HOW TO: setup Total DOS Frontend packages on AO486.

[flynnsbit]

I've been working on an easy way to search through the wonderful ExoDOS collection and use it as a source for deploying to an image collection with a DOS frontend on the Mister/AO486 Core.

I created a video of the progress in the event others want to see the setup. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLpAUtALJfw

EDIT: Couple of new Videos added for everyone:

Part 1 covers setting up thousands of DOS games by year in AO486 and a demo of that setup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMj-ryrTv5w

Part 2 covers the Windows side and how to use Metropolis Launcher to create VHDs by year. 6000 games setup in MiSTer with separate VHDs by year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK6rIDX7gxM


Step 1: Download the ExoDos 4.0 Collections. Sorry, no links, you will need to find this on your own.

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Step 2: Verify that you have 7000 zip files in your [Driveletter]:\exoDOS\Exodos\Games\

Step 3: Download this script and run against the collection: https://github.com/flynnsbit/scripts/bl ... ersion.ps1 (hours depending on system and disk speed)
You will need to update the script with the right directory structure, you need a working directory, the source zip directory, and the destination folder for the new zips. You will have to enable PowerShell to run programs if you have never used powershell on your windows machine. Instructions here: https://winbuzzer.com/2020/07/10/how-to ... cy-xcxwbt/

Step 4: Once complete you will end up with a new directory with zips that have their files in the root of the zip file. This allows for the correct folder structure on the AO486.

Step 5: Install Metropolis Launcher (https://metropolis-launcher.net/) and set it up to pull roms from your newly processed zip location (Mine was d:\exo2)
Follow these instructions to import your games directory with the processed zips in it (D:\EXO2) https://documentation.metropolis-launch ... dosbox.htm

Step 6: Run Metro Launcher and let it index your 7000 dos games

Step 7: Filter down the games you want in a collection. either using highlight, search, or favorites. You can also filter by year, studio, genre on the left hand window.

Step 8: select the games you want, right click on them, and select Export -- Export to Total DOS Collection. This will setup the zip files with the 8.3 file format automatically, index the files and put them into a files folder (It can also seperate them out automatically into files, files1, files2 folders in 2GB chucks so you can spread out the files across multiple VHDs and Total DOS Launcher will automatically find them. If it's not finding the zips check your TLD.INI file and update the proglocations=files;D:\TDL\files2;e:\TDL\files3
you can also change the cache location to a different folder cachelocation=c:\tdlcache. This could be on another drive, in a RAMdisk, etc. This export also already includes TDL and the setup, and will index the games and add them to the front end for you.

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Step 9: Copy the contents of the directory you just exported into a DOS VHD into a directory like C:\TDL, C:\ACTION, C:\1993. whatever

Step 10: Open AO486 with that VHD attached and launch TDL.exe from the directory. You can also add that exe into your autoexec.bat so the VHD will auto launch into the DOS Launcher. (like C:\TDL\TDL.EXE) If you have favorited games inside Metro Launcher then those will be flagged with hearts in TDL.

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[Coldheat007]

This is awesome, Thank you for putting this together.

[friendly.joe]

Great idea. Thank you for the guide.

[chimaera]

Great guide.
One thing I was wondering about though, games with saves will have problems when you need to clear the cache or if you use a RAMDrive as cache.
An optimal sollution would be a system that catches writes to disk and saves them to a seperate disk/save dir.

I think there was an effort in Dosbox that tried just that. Loading games as zips and saving to a different location.
I would love a sollution like that.

[flynnsbit]

Yeah agreed on game saves. That will be difficult for the larger games. You could have the TDLCache just write to the second VHD and that could be an 8GB version if you are running an OS that supports Fat32.

I've started to break out my collection and categorize all games that are over 100MB or have CDs into their own bucket so I can figure out a different strategy. Also, storage at any kind of real scale is a pretty big problem with "collections" of DOS games. CD games quickly can eat up 50GB with having to store the ISOs in the VHDs and not really having another option for mounting them outside of it like other disks.

If you really wanted a large collection that is at your fingertips in DOS, we either need ISO/BIN mounting with sysctl control of it (so needs to mount and unmount like floppies) OR, we need many more VHD mounting capabilities. 4-5 or so VHD drives would get you pretty far into the large collection. 2 8GB drives just isn't enough, mounting VHDs by collection type could be a thing but then you are using the MiSTer interface to find and launch them. Many problems, but this way I described is the farthest I have seen to someone get with some kind of automation.

Launchbox for DOS is out as it can only handle a max of 300 games in its list and you have to enter them all manually. I have a Total DOS Launcher setup with 2000 games and it will load into memory no problem. It also unloads itself on launch of the games.

Anyway, many more things to do...

[flynnsbit]

I think there was an effort in Dosbox that tried just that. Loading games as zips and saving to a different location.
I would love a sollution like that.

Just FYI, this will work today, in the TDL.ini just put the TDLCache directory somewhere other than C:. So your D: drive could be an empty 8GB VHD and the actual games are extracted and run from there. C: would just have the zips and would only be accessed if it hasn't been extracted. What would be a super nice thing to have is the ability to write to the misterFS shared folder. That way either TDL could run and extract from that folder or you could put the TDL cache over there.

[chimaera]

I think there was an effort in Dosbox that tried just that. Loading games as zips and saving to a different location.
I would love a sollution like that.

Just FYI, this will work today, in the TDL.ini just put the TDLCache directory somewhere other than C:. So your D: drive could be an empty 8GB VHD and the actual games are extracted and run from there. C: would just have the zips and would only be accessed if it hasn't been extracted. What would be a super nice thing to have is the ability to write to the misterFS shared folder. That way either TDL could run and extract from that folder or you could put the TDL cache over there.

What I meant was to Mount a zip, and then catch the writes (for config and saves) to save them to a specific location.
I found the DOSBox page för it here: https://sourceforge.net/p/dosbox/patches/100/

[flynnsbit]

Added some new videos to show the power of this setup. 6000 games available in MiSTer.

Part 1 covers setting up thousands of DOS games by year in AO486 and a demo of that setup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMj-ryrTv5w

Part 2 covers the Windows side and how to use Metropolis Launcher to create VHDs by year. 6000 games setup in MiSTer with separate VHDs by year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK6rIDX7gxM

[WolfgangBlack]

6,000 DOS games?
If you can play them all then next week cure cancer and poverty, m'kay?

[flynnsbit]

6,000 DOS games?
If you can play them all then next week cure cancer and poverty, m'kay?

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[WolfgangBlack]

Lol!
Just amazed y'all have 6,000 DOS games on MiSTer.

[flynnsbit]

I think I have gotten through 100 so far. I should get through 5900 before the end of the week.

[0xdeadbeef]

Quite a few games from eXoDOS seem to have their password checks still in. In some cases (Elite Plus) it was obviously deactivated, in others (Al Qadim) it seems to be still working. So, one of the first games I tried was Al Qadim and I couldn't get it to work due to the password check (returns to menu). I tried to copy over changed files from the GOG release I own where the password check was removed but couldn't get it to run on ao486 (returns to DOS with some exception error code). Then again, the GOG version seems to be different anyway since it doesn't have the CD image.

Besides I'm observing strange slowdowns in DOS now and then, mainly after leaving a game. Like I type DIR and the directory is shown but then nothing happens anymore for a significant amount of time (like 20 seconds or so). At some point, when I usually lost patience and started slamming Esc, Ctrl-C and the like, the system recovers and continues to work normally. Still, can't say that I ever observed this on a real PC.

[Chris23235]

Quite a few games from eXoDOS seem to have their password checks still in. In some cases (Elite Plus) it was obviously deactivated, in others (Al Qadim) it seems to be still working. So, one of the first games I tried was Al Qadim and I couldn't get it to work due to the password check (returns to menu). I tried to copy over changed files from the GOG release I own where the password check was removed but couldn't get it to run on ao486 (returns to DOS with some exception error code). Then again, the GOG version seems to be different anyway since it doesn't have the CD image.

Try to google the copy protection codes. I guess this is easier then trying to make a running version from the ExoDOS and the GoG version. As far as I see it's a short list.

[0xdeadbeef]

With only a few games i tried, I ran at least into two which don't work due to password checks. Apart from Al-Qadim there is also Blackthorne which demands a password check for the setup and without setup, it doesn't seem to start. Besides, quite a few games don't actually run from their base folder as the frontend expects even after running the script. E.g. Dungeon Master want to install into d:\FTL, Pinball Fantasies and Blackthorne still contain subfolders were the actual executables are located and so on.
So for a quite substantial number of games, there seems to be a lot of manual work involved when using the eXoDOS versions to actually get running games you can start from the frontend.

[flynnsbit]

Yeah, it's far from perfect, but much farther than anyone else had gotten Substantial is a strong word, I am working through each game list line by like seeing what plays and I am still hitting 80% success.

Fix a script here or there, copy a file or add an extra batch file one file down from the folder where exodos put the files to just launch it's batch file works fine. This is a 30 second fix.

[0xdeadbeef]

Sorry, didn't want to sound negative. Actually it's a dream come true to be able to play some DOS classics on the MiSTer and this frontend creation approach is most certainly a great help. I was mainly surprised that the eXoDOS collection is such a mixed bag. Some games can be played directly, some need to be configured or even installed in a different path, some have their protection removed, some don't etc.I guess I'm spoiled by the fantastic MegaAGS collection for the Amiga.

[flynnsbit]

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. It took years for the Exo collection to get where it was and if we truly wanted to "replicate" that exact setup, then you have to treat a single VHD as a game like exodos does with dosbox. So it is a self contained environment that can have different paths and a nice front end outside of DOS that is launching things with configs, auto mounts, drives set up a certain way. It just doesn't work here so this was the best option without manually creating thousands of VHDs or manually configuring every game on the MiSTer. That would take a very long time.

Also he includes digital versions of all the manuals so if the game is asking for a key, you could just go over to your windows box and open the manual. They are in: \eXoDOS\Manuals\MS-DOS. Can we have Sorg add a PDF viewer inside of the MiSTer interface for quick access to view PDF manuals . (This is a joke Sorg, don't kill me)

What would be cool is a way to pool everyone's flagged "favorites" in Total DOS launcher so that if you flag something, the community could just pull down a shared index and the dos interface would just automatically have a heart next to something that other people flagged as working. Not sure how to make that work though. IT would have to be some script that pulled/pushed to a shared location. Interesting random thought though..

[0xdeadbeef]

Just for the sake of completeness, I got both Al-Qadim and Blackthorne to run. For Al-Qadim, the GOG files actually did work after a proper sound setup. The "sinstall.exe" exe there claims that it found a Soundblaster Pro 2, so the trick is mainly to select the normal (basic) Soundblaster.
For Blackthorne, I copied the files from the free version offered by Blizzard a while ago which also contains a PDF manual.I still needed to use the password protected setup tool (missing in the new release) but could find the correct password in the PDF manual.
In both cases, it's worth mentioning that large CD images (Blackthorne ~150MB) are included in the eXoDOS zips even if they are not really needed. Specifically the Blackthorne CD image seems to contain all kind of things not related to the game in any way. So I'll zip my running folders and replace the eXoDOS archives with them.

[bboudreaux28]

just out of curiosity, how did you manage to import the entire ao486 compatibility list into metropolis? Did you manually select all ~200 games off the list?

[flynnsbit]

I did, I just pulled it up on two monitors and checked each one. It really didn't take that long. I don't know if it is even worth it to do as a mass majority of the games I try work fine.

[sawf]

Has anyone had an issue with the DOS 7.1 QEMM VHD from archive.org not booting up and just sitting on the MS DOS 7.1 start up screen?

[flynnsbit]

Something is up with the logo.sys on some peoples systems that I haven't been able to figure out. Can you swap your boot1.rom with the other one in the release and test again and tell me if it still locks up? If it doesn't, can you report back. if it does, just rename logo.sys to something else and it wont use it.

[sawf]

Thanks I replaced both ROMs in the release and it works now.i didn't realise that the boot ROMs are updated so they are probably the ones from when I got my de-10 2 years ago.

[flynnsbit]

Oh, yeah, that will do it. We should probably push those with the update script now. I expect a lot of people still have the old ones and that is going to cause issues with a lot of things if they are not updated. Glad to know that fixed the logo problem.

[aberu]

You will have to enable PowerShell to run programs if you have never used powershell on your windows machine. Instructions here: https://winbuzzer.com/2020/07/10/how-to ... cy-xcxwbt/

Just make a exodos_conversion.bat with the following that the user should run as an administrator that does this btw:

Code: Select all

Powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File "%~dp0exodos_conversion.ps1"

Then they won't have to read the article and everything. Have people download the whole master of your code with the github zip link as well, and just tell them which scripts to copy, since github is bad at handling linking scripts that it can preview in terms of downloading (right click downloading leads to html page, etc...)

[Storm]

In my case, exporting to TDL doesn't work because Metropolis cannot extract the TDL zip. Anyone have a clue why that happens?

[flynnsbit]

Can you extract it yourself? if not, just go grab it from https://github.com/MobyGamer/total-dos- ... ter/distro
and zip that up where the files are at the root of the zip.

[Storm]

It doesn't work that way sadly. It requires the zip file for TDL.

I always get a Error Message with sharpcompress cannot determine stream type. Something like that.
I tried it on two different computers, but to no avail

[flynnsbit]

Try this one, it might be flaky as it has all the new changes made for MiSTer in it. https://github.com/flynnsbit/scripts/bl ... uncher.zip