is there a way to presearve old games?

[Unknown,Unknown]

I have a huge collection of old sierra games. Most are on old floppy disks. Some of the old disks are starting to fail. Since Vivendi does not support these and will not replace old disks, is there any way to presearve these old games and still be able to use them in the future?

[Unknown,Unknown]

Ditto…One problem is the ever changing media format. Another is the installation that requires each disk to be inserted in the A drive. DosBox, which I know almost nothing about, may take care of the second problem.

If you had the source code on paper that would be nice. The only thing I can think of is to try to move it to a newer media like CD, DVD or Flash drive. This is easier said than done. Most new computers do not have 3 1/4 disk drives but they do have USB 2.0 for Flash / Thumb drives. The old computers do not have flash drives. I have pulled the hard drive out of the old computer and set it as a 2nd drive to my main hard drive. You have to know a little about drive installation. But if your old drive does not use the 40 pin setup it would be harder to do this. I have an old 486 with a 5 1/2 drive but the hard drive is “scuzy” and won’t install in my newer computer.

This all said, unless someone can can add more, were in the same boat. I have four cases of 5 1/2 disk with games of all types. It is hard for me to tell the difference between the many different types of 5 1/2 drives. (single sided, double density…)

Good Luck and let me know what you find out.

[Unknown,Unknown]

This will be one of the archive projects happening here. We’ll be backing up each disk version of all of Sierra’s games, as far as we are able to. At first we’ll just be concerned with the files on the disks. A second version of the backup will be a pre-installed zip so that the original files are all present but there is no need to install the game. And the third version of the backup will be an actual image of the disk so that the disk can be exactly reproduced.

We haven’t talked about this a lot yet because as you can guess, there will be strict conditions to ensure we are getting untouched disks (many people will have used their disks for saved games, playing games off the disks so configuration files are saved, etc), but the project is under development. Also the person who is working on the imaging program is still working on it, I believe.

[Unknown,Unknown]

Quote:
“… (by Brandon Klassen) Also the person who is working on the imaging program is still working on it, I believe….”

Yes, indeed. I’m currently hoping I can deliver more information and a working procedure by the end of the summer.

Vincent.

[Unknown,Unknown]

Does anyone know how to verify whether a floppy is still valid? I mean, if it doesn’t give an error, how much can we trust it?

There used to be a program called WINIMAGE that made disk images. I don’t know if that’s still made. I’d like to get all my floppy-based games backed up.

[Unknown,Unknown]

You can try copying the disks to your hard drive. If any of the files have a CRC error, you won’t be able to copy them. Winimage is still made, infact, they just released a 64 bit version.

[Unknown,Unknown]

Brandon — will you be archiving multiple versions of the same game, too? Such as version 1.0 and 1.102 of Hero’s Quest and Quest for Glory II? And what about the version changes that are not noted on the lables (I have several copies of SQ4 for example that have different sized/dated Resource files. Probably bug fixes?)

Just curious 🙂

Tom.

**EDIT: Addition**
7/6/05

I just got a TON of games in today and I was sorting through them all and found many variations of King’s Quest 4. Not only AGI and SCI, but there’s two (or three?) different SCI versions: #1.000.111, #1.006.003 and #2.0

On the other hand, I have 6 copies of Laura Bow 1 with different labels (some say, “THE COLONEL’s BEQUEST” and others just say, “Colonel’s Bequest”) but they’re all the same version. I thought this type of game would have more versions than a KQ game. Guess I was wrong!

Anyone know where I could find info on how many stages a game went through after release? Ken? 🙂

[Unknown,Unknown]

This one’s for the Sierra former crew:

When I visited I was told there were no large archive areas at Headquarters. Were there archives at all? Does the Sierra holder now have early versions of software?

–Dave

[Unknown,Unknown]

I tried several ideas, but the copy protection keeps messing me up, so will wait for the archives.

[Author]

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