Slashdot Mirror
Archive.org Adds Close To 2,400 DOS Games
New submitter Bugamn writes Archive.org has added a new library of DOS games. The games are playable on the browser through EM-DOSBOX, a port of the DOS emulator. The games are provided without instructions, so some experimentation (or search for old manuals) might be necessary. The library does not mention any copyright concerns, although some of the games can be found for sale on sites such as Steam and GoG.
Is goatse link.
Naww, I grew tired of Denial of Service attack games.
Table-ized A.I.
Stunts...
Enter the 3rd word on page X of the manual.
Couldn't get the mouse to the right hand side of the screen either.
Not sure how useful.
For those who have recovered from clicking your link, there's an actual short best-of:
https://archive.org/details/so...
They've got Master of Orion. Ok I'm just going to close up this story, walk away and pretend I didn't see it, before I go looking for Star Control and lose the next 4 months of my life to those games again.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
And not a single line in the crefits, source, github-page - nowhere. :/
I even have mails from "dreamlayers" from 2014-01-03, when he discovered my port, and three days later his commits in his repo start...
Would have been nice to be credited correctly...
What the hell is DOS? Is that a console before the SNES?
Yep, sounds about right for the best of games of the DOS era. There's a reason consoles absolutely dominated gaming through the 80s and 90s.
Did they? At least around here in Germany, everybody in the 80s had a C64/Amiga (or maybe Atari ST) for gaming (because you could trade disks at school). Anybody with a console would have been pitied as the poor kid who cannot play the latest games. And from '93 onwards (when Doom arrived and LAN parties started) gaming changed forever, anyway. Maybe it was different in the US, don't know, Nintento consoles apparently were more popular there (I actually cannot remember any of my friends EVER owning a Nintendo console).
Archive.org has been turning into a warez-filled ARCHiVE.ORG since Jason Scott was hired. Seriously, check the 'games' in the "Books" section, there's modern (as in 2014) warez as well, downloaded thousands of times unscathed.
The Internet Archive has a laudable goal, but these days they seem to just be shooting for straight-up piracy, not only hosting copies of games that are still for sale, but making them playable right on their site... I mean, they've got Street Fighter II in their arcade section...
To be honest, I'm shocked nobody has sued them yet. They really don't have any fair use defense.
Nintendo was very popular when I was in grade school (near Washington DC). I can think of only one friend who did not have one (and they had a Sega Genesis). I still have mine, along with a spare I picked up, and 80-90 games for it. These days, I play the Super Nintendo more. I remember the schools having Atari computers, and Apple IIGS computers, but I can't remember any Commodores or Amigas. My dad used MS-DOS at work, so we had a progression of 8086-286-386-Pentium 75 MHz- Pentium II @ 450 MHz at home all running Microsoft OSes. I learned Linux after the Pentium 75 MHz had been demoted to scrap status, so I could play with it however I wanted. I remember running RedHat 5.1 (the old 5.1), and it taking many hours to rebuild the 2.0 kernel.
-- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
as a dos game collector, this "collection" is useless too, it's just the blind romsite idiot 'good' dumps that all have Christmas '96 timestamps, which screws with some copy protection schemes. So in the aim of "software preservation", it's absolutely nil towards it.
The Internet Archive has a laudable goal, but these days they seem to just be shooting for straight-up piracy, not only hosting copies of games that are still for sale, but making them playable right on their site... I mean, they've got Street Fighter II in their arcade section...
To be honest, I'm shocked nobody has sued them yet. They really don't have any fair use defense.
See, this is how the Copyright Cartels want you to think. It's not piracy, and it is fair use. If a owner of any of the software has a problem, they can ask for it to be removed.
Be seeing you...
You're going to be absolutely shocked if you ever wander in to your local library!
Required reading for internet skeptics
NES was huge in the USA. Everyone I knew owned a NES which came with mario and duck hunt. Some of the games
I remember were metal gear, double dragon, zelda, ninja turtles, tetris, and mario 1, 2, and 3.
c64 never really caught on with the non-geek crowd where I lived, they went straight from the atari to the NES to the IBM PC.
At home everyone had a NES and all the schools had some variation of the apple II. NES and the super nes remained
popular until ibm overtook the apple II at school which happened about the same time that wolfenstein, doom, and the
internet came out. We started getting ibms and internet connectivity at school in the mid to late 90s.
Just a note that many games on archive.org cannot be downloaded. They can be played online only, through the uncredited javascript dosbox implementation. Not sure how that affects the legal status of these games.
A pile of just games, really? Not even manuals?
Archive.org seems like the kind of place that should have the resources to scan and host all kinds of serious material. There are many, many, "boring" vintage applications, application manuals, and other computer system manuals, that have not yet been archived.
Give me R:Base 4000, UCSD p-system for IBM PC, the Kaypro 2000 utility disk (with color utility), Digital Research DR Logo for IBM PC, or how how about the impossible to Google for 1980s telecommunications program from Microsoft called "Access". Given time I could list hundreds more that need archiving. And even when some messy partial copy surfaces, many of these are useless without their manuals.
Chances are archive.org are just up for the attention grab, and I do hope that in the long run perhaps it benefits all media that needs archiving.
I've been trying to remember the name of an old DOS "game" without success for some time now. Can anyone remember this game: It was a shareware DOS game the used only the native character set, mostly symbols like slashes and * and other pseudo-graphical characters. It used the screen as a large 2 dimensional workspace, and moved pieces around the screen based on other cells that served as twirling propellers, moving panels and other simple character animations. Some of the "maps" were amazingly complex for such a simple basic concept. I don't really remember enough about it to find it with a search (I have tried), but I'm hoping this rather poor description might trigger something in someone else's memory.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
It is in no way fair use. Even if the four things considered when determining whether or not fair use have vague boundaries, they are quite clear what things are considered, and "owner not noticing" is not one of them. Recognizing what the law and precedent actually says isn't caving into big business interests, it is a necessary step in actually know what needs to be changed.
Goatse is the reason consoles dominated gaming in the 80s and 90s?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
It doesn't matter if it's fair use or not.
It's historical preservation.
"Arguing the law" here is silly. As a crime, NO ONE cares. As a tort, no one seems to be willing to step forward. Until they do, you can't say there are any damages. Even then, what would those damages even be?
There is simply no basis for "pretentious moral outrage".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Every book in the library was printed with the permission of the copyright owner. That is the proper and legal way to do things.
You jest, but the differences in paradigm between the two platforms merit a quick refresher.
MS-DOS is an operating system for IBM-compatible personal computers that was popular before Windows 95. In gaming terms, it really didn't provide any services beyond a file system (hence the name Disk Operating System), and games for it were coded to access the VGA (graphics), Sound Blaster, keyboard, and joystick hardware directly, bypassing DOS and even BIOS. Various versions of MS-DOS were popular from 1982 through 1995, after which games started to be published for Windows. (Windows 95, 98, and Me used parts of MS-DOS as an underlying layer, but games for that were coded to the Windows 95 DirectX API.) The free software community has developed functional clone of MS-DOS called FreeDOS, much as GNU/Linux is a clone of the UNIX system. It has also developed a partial PC emulator called DOSBox that contains a stripped down clone of MS-DOS. The emulator is not quite cycle-accurate, but because of variance among manufacturers' PCs, PC games tended not to demand cycle accuracy.
Because of fundamental differences in input and graphics capabilities between MS-DOS PCs and the Super NES, games for the two tended to be in different genres. MS-DOS games drew their graphics in software to the VGA's frame buffer, while Super NES games were more likely to rely on the S-PPU's built-in scrollable tile planes and sprite capability. (About a dozen Super NES games contained a faster CPU called Super FX that made software-rendered 3D halfway practical.) With the vast difference in paradigms you can't usefully say one is "before" the other in the sense that the Super NES is "after" the NES and "before" the Nintendo 64.
MS-DOS also had something called "shareware", an early version of what people now call "IAPs". Individuals or small teams would create a game or other application and distribute a feature-limited free version through bulletin board systems and user group-hotsed copy parties. People who wanted the whole thing could mail-order a set of floppies with the complete version. This was impractical on the Super NES, with its more expensive cartridge media and Checking Integrated Circuit (CIC).
Fair use is not the only limit on the scope of U.S. copyright. Section 108 describes exceptions for nonprofit libraries to make copies for patrons.
17 U.S.C. 107
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. 106 and 17 U.S.C. 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
the nature of the copyrighted work;
the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
All of these must be taken into consideration, and very rarely does an entire copy of a work clear the third one. Maybe you meant to suggest this was protected under the DMCA, which allows a website to be immune from things posted by users as long as they don't notice and take things down when asked to... but certainly is not fair use. And don't try arguing it is for scholarship or research, as that only flies when you are actually doing something much more specific and have actual commentary on the portions of work you are copying.
You could whine about it being some deceptive trick of "Copyright Cartels," or you could accept the reality way things are and see how bad it actually is, so as to have some clue when it comes to actually speaking about how things should change.
There is simply no basis for "pretentious moral outrage".
Right...
"Arguing the law" here is silly. As a crime, NO ONE cares.
No, it should be the exact opposite. Pretending that the law happens to agree with one's lack of moral concern is not how one should react to this, but isntead realizing how stupid the law is that it still says it is illegal.
Why, are libraries making copies of entire books and giving them away? Last I checked all the books they had were legally purchased with a valid copyright page and could only be lent to one person at a time.
They have a DMCA exception for this which they asked the Librarian of Congress for.
And you're clearly going to be shocked if you ever learn how a library actually works.
Hint: the books (and CDs, and DVDs, and games) on the shelves are legally purchased copies, and are lent to a single patron at a time. They are not printouts of torrented epubs.
I love the Internet Archive but I seriously have no idea what they think they're doing here.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
The Nintendo console was very popular in the US, but it is undeniable that the C64 was a hugely successful machine. The C64 also competed more directly with earlier consoles like the Atari 2600, Colecovision, etc. The Atari 2600 was very popular because it was extremely easy to setup, plug it into a TV and that's it.
I also did a lot of Amiga and Atari ST gaming as those are the machines my Dad was into and got. I didn't have a lot of people around me with similar computers to trade games with. I believe both of those machines were much more popular in Europe while the PC compatible clones were starting to take over the US market at the end of the C64's life.
Yes, it might be that the whole "gamers bought C64/Amiga, Atari XL/ST and ZX Spectrum" thing was mainly european. I just looked at the Wikipedia article for the NES, and it says about the sales numbers "Worldwide: 61.91 million, Japan: 19.35 million, Americas: 34.00 million, Other: 8.56 million". So the whole of the world, except Japan and the US, bought only 1/4 of the number of consoles the US bought. Like I said - I do not know anybody among my friends/relatives who bought a Nintendo console. Around here in Germany, the usual transition was C64/... to Amiga/ST/... to PC and back in the 80s/90s, trading disks on the schoolyard was huge.
This is Jason Scott. If you e-mail at at jscott@archive.org, I'll be glad to sort it out.
So it's legal because copying the book takes longer than copying the data?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A quite fitting response, considering how rights holders have lobbied to pervert copyright in the name of profit.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Dosbox? Heretic! Get that old 386 running again, install Dos 6.2 and tinker with config.sys and autoexec.bat 'til you have enough low ram to run it! That's the only true way to do it!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, technically when someone accesses it, it's also not the server that makes a copy, it's the client.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Where on Earth did you get the idea that it's legal to copy the book? Don't the libraries near you have the posters up near the photocopiers specifically telling you you're only allowed to copy short sections under fair use?
Sorry but your port is "abandonware" and is now in the public domain.
No. Mostly because the catastrophic US copyright law does not apply in Europe.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Heretic? Don't be silly, Heretic requires 486-33, 4 megs RAM, VGA, 10 megs HD space :}. Even crazier though, the shareware download for this game from 1995 is 2.8MB, smaller than a single pic from my smartphone. http://www.doomworld.com/idgam...
Nice! The archive.org's selections are somewhat odd though. :) There's a bunch of text adventures, four Commander Keen games, and couple of other random games. I don't know how that is a well-rounded showcase of DOS games, it seems more like someone's subjective favorites.
How about first checking if you are allowed to publish the game like this before actually doing it?
What makes them different from any other internetuser?
I think they think that by not allowing you to download the binary they're in the clear. Unfortunately you _are_ downloading it, to the emulator running in your web-browser.
There was a conference down here in Australia on game preservation last year and one of the most discussed subjects was precisely this -- and the conclusion was simply that what archive.org is doing in this context can't be considered as anything other than illegal.
Now whether or not anyone complains or not is something for IA to deal with, but let's not have any confusion that using the site to play games is in no way any more legal than just finding a torrent or an 'abandonware' site and downloading them.
I fairly sure it's their entire library, was getting updates from the Usenet but god was that ever slow going.
MAME_0.149_CHDs_A-B
MAME_0.149_CHDs_C
MAME_0.149_CHDs_D-G
MAME_0.149_CHDs_H-N
MAME_0.149_CHDs_P-S
MAME_0.149_CHDs_U-Z
MAME_0.149_EXTRAs
MAME_0.149_ROMs
These are game disk images http://fileinfo.com/extension/...
I added up the files (torrents) and I've got 308 Gigs worth of games, most of which I'll pry never load let alone play.
If your not aware the program MAME will load the ROMs of the old arcade games, so you can play your old favs. MAME has been ported to most tablets and cell phones, not that they all work that well. "Moon Patrol" is a great cell phone game for me as there are only 4 keys that you use, fairly fun to play and it's great bathroom throne material.
"MAME can currently emulate several thousand different classic arcade video games from the late 1970s through the modern era."
http://mamedev.org/
Not to mention there isn't any "grey" area legally (not that there ever really was) as many of the games listed are for sale on GOG and Steam. I've personally tried talking to some of the bunches that hold the rights to the old shareware titles too and they do NOT let anybody host their old stuff, in fact most want a fricking mint just to let you put up the original limited CD shareware, much less entire games like what they are doing.
Is there ANY way the community can fork off the Wayback Machine? Because AFAIK that is the only source for many web pages lost to time and it would truly be a crime to lose them forever because this yo-yo has decided to turn Internet Archive into another warez site.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I seriously have no idea what they think they're doing here.
Historical preservation would be my guess. But what's the point of preserving history if it's completely hidden for all time? One could arguew that it's not really been preserved at all in that case.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Indeed, there was a class divide here, but it did not have so much to do with the cost of the systems. The poorer kids lived in apartment housing, which was cheaper, but only apartments had cable TV (private homes would need a satellite dish, which was both expensive and seen as vulgar/ugly). So they got a lot more cultural influence from the US. It wasn't just consoles vs. computers, it also was Transformers vs. Colargol, or Superman vs. Pellefant.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
We would give you credit but you posted anonymously...
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
How are you "preserving" games which are currently for sale by offering them for free? I don't see how you can argue that is anything but straight up piracy. hell we aren't even talking about some one off site that the masses have never heard of selling old copies, we are talking the latest fully patched versions being sold worldwide on GOG!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
They are curating a collection, like a museum does. There are museums dedicated to old computers and old games consoles, which allow visitors to view and even use old software that is still under copyright. They are tolerated and while I don't know the exact legal situation in the US, judging the the policy of Archive.org of not collecting games that are still for sale or where removal has been requested I'd imagine that is representative of it.
As for games that seem current like Street Fighter 2, it's the DOS version specifically which I seem to recall sucked pretty badly. I imagine if it was the arcade ROM then Capcom might care, but no-one will consider this version running in a browser based emulator and played with the keyboard to be a reasonable substitute.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
At least around here in Germany, everybody in the 80s had a C64/Amiga (or maybe Atari ST) for gaming (because you could trade disks at school)
Hey man, don't copy that floppy!
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Even crazier though, the shareware download for this game from 1995 is 2.8MB, smaller than a single pic from my smartphone.
Thus explaining why porn in the 1990s sucked so bad. You'd wait five minutes for each photo from alt.binaries.erotica to download (1MB photo at 28.8kbit/s = ~5 minutes) only to discover that 99.9% of them sucked. Today it's much better; now you wait five minutes for each video to download (600MB video at 10mbit/s = ~5 minutes) only to discover that 99.9% of them suck. "What? They used THAT pose? Again? And what's with the lousy lighting here? Did they blow the whole budget on the script and save nothing for light bulbs? *sigh* *delete* Hey, here's another video set, this one is sure to be better.... Ugh, an hour to download. Guess I'll make some coffee and read Slashdot while I wait."
Teenagers today don't know how good they have it. ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I have mixed feelings about this. I have a former shareware game that I've made freeware years ago and occasionally update. It's available from our web site for download.
I would have preferred if Jason had asked me first before uploading it to archive.org. As it stands, while I like the idea, I really don't like someone assuming that I'm okay with it and imposing "Opt-Out" on me if I'm not.
I'm going to mull it over. If I decide to have it remove it, I may offer my own web player (I toyed a while back with JPC.
"Is there ANY way the community can fork off the Wayback Machine? Because AFAIK that is the only source for many web pages lost to time and it would truly be a crime to lose them forever because this yo-yo has decided to turn Internet Archive into another warez site."
It's got a couple of complicated twists I don't yet understand though.
Elsewhere we see stories that skies alive if someone torrents a Justin Bieber song, say a homeowner's sister in Kansas or something, they wind up with a multi thousand dollar lawsuit threat and a settlement offer of ten grand.
And this isn't War3z0074evar.mobi either.
It's Internet Archive. And it's not a faux-hidden little secret section you need a handshake and a passphase to get into. It's x thousand chunks of stuff at a time, with thundering Slashdot-and-media articles to proclaim it around the world.
One of the disturbing aspects of copyright law is how long rights holders can sit around before pulling a trigger to enforce something. (Where, isn't Trademark something you have to defend 'promptly' or lose?) So, it's months later since that last round with the other old games ... So 7000 works at that $300,000 clip ... why isn't one of those copyright troll jerk companies drooling at a billion dollar pot of gold?
To me that's the "hypocrisy" of copyright enforcement.
So it's like some strange card game where Internet Archive is holding a pair of aces in the open, and the other two we don't see, and they're going all in and we can't rationally figure out why someone isn't calling their bluff.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
It is a fair (and arguably legal) use. It is not Fair Use (as defined under the Fair Use clauses of the Copyright Act).
Learn to love Alaska
And I've never seen a library without a copy machine. I'm sure they existed, before copy machines were created, but since the '70s, I've not seen one.
Learn to love Alaska
Last I checked, the libraries have started carrying e-books and let you "check out" e-books, which is a copy of an entire book that's "given away".
Learn to love Alaska
No. I've seen copiers in every library I've ever been to, but I've never seen a copyright warning around them.
Learn to love Alaska
Oooh, Colargol! Someone should something something Colargol in SpaceX's dragon :)
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I don't if any of these games are in violation of copyright laws but I do know that just because it is for sale does not mean that it is a violation. You can get e-books for works out of copyright for authors such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and W. Shakespeare from archive.org and Project Gutenburg but it doesn't stop books stores from selling them anyways.
I imagine that the copyright laws governing these games are subject to where the foundation for archive.org is established. So if they established the foundation in a country that doesn't have draconian copyright laws like the US, but instead where it is something reasonable like 20 years then I believe that all of these games would be clear.
Well, since in all likelihood, neither The Internet Archive or the user own the game, that's kind of a moot point.
The Internet Archive is based in the US. Every single game that they're pirating is still under copyright in the US.
The Sound Blaster was AdLib compatible, so there was no reason to ask for both.
I think the AdLib option would try to push sound effects through the AdLib chip, stealing channels from music if necessary, rather than mixing them into the SB's digital output.
it wasn't until Win 3.0 where you saw thing written for Windows
And in the Windows 3.x days, action games with any sort of scrolling or 3D graphics were still made for DOS because Windows was designed for enhanced-definition 640x480 modes instead of the low-definition mode 13h (320x200) and mode X (320x240) that action games used to reduce how many pixels they have to push around.
I've got a Virtualbox setup with MS DOS and a stack of 2GB virtual drives packed chock full of full version games and apps, I've had to put a clock limiter on it because watching USS Ticonderoga scroll through at $stupid fps makes me dizzy.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
[almost] hear hear! I use a Virtualbox VM with MS DOS 6.22, works a treat..
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I am dreamlayers
I first used this: https://git.cryptopath.org/cer...
Only one important commit is there: https://git.cryptopath.org/cer...
That code compiled but did not work. I made changes and got a DOS program to run. Then I decided to start with a git repository which has all the DOSBox history and re-do things in a cleaner way. These two em-dosbox-0.74 commits on Jan 5, 2014 are based on the cerial/dosbox commit mentioned earlier:
Compile error fixes f6e0953
Disable SDL CD and CD image support on Emscripten. 59e11b1
For example, take a look at how CD function bodies were commented out and replaced with "return false" in the cerial commit. I used a different method, removing most CD functions and using "#ifdef EMSCRIPTEN".
I can safely say I did most of the porting work overall, but Ismail deserves some credit. I am sorry about not saying anything in the commit messages. Don't forget to credit the DOSBox developers. The porting work is tiny compared to the overall effort invested in DOSBox.
I agree... the inclusion of the SpellCaster games, for instance, is somewhat odd -- as is leaving out some of the classics that shaped how future game design went, and shaped many common catch phrases in use today.
It doesn't grant libraries permission to make unlimited numbers of copies and then distribute them for free to the public. It's also highly questionable as to if The Internet Archive actually own copies of any of the works in question.
And maybe they do own copies of these MS-DOS games, or at least a few of them. What of their arcade collection? Do they really own arcade cabinets or boards for each of those? Because those arcade games were certainly never sold as software alone digitally distributed...
What's to stop somebody from declaring themselves a library or archive and then streaming copies of all television shows and movies online to anyone in the world? How is that different than what The Internet Archive is doing with games? Many of the games that they're offering up for download are still available for purchase (with support for running on modern systems as appropriate) from their copyright holders, so making any claims that they're obsolete or subject to damage is questionable.
It's because by law, you can not make more copies than the copyright holder allows. If they library lends out ten copies at a time then they need to buy ten copies! Otherwise you could have one library buy one copy and then lend it to the entire world; congrats the author spent a couple years writing the book and got only $20 for it.
rewriting application code so it'll run in a browser (a form of porting) is not historical preservation. I can't run this shit in an MS-DOS VM for the simple reason that it's rewritten to run in a Java sandbox. That is of no use to me. Nor should it be any use to anyone else with any sort of interest in preserving anything. A preserved application originally written for MS-DOS is one that I should be able to dump into my DOS VM and just fucking run it without having to do anything extraordinary to it like rewrite the code or sacrifice a fucking goat.
Here are some games & apps I have in my VM that I've not had to do ANYTHING to beyond simply dropping the game folder onto a virtual partition so the VM can actually read it:
Day Of The Tentacle
The Need For Speed
Albion
Prisoner Of Ice
Hexen: Beyond Heretic
System Shock (CD Version, CD image is automatically loaded when you invoke the app)
Archipelagos
Warcraft
Dungeons Of The Unforgiven
Zzt
Terminal Velocity
Grand Theft Auto
FractINT
Lemmings
Shooting Gallery
Jason Jupiter
Moraff's World
Su-27 Flanker
Command & Conquer
7th Guest (with CD enhancements, loads the same way as System Shock)
USS Ticonderoga (just the enhanced demo, but still, 180MB for something that was at the time the biggest game on the planet in terms of the size of the codebase...)
Magic Carpet (CD enhanced again)
Up to now I have 23 2GB partitions packed to the brim with DOS software lifted either from my archival CDs or from floppies that still worked or pulled off the dozen or so DOS hard drives I still have. Still crawling through old software collections I've had for nigh on 25 years, keeping what works and dropping those titles onto the VM, and writing them into the menu.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
every library I've ever been in prohibits you from making a copy of an entire book using their copying facilities.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
That appears to only apply if the library makes the copies, and not when the user makes the copies. That's more archival than casual community library related.
Learn to love Alaska
People keep implying this is somehow illegal, but in reality they have a DCMA exemption: http://archive.org/about/dmca.... .
The archive is a lot older:
https://archive.org/details/DO...
Excellent! It took me straight to The Black Hole game. Thanks!
Trolling is a art,