Help with reading disc?

[humanios]

Hi everyone, I recently stumbled upon this community while searching for a means to emulate an old machine in order to open old data. I came in the possession of a cd-rom that was meant for IBM 286 compatibility. I'm admittedly new to emulation in general though as I understand it I need to find "roms" elsewhere in order to run the emulators that I'm looking to run. I thought I'd try my luck and reach out to a community that seems to know how to go about reviving old machines through emulation in order to successfully pull some of the data off the cd-rom.

Would it be possible to rip an iso of my cd-rom (which was purchased legally) and provide it to someone with the intention of running an exe that presumably allows the viewing/extraction of some photos? The cd-rom in question is the "Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record" which in part contains data imagery (which I'm unable to access on modern pc) and audio which I'm able to listen to with any cd player.

Any help or guidance would be appreciated. Thanks!

[Orchidsworn]

Is it a Dos program?

[humanios]

Hi Orchidsworn thanks for the reply,

I'm under the assumption it is but I don't know for sure. It's a audio/data cd combo so when I pop the cd into a modern laptop and look through the file structure I get two folders:

mac_murmurs and pcmurmur

If I open the pcmurmur I get a single exe file "murmurs.exe". If I attempt to launch it I get a "This app can't run on your PC" message (I'm on Windows 10).

The mac_murmurs folder contains a "murmurs of earth" file with a unknown extension along with a "data" folder. Inside the data folder is a "shared cast" file with multiple other files titles "v0","v1","v2" and so on. All without labelled extensions. I presume these are the 116 color images I may be after but not entirely sure.

The cd case states my computer needs to be IBM 286 compatible or Macintosh II series or LC system 6.0.5 or greater.

I've been googling around scratching my head how to go about opening the images on windows 10 or finding some way to emulate but I'm not getting very far. Thanks.

[ender]

If you find a 32-bit Windows 10 install, it might work without any emulation - the file is most likely a DOS program, and Windows 10 still supports that in 32-bit version.

[Zup]

It seems that you have a disc with a DOS (or Windows 16 bit) and a MacOS program. If you need to make a copy, any modern CD burner will do the job; if you need to make it work... well, you'll need an emulator or an old computer.

Some things you can try:
- Use it in a computer with Windows XP (32 bit) or lower. Although every 32 bit edition of Windows will work, I don't really trust in Vista and higher Windows versions for that job.
- Use DOSBox. If the program is DOS, it will surely work; if it's a Windows 16 bit program you'll need to install Windows 3.x into DOSBox.
- Use PCem, but you'll need to set up a compatible environment (i.e: 486, CD-ROM, HDD and install DOS into that HDD).
- Use any virtualizer like VMWare or Virtualbox. You'll have to set up a MS-DOS virtual machine and DOSBox will work better, but if you have it installed (because you use VMs for other things) you might want to give it a try.
- Use a real old Mac.
- Use some Mac emulator, but they usually need to set up a compatible system (there is documentation to set up Mac OS 7 in MESS you can follow).

[Orchidsworn]

I agree with Zup I would use a Virtualbox setup of say windows XP and see if its built in Dos emulation can play it. Since your not looking at a game it really should not need anything special. If that does not work move on to dosbox, if it needs windows look into installing 3.x into dosbox. Still no luck well I would come back here.

If you need help with any of it I can point you to links if you let me know what is causing you trouble. Do you have any old hardware with a 32 bit operating system to check or a XP machine. Those would skip you past a few programs to try if you got them readily available or have some friends that do.