Play games larger than 2GB in Win95…?

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  • #8489
    KGMattson
    Participant

    Hi!
    I’m trying to play “Planescape Torment” but the game is huge!! The game comes with 4 cds with a total of 2.5GB in size (and that’s ONLY the cds). How can I play this game in dosbox-win95-emulation? Same thing with Baldurs Gate, this game also comes with 4 CDs aswell and will get me the same problem as above.

    Is there any way to play these “huge” games larger than 2GB?

    Note:
    I managed to install Planescape Torment into my host-PC, then I copyied the movies/music from the 3 CDS into the installed drive, then I used a “no-CD-crack” to be able to skip the CD-swapping in magic dosbox. The installed game folder was now 1.9GB so I used the “2gb HDD image” and injected it with WinImage and trasfered the img file into my tablet. The game starts but an error comes up saying that my computer has too low disk space to be able to play.

    #8490
    Al ex
    Keymaster

    2GB is a hard limit in Win95, the OS simply didn’t support more back in the day. You might be able to kinda hack this game to run (copy all files to a huge ISO image, copy that to a 2 GB D: drive, mount that iso from within Win95 booted from a C: drive) – but I’d strongly suggest you simply get the Android port from Beamdog. It’s not cheap (10 bucks), but there are zero microtransactions, and all their ports are really well made (also BG 1&2, IWD, NWN).
    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.beamdog.pstee&hl=en

    #8491
    admin
    Keymaster

    Alex is right 2GB is limit. Full truth is, you can have 2 x 2GB – (c: and d:). But really, both games were ported to android and works well with enhanced engine.

    #8492
    KGMattson
    Participant

    Ah, I thought that the C drive was limited to 512mb! My bad..I will try to make a new larger Win95.img. Then I should be able to play the game. Thanks!

    And I will check out the android ports aswell, thanks guys!

    #8493
    Larrynho
    Participant

    As said, check the Android port. Its MILES better to play it on mobile than using mdb. Ive completed all games in my phone, s7 galaxy edge with exynos chipset ( BG1,2 IWD1,2 PS:T and NWN 😛 )… size screen is not a dealbreaker and usability is very good.

    Furthermore, I think that PS:T and other infinity engine games are built for xin xp and wont work on win 95. Plus I imagine that the loading times on a phone would be scary.

    Furthermore, there is a free engine reimplementation called GEMrb. Its a bit of a pain to set up and has some bugs but you can play through the full game. And other as well like BG1, 2 and IWD1 ( IWD2 is unpolished and uncompletable thou )

    https://gemrb.org/

    #10608
    phantar
    Participant

    Hey, sorry for the necrobump, but I also had been looking into 2gb+ hard drives and/or Windows 98 Emulation for Magic Dosbox, since I had trouble getting Planescape Torment (the Android app isn’t available for my smartphone, so I used my old CD copy) and Fallout 2 RP 2.3.3. working (following the online guides enabled me to get RP 2.1.2b running, but not 2.3.3.). I eventually got both to run by installing Windows 98 in the Dosbox Pure Core in RetroArch on a PC and then copying over the resulting Hard Drive image to my smartphone and loading it up on the latest RetroArch version for Android (the stable release from the libretto site, NOT the one on Google Play. Both run okay, but I would prefer if they could also run in Magic Dosbox, since I prefer the latter’s usability and the ability for setting up custom hotkeys and macros (I kind of kludged a solution together by mapping custom keyboard keys to the Virtual Gamepad in RetroArch, but it’s definitely not as user-friendly).

    Anyway, I kind of stumbled over this statement by Al Ex:

    “2GB is a hard limit in Win95, the OS simply didn’t support more back in the day”

    But that’s not exactly true, isn’t it? Win95B and Win95C *did* have Fat32 support! I think the problem doesn’t lie in the Windows version, but the *DOS* version: Regular Dosbox emulates MS-DOS 6.22, which only had FAT 16 support. For Win95B or 95c with FAT32 support, you’d need a MS-DOS version 7.1 (from Win95B) or 7.1.5 (Win95C) as a base, respectively (which Dosbox-X actually switches to when mounting a hard drive image over 2GB in size).

    So the question is: would such an Upgrade to one of these DOS versions be doable / feasible? Or am I missing something else entirely?

    #10609
    Al ex
    Keymaster

    You’re right, I was referring to the “OG” Win95 version, that was commonly used with DOSBox. Patches for +2GB hdd sizes have been around for many years now, though I can’t tell how feasible it would be for Magic Dosbox. 🤷‍♂️

    #10610
    admin
    Keymaster

    No, it will not work. But there will be update in next version or so and it will work.

    #10611
    phantar
    Participant

    Alright, then I’ll eagerly await the next update or so. 🙂

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