Hard Drive Installable Games?

[Tempest]

Is there a good way to know which games can be installed on a hard drive and which need to be run from original disks?  I know after a certain year most games became hard drive installable, but before that it seems to be hit and miss.  Something like Deja Vu (1985) runs just fine off the hard drive but Dark Castle (1986) only runs from floppies.  It's really frustrating.  Is there a list of 'floppy only' games somewhere?

 

[SE30_Neal]

I have no idea but sure someone on here will know. Good to know that myself as ive just brought an se/30

 

[Tempest]

I can't really find a pattern.  The release year helps (most game past 1989 or so supported hard drives), but beyond that it's hit and miss.  I'm guessing that most of the 'only plays from disk' games are because it's hard coded to read from the disk drive and the games that don't mind being on a hard drive read from whatever directory they're launched from.  Just a guess on my part.

 

[Byrd]

I don't think there is any pattern - I've come across many games from the mid to late 80's that will only run from floppy disc.  This might be due to copy protection, or if the game needs to boot off an older System to free up resources to run it.  You could say the same for 90's games that require a CD to be mounted, even if the CD isn't really used.

 You might look on Mac The Underdogs though, some edited games might be available ...

JB

 

[Paralel]

Anything written for the Plus or earlier probably just assumes floppy and doesn't think about trying to run off of an HD at all.

 

[turbo]

Will these games not run from a mounted floppy image?  I haven't run across anything like that, yet...

 

[Tempest]

I'm running these on a real Mac Classic, not an emulator.

 

[CC_333]

The copy of WorldBook '98 that came with my iMac "required" that the CD be mounted for the program to run, but I discovered that I could make an image of the CD and mount that instead, and the program worked just fine, so it's probably worth a try to see if a "floppy-only" game will work with a floppy disk image instead of the real thing.

c

 

[EvilCapitalist]

It's not exactly an old game, but my copy of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 runs quite happily with the CD image mounted using Toast.  My original disc is well-worn and I figured better to save the wear and tear. 

I would presume that the older programs wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a disk copy image and the actual media so long as you set up the image as read/write, not read only.

 

[Paralel]

True, a Disk Copy disk image mounted by Disk Copy from the HD may indeed provide what the program is looking for.

 

[CC_333]

Yeah. Be advised, however, that Disk Copy 6.x.x requires System 7 to run (there *might* be some earlier version or some other similar program (such as ShrinkWrap) that will run on System 6).

c

 

[olePigeon]

I seem to recall Dark Castle worked fine when I copied it to a HDD on a 512k.  I'll need to experiment.

 

[Tempest]

Really?   It didn't work for me when I tried it last. I think it complained about not enough memory or something (I have 4MB in it).  I'd have to try it again and see what the error was.

I don't mind making disks where I have to, but the more things I can put on the HDD the better.

 

[Paralel]

You might just need to adjust the memory parameters for the program.

 

[Tempest]

How does one do that?  I'll admit I'm not as familiar with System 6 as I am with other OS's.

 

[Paralel]

If I remember correctly, its through "Get Info"? I have to admit, I'm more System 7 oriented myself.

 

[olePigeon]

It could also be that you're using too much memory for the System, and there isn't enough for Dark Castle.  Nearly all of the 128k and 512k era software came with a very tiny and minimal OS to reduce memory footprint.

 

[Tempest]

Could be.  I'll look into it this weekend.

 

[Byrd]

I seem to recall Dark Castle worked fine when I copied it to a HDD on a 512k.  I'll need to experiment.

I recall the same, but it needed System 4.x to actually run.