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Sierra’s games had a lot of variations… there were different version #s as Sierra made updates to the game, there were distribution variations on 3.5″ and 5.25″ disks, there were 256 color and 16 color versions, and there were floppy and CD versions.
I’ve been working on an archive of all the different versions of Sierra’s PC (DOS/Windows) games for presevation and research purposes. Archiving doesn’t just involve copying the content off the disks – each archival set is comprised of disk images created from
the original disks. A disk image is a complete sector by sector,
uncompressed copy of the original disk that perfectly replicates the
structure and content of the original. These image files are readable
by DOSBox.
For each unique combination of all the above factors, I’m trying to attain
multiple sets, which are important to verify the integrity of each version. Original disks that have things such as user-created resource.cfg files are avoided.This is where you come in… many people don’t have the means to read their old Sierra floppies, especially the 5.25″ disks. Not to mention that old floppies don’t always work anymore. If you have Sierra floppies or CDs, and are willing to loan them for archival, I would love to hear from you. I offer this as a backup service – I will provide you with the preserved image files for your disks. If any of your disks are bad, I will replace them for you from the archive when I have a replacement image of the same version, so that you can play your old games again.
I’m including anything that was under the Sierra umbrella for this – Dynamix, Coktel Vision, etc. In fact, if you have other old disks, I would be glad to provide the service to archive, backup and/or transfer them to current media for you, whether its other old games you want preserved or old personal files on disk that you can’t read anymore.
Brandon Klassen, Sierra Archivist
klassen at hotmail dot com -
I don’t see the need for disk images. Most of the floppies had no extra information than the files themselves. Most did not even have a disk label. For the early AGI floppies with the CPC protection, the fake bad sector is not imagable.
That said, I do archive my floppies, too. I try to collect as many variations as possible. This is important for my installers. By far, the main reason that my installers fail is because the user has a version if the game that is different enough in content or layout that the installer cannot find all of the files to install. 5.25″ disks can have the resource file split into smaller and more parts. Some versions can have additional patch files, or even have main resource file repacked with a different map file. I can build in support for all of these other versions, but I need to have access to the media to add it.
BTW, this forum is currently broken for Firefox. It will not let you login.
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Hmmm, at home I’m using Firefox 3.5.19 on a PC and don’t have a problem logging in.
You’re correct that the early AGI floppies aren’t imagable, and in that case, copies have to do.
The problem with any archival effort of old versions of games is that because people worry about the copyright issue, everyone can archive their own floppies as they see fit but no one has every version of every Sierra game out there. It’s definitely another use for a coordinated effort that it would be great for you to have more versions for your installers.
Anyway, I hope some people might see this thread and be willing to contribute. If so, please get in touch with me. I’ve had this discussion countless times with a number of members of the community, but it’s never resulted in anything getting done, so I’m just putting it out there. Collector, maybe you and I should coordinate some on this, since we both have an active interest 🙂
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I was wondering if someone could help me.
I have the 8 disk version 3.5″ (startup + 7) of KQ5 256color MS-DOS with VER#0.000.062 and INT#2.1.91 on the front of the disks.
My “Game Disk 5” is corrupt (thats really the 6th disk if you include startup disk). It contains “resource.005” and “version” files.Can someone send me a disk image for that one?
I’ve made images of the rest of the disks to add to the archive.Steve Collins
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