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Table of Contents
How to install games to hard drive and make them run.
Chapter 1: The Fundamentals
You will need X68000 with 2MB of ram and a keyboard. It is possible to run some small games with 1MB as well, but the majority of them require 2MB. Download the latest English version of DiskExplorer here:
http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA013937/editdisk/index_e.html
And download the hard disk image from here:
http://gamesx.com/wiki/doku.php?id=x68000:sxsi_disk_image_with_games_and_lots_of_mdx_files
This will save you the trouble of setting up a working environment. Open the downloaded image with DiskExplorer, have a look around.
Chapter 2: HumanOS vs MS-DOS
Lucky for us the HumanOS is very much like ye good old MS-DOS. Now let me explain what happens when X68000 tries to boot from hard drive:
- FIrst it checks for partition which is set as BOOTABLE and tries to boot from it. If none are found, insert disk prompt appears;
- Tries to execute HUMAN.SYS, COMMAND.X These files are mandatory for X68000 to boot into command prompt;
- Executes scripts from CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT
Every game disk which has these files boots in the same manner. There are some very rare exotic games which use trackloaders, kind of like on Amiga. Motos and Flying Shark, to name a few. You can recognize them very easy because if you try to list contents of such disk, they will look like empty or have one or more dummy files. Please note that in most cases you will have to convert *.dim floppy image files to *.xdf before opening them in DiskExplorer.
You can do it with Virtual Floppy Image Converter. Grab it from here:
Chapter 3: Floppy Drive vs Hard Drive
We all know that Hard drive is the ultimate thing to have on X68000 so to cut a long story short, we want games on hard drive, and we want them now ;)
Example #1 - Installing Fantasy Zone and running it from Hard Drive
- Make a directory in Games2 and call it FantasyZone
- Copy the contents floppy to created directory
- Delete HUMAN.SYS and COMMAND.X from directory FantasyZone
- Rename AUTOEXEC.BAT to !Start.bat
- Run !Start.bat
This method should work with the majority of one floppy games. If for some reason it refuses to load, try the SUBST A: A:\GAMES2\NameOfYourGame method described in the next example. If that fails, try to exit all file commanders and run it from pure DOS. If that doesn't help, it could be some sort of protection. Try a different game.
Example #2 - Installing Star Cruiser and running it from Hard Drive
* Make a directory in Games2 and call it StarCruiser
* Copy the contents of both floppies to created directory
* Delete HUMAN.SYS and COMMAND.X from directory StarCruiser
* Rename AUTOEXEC.BAT to !Start.bat and add the following two lines at the very beginning:
SUBST B: A:\GAMES2\STARCRUISER
SUBST A: A:\GAMES2\STARCRUISER
The resulting !Start.bat should look like this:
SUBST B: A:\GAMES2\STARCRUISER
SUBST A: A:\GAMES2\STARCRUISER
CRUISER
* Run !Start.bat
That's it. Try it ! It really isn't that hard. The most annoying part is understanding when a game has not enough free memory or if there is a protection.
Keep the scene alive !
Eidis