Help installing StarTrek 25th Anniversary on Dosbox - CD game

[unessential]

Hi there

I've spent the best part of 6 months now trying to install Star Trek 25th Anniversary on my Pi3 and just cannot figure out what's going on so figured it's time to ask for help! I've tried a lot of different approaches but unfortunately I can't remember them all now so it might be best for me to just all over again if somebody is able to guide me through the process? As I see it the main problem is getting the game to recognise the ISO CD image.

My current attempt is setup as below:
#!/bin/bash
/opt/retropie/emulators/dosbox/bin/dosbox -c "mount c /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc" -c "imgmount d /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/ISO/TREKCD.ISO -t iso" -c "c:"

By launching Dosbox with this script it mounts the C drive and the ISO as the D drive. I then attempt to install the game onto the C drive within Dosbox using the ISO mounted to D. But when I press confirm to install to C:\TREKCD the installer displays 'Error copying files to hard disk' and aborts.

Any clues as to where this is going wrong? Or does anybody else know how to install and run this game without these problems? As I say I've followed the instructions on the wiki with no success, other methods such as copying the folders direct from the pc resulted in the game exiting at launch because it couldn't read the CD even after I edited the file with the correct ISO location. I also hope I'm not posting a duplicate question, I've searched these forums a lot over the last few months and whilst I've found similar answers none of them have solved my problem. Thanks for any help!

Pi Model or other hardware: 3B
RetroPie Version Used: 4.2
Emulator: DOSbox

[quicksilver]

@edmaul69

Im sending up the edmaul signal for you.

“Because he's the hero dosbox deserves, and the one it needs right now. So we'll hunt him. Because he can take it. Because he's not our hero. He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dosbox knight.”

[edmaul69]

@unessential ok a couple things. Do you have enough space on your card for the install? Second change the “-t iso” to “-t cdrom” and see if that changes anything. If the disc is trying to do a cd check then it might not work because setting “-t iso” doesnt make dos necessarily see it as a cdrom. You should always do “-t cdrom” if you want it to be seen as a cd drive.

[unessential]

Thank you guys, @edmaul69 plenty of space on the card, around 48gb so that shouldn't be the issue. Tried changing the type to cdrom but still get exactly the same outcome. I have the iso mounted on dosbox on my PC and it all works fine, never had an issue. Any other ideas?

[quicksilver]

@unessential in your original post you mentioned that when you copied the files from your PC and tried to run the game it wouldn't read the iso file. Did it give an error? What exactly did it do?

[edmaul69]

@unessential can you email me at the email in my profile?

[unessential]

@quicksilver From what I remember dosbox on the Pi would launch and then immediately exit. I searched through some dump/log files to try to establish what was causing the exit. There may have been an error in those but this was some months ago now and I can't remember it if there was. Following this I tried running the game through dosbox on the pi without the script file - launching dosbox, mounting C: and D: and then tried and got the same effect. I will have to recreate this setup and let you know the result, bear with me a bit. To save me searching again is there a particular log file I can look for?

@edmaul69 I can indeed, what do you want me to send over, just the iso file? Bear with me again as I have super slow internet and upload takes a while!

Edit:
I've had some success! By combining the 2 methods the game appears to launch. I copied the directory from my PC version of Dosbox to try and replicate the original problem but I decided to keep the .sh script I described above. I launched dosbox with the script but rather than trying to install the game from the D drive I just changed to C and launched it and it worked.

I realise this still doesn't explain why it was failing to install in the first place but it seems to be working so I'm happy. This is the first Dos game I've installed and I have other games along these lines which I also want to setup so I'll see if I can replicate the problem with those.

As a final question for now, copying the PC directory has created an automatic duplicate .sh file. I now have 2 .sh scripts under Dosbox both called TREKCD.sh - 1 is the 1 I manually created which works and the other is the automatic 1 which is missing the D drive mounting. How do I delete the duplicate and stop it automatically showing? When I look at the PC directory on the terminal/file explorer it only shows me the .sh file I created, where is the duplicate?

[Mycarz]

@unessential I attempted to install this game on retropie this afternoon and I too was experiencing "dosbox on the Pi would launch and then immediately exit". In the end, instead of copying installed files across from my PC, I performed a fresh install of the game from my PC (over my local network) by mounting a folder (e.g. '\TREK25THCD') in the '\RETROPIE01\roms\pc' location and mounting the cdrom drive. Unfortunately, even though I installed it this way it would still immediately exit. I even trialed creating .bat and .SH scripts but without success.
After about 2 hours of frustration and thought, it occurred to me that due to installing it from the Enhanced CD, the application was probably looking for the VOC folder, and hence when not finding it, it would fail to load and exit immediately. So I copied the whole VOC folder from the CD and pasted it into my '\TREK25THCD' folder on the retropie. So the '\TREK25THCD' folder just contained the 3 data files, the cfg file, setup file, exe file, and the VOC folder.
Success!!
Now when you select the 'Startrek.exe' file from within retropie, the game launches and the enhanced audio plays without fail, every time! (No .bat or .SH scripts needed).

(PS. I still reckon William Shatner had a cold when he recorded his dialog for this game)

[Using: Raspberry Pi 3B+ (Latest retropie build; latest retropie start up script)]

[BiZzAr721]

I'm glad you've gotten it sorted out. I started using .conf files to launch Dos games. What I do is enter dosbox command prompt from RetroPie and start the game from there, keeping track of the command I entered. Then I add those to commands to gamename.conf below [autoexec].

I use the games from eXoDOS collection since it uses the "best" version available. It also has a pre-configured *.conf file as well as all the game files pre-installed in it's own folder. You must make sure to change usescancodes=trueto usescancodes=false to make sure input works correctly. Other information will already be set up such as machine type (machine=vga) which can sometimes cause a headache trying to figure out.

Here is an example Star Trek - 25th Anniversary (1992).conf I based the autoexec off of another CD based game-Fallout 1.

[sdl]
fullscreen=false
fulldouble=false
fullresolution=original
windowresolution=original
output=overlay
autolock=true
sensitivity=100
waitonerror=true
priority=higher,normal
mapperfile=mapper-0.74.map
usescancodes=false

[dosbox]
language=
machine=vga
captures=capture
memsize=64

[render]
frameskip=0
aspect=true
scaler=normal2x

[cpu]
core=auto
cycles=max
cycleup=500
cycledown=20

[mixer]
nosound=false
rate=44100
blocksize=2048
prebuffer=10

[midi]
mpu401=intelligent
device=default
config=

[sblaster]
sbtype=sb16
sbbase=220
irq=7
dma=1
hdma=5
mixer=true
oplmode=auto
oplrate=44100

[gus]
gus=true
gusrate=44100
gusbase=240
irq1=5
irq2=5
dma1=3
dma2=3
ultradir=C:\ULTRASND

[speaker]
pcspeaker=true
pcrate=44100
tandy=auto
tandyrate=44100
disney=true

[joystick]
joysticktype=auto
timed=true
autofire=false
swap34=false
buttonwrap=true

[serial]
serial1=dummy
serial2=dummy
serial3=disabled
serial4=disabled

[dos]
xms=true
ems=true
umb=true
keyboardlayout=none

[ipx]
ipx=false

[autoexec]
MOUNT -u C
MOUNT C /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/
c:
IMGMOUNT D /st25/cd/Star Trek 25th.cue -t cdrom
cd st25 > NUL
STARTREK
exit

I haven't tried this .conf yet but what I would do if it didn't work would be to try those commands manually and copy over the changes.

Lastly, sometimes entering setup again is all that is need.