PCem windows 95 not detecting CD for certain games

[jwc9005]

Looking for some help in case anyone else has run into this issue, and didn't see anything on this after searching the posts but let me know if I somehow missed something.

EDIT: After looking through the posts more it looks like maybe PCem isn't able to fully replicate the operation of some copy protection systems as it would work with a real physical setup. Was hoping there was a way to fix this as these are ISO files I made from the physical CDs I still have and owned... but if there's nothing else that can be done then so be it. But I'm not entirely certain that this is the reason why the games don't start without the CD so wanted to see if anyone else had any ideas.

I'm running Windows 95 in PCem version 17 and for the most part everything has been working really great, but there are a handful of games where they don't start because they aren't able to detect the CD in the CD drive even though the ISO files are definitely mounted (otherwise I wouldn't have been able to install the games in the first place).

My setup has the following specs:
Motherboard: [Socket 7] Shuttle HOT-557
CPU: Intel Pentium 133
Memory: 128 MB
Display: S3 ViRGE/DX with Voodoo 2 graphics
Sound: Sound Blaster AWE32
HDD: [IDE] Standard IDE
FDD1: 3.5" 2.88M
CD Model: PCemCD
CD Speed: 4X

I'm running Windows 95 OSR 2.5.

Here's the games that complain about not having the CD in the CD drive and refusing to start:
- Disney's Hercules
- X-wing vs. Tie Fighter
- The Sims
- Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun

I don't know much about how these games try to detect the CD but if anyone knows whether this is a known issue with PCem I'd love to know more about it! I've also tried this with the other PCem CD drive model I have available (AZT CDA 468-02I 4X) with no luck either unfortunately.

Really appreciate anyone who would be able to help out!

[eddman]

1. Do not use ISO format for CD images. Some CD-check based protections scan the structure of the CD, which ISO doesn't provide. Use the BIN/CUE format.
Also, with ISO, you will not have game music if the game's CD has audio tracks, which X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter does.

By the way, when loading the image, load the CUE file, not BIN.

2. For certain games, even with Bin/Cue, for some reason PCem still doesn't replicate the CD close enough for CD-check to work. For those you can use Daemon tools on the host system.

3. Some games have copy protection like Safedisc, Securom, etc. Tiberian Sun and Sims have the former (at least their original releases do).
PCem cannot handle those. You'd have to use cracks, or tools that can remove the protection. For example, UnSafedisc can remove Safedisc up to v2.40.10.

Sometimes Daemon tools installed inside PCem itself can help, but there's been cases where it didn't work for me.

Redump.org usually lists the copy protection of games: http://redump.org/disc/100968/

P.S.

A few tips. A higher CD drive speed can reduce install times quite a bit.
If you're using 95 OSR 2.5, you might as well go with 98 SE. The reason people go with 95 is usually for the lighter file explorer, but that doesn't apply to 95 OSR 2.5. It uses the same, heavy explorer as 98.

[jwc9005]

Thanks for the quick reply -- all really great suggestions. Will definitely give bin/cue format a try and see how it goes.

Also intrigued by your suggestion about mounting the CD in the host system. For some reason when I do so (either with the native Windows 10 iso mounting capability or with Daemon tools) I don't see an option in PCem to access the virtual CD drive (see screenshot below), and the image is definitely mounted on the host system but PCem doesn't detect it:

Capture.PNG (74.77 KiB) Viewed 1378 times

For the CD drive speed, I realized I had it to 4x because of some quirk where Megarace based its running speed on the optical drive speed for some reason . I initially had it on 24x which made it run too fast and setting it to 4x worked like a charm. But yeah I do switch it back to 24x for some of the installations when I need haha.

About Win98 SE, I actually had tried it first with PCem but found it had some trouble running some MS-DOS based games where it was a breeze for Win95. Not sure if it was because I was just worse at figuring my way around a retro system since it was my first attempt at it or whether it's because Win95 is closer to the bridge between MS-DOS and modern Windows. So I decided to try to do everything in Win95 (which I felt should work in theory since all the games I'm trying to run were from my childhood computer which ran Win95).

[eddman]

Also intrigued by your suggestion about mounting the CD in the host system. For some reason when I do so (either with the native Windows 10 iso mounting capability or with Daemon tools) I don't see an option in PCem to access the virtual CD drive (see screenshot below), and the image is definitely mounted on the host system but PCem doesn't detect it:

It should not be ISO, regardless of the method. ISO does not contain all the necessary data that exists on a CD. It works fine if the CD has only a single track (no extra audio tracks) AND no CD-check or other protection, but for everything else, it's not good. (Although, if you decide to use cracked exes, ISO should be fine too, except for CDs with audio tracks)

It goes without saying, but converting the ISO to bin/cue wouldn't work. You have to create new bin/cue from the disc.

After mounting on the host, you have to completely exit PCem and relaunch for the options to show up.

About Win98 SE, I actually had tried it first with PCem but found it had some trouble running some MS-DOS based games where it was a breeze for Win95. Not sure if it was because I was just worse at figuring my way around a retro system since it was my first attempt at it or whether it's because Win95 is closer to the bridge between MS-DOS and modern Windows..

I haven't tested too many games, but so far they've been mostly fine with Windows 98.It's not any closer or farther from DOS compared to 95.

There have been one or two games that had issues in the windows environment, so I had to launch them in the DOS mode. Don't know if they behave differently in 95.

If you want to stick with 95 and don't mind using the old explorer, pre-OSR 2.5 would work better. Navigating with the old explorer is much faster. The new explorer constantly causes the emulation speed to drop when using it.

[jwc9005]

It goes without saying, but converting the ISO to bin/cue wouldn't work. You have to create new bin/cue from the disc.

Yeah that makes sense. Won't have a chance to try this out until next weekend but this sounds like a good place to start. Thanks again for all the tips and cheers!

[tk421]

I highly recommend using the bin/cue format for your virtual CDs.

ISO usually fails to produce a 1:1 copy of your actual game CD, especially for games like Jedi Knight or X-Wing vs TIE Fighter with the redbook audio technology used to give you such great CD music in-game. Newer games like Jedi Outcast or Jedi Academy do not seem to have this issue.

For the copy protection error from some of your CDs, use Daemon Tools. You need to copy your bin/cue files to the emulated hard disk of your PCem VM. That means creating a virtual DVD file, ISO is ok here, from Alcohol 52% containing the bin/cue files for your games. Once the bin/cue files are on the emulated hard disk, run Daemon Tools within PCem and simply select the virtual game CD you want. Your game should run.

X-Wing vs TIE fighter has the annoying disk swap problem for Balance of Power. I have never tried it in PCem, but in VMWare you can use XWAhacker to bypass the disk swap problem. It will make that game much more fun to play.

I hope this helps,

tk421

[Xanarki]

I know this might not be an issue for you, but I recently found out that when I edit my autoexec and sys files (so that I can load CD-ROM drivers for my DOS games), it also has the adverse effect of disabling AutoRun (and screwing with the CD-ROM emulation). So make sure those 2 files are blank when trying Win9x CDs.

I have 1 PCem setup where, even though I blanked both files, my AutoRun still no longer works. I'm pretty sure it's an original glitch with Win9x, as I saw someone had the same issue back in 1998 in a PC Gamer magazine (unsurprisingly the writer's only solution was "make sure that AutoRun is enabled under the CD drive" lol).

I made a topic about it last year, and there's some good insight from others, including a few helpful hints from ruben that made things more clear to me: https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/phpBB3/view ... hp?p=15791

[creopard]

Get the tool "ProtectionID 6.9.0" in order to identify whether your CD has a copy protection in place or not, see also https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager. ... &iId=16621 for a screenshot.

Regarding the autoexec.bat and config.sys files:
you should setup a DOS boot menu to avoid loading DOS drivers (for CD-ROM, Sound card, etc) when using Windows 9x.