the screen corners. The game then exits without confirmation (through a 2-minute long non-interruptable credit sequence!). Now, where do you think a toddler's uncoordinated mouse twitches end up most of the time? You guessed it! The game is just plain frustrating to kids and parents alike.

BTW, I found a solution for the "kidified" CD syndrome. I no longer let my kids have the actual CD media. Instead, I've installed Daemon Tools virtual CD drive software. Before I install a game on the kids' machine I snag an image of it and mount that in the virtual drive. Once the game's installed I replace the desktop icon with a batch file that automagically mounts the appropriate CD image and starts the game. No more scratched CDs! You'll need a large hard drive, but even a 20G drive holds a fair number of games.

This technique works great for my grown-up games, too. Snag the image and forget fumbling for CDs. Daemon Tools emulates common copy-protection schemes, and I have yet to find a game (kiddie or grown-up) that can't be played with the image instead of the CD itself.

> I bought a copy of Diablo-2. It was copy protected.
> To use the game, I had to make 2 copies of the disk:

Why not just use Daemon Tools? Rip the CD as an .ISO and you can put away the CD for good!

> I used it to make a copy of my diablo 2 play disk so I could play at home on battle.net and also do the same at work.

I frequently play a few games, and they all require the stupid cd in the drive. After getting tired of swapping cd's all the time, I found this page:

Game Copy World - Diablo 2

Which gave me a link to game CD ripping utils

Then finally to Daemon tools

Use DiscDump to get an .iso of the 2nd disc (it's not copy protected) and just use Daemon Tools to "mount" your .iso in the virtual cd-rom! Change the registry drive setting for D2 and you're set! (I have drive R: cdrom, drive V: virtual, drive W: burner)

Sure it takes 640 megs (good thing 30 gig drives are less then $200 ;-) but at least I never have to worry about my cd getting scratched.

If I bought the game, wtf do I *need* the cd in the drive to play?!

UT has a real nice compromise - you only need the cd-rom for patches: you can play BOTH single player and multi-player without the cd. I find Q3 and HalfLife to be annoying that you need the CD for single player.

I wish certain idiots would wise up and realize ALL copy-protection schemes have been and will continue to be broken.