Coverdisk Archive – DOSBox and D-Fend Reloaded Guide
Posted on October 6th, 2016
If you’ve been looking at the old PC coverdisk archives I’ve been uploading you might be wondering how to play them on a modern PC. The answer is DOSBox, or more specifically, D-Fend Reloaded.
DOSBox is a Intel x86 PC emulator along with all the sound (Sound Blaster, Adlib etc), graphic and input devices needed to play MS-DOS games. It’s the next best thing to playing on original hardware (and in many ways better as you can emulate all sorts of hardware combinations).
D-Fend Reloaded (DosBox Frontend Reloaded) is a frontend for DOSBox making it exceptional easy to configure and get going with the important job of playing games.
Installing DOSBox and D-Fend Reloaded
You don’t actually need to install DOSBox, the D-Fend Reloaded installer will do this for you.
Head over to dfendreloaded.sourceforge.net and get the latest full setup (not the update). It’s your everyday Windows installer, run it, install it.
Configuring D-Fend Reloaded
Normally when you configure a DOSBox profile you set it up to run a specific game. We’re not going to do that, we want the full 90s MS-DOS experience.
We’re going to make a profile that dumps you at the DOS prompt and allows you to run the coverdisk installer program (most of the coverdisks came with a small program that allowed you to browse and install the contents). Once installed you can navigate to the correct directory and run the game. More about that later. We’ll also create a “Floppy” folder on your PC that DOSBox will mount as a real floppy. You can then just copy and paste on of the archive contents to this folder and see it in DOSBox. Easy.
- Create a folder on your local PC called “Floppy”. This can be anywhere, but you can put it with the rest of your D-Fend profiles:
C:\Users\[UserName]\D-Fend Reloaded\Floppy
Start D-Fend and you’ll be greeted with the following window:
Now click:
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Add
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Add from template
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Complex DOS games with 3D graphics (...)
-
You’ll see a new profile window as bellow. Enter a profile name, in this case I called it “Coverdisk Archive Explorer”.
From the left hand menu select:
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Drives
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Add
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You’ll see a new dialog box. Select:
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Folder as Floppy
Navigate to your “Floppy” folder or paste the directory path. If you’ve placed the folder in D-Fend profile folder as above, it may show up as:
.\Floppy\
Select Drive Letter:
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A
Ok the changes and your config should look like:
From the left hand menu choose:
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Graphics
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deselect Start in fullscreen mode
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This is optional but I find it easier when you’re copying floppy content across.
OK your changes and you’ll see the following dialog:
This is fine. Select Yes. You’ll see your new profile:
Loading a Coverdisk
Double click the profile and DOSBox will boot to a screen as below:
Go the A: drive by typing the following followed by Enter:
a:
Display the contents of the A: drive with the following followed by Enter:
dir /w
You should see the following output:
Head over to the Coverdisk Archives and download one the zips. Extract it to your local “Floppy” folder you created before. You do this within Windows as normal, not within DOSBox or D-Fend:
Go back to DOSBox (no need to restart):
dir /w
As you can see all the contents are updated and seen as floppy drive by DOSBox
That’s it! Easy. You can explore the disk, install the games and utilities etc. Normally there’s a small program specific to the magazine for installing the programs. In this example I’m using a PC Format coverdisk and we see PCF.EXE. Running this will load the main program:
Install the demos you want and run them from the DOS prompt as you would any other program. Tip they are most probably installed to:
c:\games\
For example:
c:\games\alien\alien.exe
Troubleshooting
My game is too slow!
- Try increasing the cycles (Ctrl + F12)
- Try creating a new profile with different template or editing the hardware in your current profile
My game is too fast!
- Try decreasing the cycles (Ctrl + F11)
- Try creating a new profile with different template or editing the hardware in your current profile
My game wont run!
- Look in the game directory, is there a config or setup program? If so run it and make sure you select the correct sound and graphic options. If in doubt turn them all off/down and try again
- Try a different profile template
There’s no sound!
- Look in the game directory, is there a config or setup program? If so run it and make sure you select the correct sound and options. These can be found by editing “Sound Blaster” in your profile. Default setting are:
- Interrupt: IRQ 7
- Port: 220
- DMA: 1
- Try selecting a different, older model of sound card. Some older games may not support Sound Blaster 16
- Some very old games might not use a sound card at all, only the PC speaker