Installing PC DOS games on ORIGINAL hardware
If you want to play these games on your old PC, you will need the following:
- An old computer which has MS-DOS as it's operating system.
- A floppy disk drive (a USB floppy drive will do just fine) to transfer files off your internet-enabled computer
- Some diskettes to copy files
- PK tools (PKUNZIP, PKZIP) installed on your old computer
New computers don't come with disk drives. This is a pity, but you could consider buying one off eBay. They are pretty cheap.
Installation steps
- Download the file and save the file to a diskette (Computer\Floppy disk drive (A:))
- Boot your old computer and insert the diskette in it's drive.
- Create a directory for the program and copy the file there.
- Unzip the file.
- Find out which executable runs the game and run it
Example
You should have booted up your old computer, and see the
C:\>
-prompt. If you do not see this prompt, you may be running Windows. You must shut down Windows to enter pure MS-DOS. If you are running Windows 3.x, just close the Program Manager. If you are running Windows 95 or 98, click on Start –> Shut Down –> Restart in MS-DOS mode
In this example we have downloaded Duke Nukem in a compressed archive (ZIP file format) copied it to a floppy disk. Now we are about to install it on the computer. To copy the file form the diskette onto your hard-drive:
First make a directory for the game:
C:\>md duke C:\>cd duke C:\DUKE>
Now copy the file to C:
C:\DUKE>copy a:\1duke.zip c:
1 file(s) copied
We will now proceed to unzip the archive
C:\DUKE>pkunzip 1duke.zip
After the process is done, you can see what the directory contains by typing:
C:\DUKE>dir
If you want to only see the files you can run, type:
C:\DUKE>dir *.exe
Volume in drive C is MS-DOS_6
Volume Serial Number is 4647-9F76
Directory of C:\DUKE
DN1 EXE 54,688 11-01-91 2:00p
4 file(s)123 54,688 bytes
6,856,704 bytes free
C:\DUKE>
We can see here, that the only program that can be run DN1.
Type
DN1
to start the game! games:Support