MechWarrior 2: Resource Forum

in the tutorial post for using dos box,it is mentioned "Question: Why did we make an ISO/CUE?" and further it is mentioned to use a particular program. is the mentioned program necessary or can any program capable of making an iso acceptable?
thanks in advance.

edit: forgot to mention i have win 95/dos version, no enhancements, same with gbl.

The ISO format does not work, period, for any mixed-mode disk. This holds for any ISO, any mixed-mode disk, whatever. Most MW2 disks are mixed-mode disks, meaning they have a data track and then music tracks as well. Some however are not, for instance the "Softkey" versions of MW2:31CC. An ISO will work in DOSBox for these, but of course, you won't have any CD music. The simple picture is that if you make an ISO of your disk if it is another version, it will work essentially for installing but not too much more.

You need to make a cuesheet format image from your disk if it is mixed-mode (i.e., has CD audio tracks), with whatever software you choose to make it. Here's an explanatory page at the DOSBoxWiki. I can tell you that MMPD's recommendation that you reference does work, however.

i can install with no problems,launching it however is the issue. i know there is a lot of info in these forums but finding it is daunting much less making heads or tails of it. thanks for your response.

an all in one thread with all the various solutions can be found here.

npsbre wrote:The ISO format does not work, period, for any mixed-mode disk. <snip>

I'm sorry to disagree, but I managed to make it work just fine with an ISO image, and I can tell you my original cd is mixed-mode. I posted the following text in another thread:

macflav wrote:Couldn't get CloneCD to work on my laptop (it froze before detecting any SCSI/ATAPI devices). So here's what I did:

1. Downloaded the free version of Nero (Nero 9 Lite -- http://www.nero.com/enu/downloads-nero9-free.php);
2. Made a .NRG image of my MW2 DOS cd;
3. Used a free little software called NRG2ISO, which very effectively makes a .ISO version of the .NRG image.

After mounting the image ("imgmount d mw2.iso -t iso"), it worked perfectly! DOSBOX installation was by far the best solution for me.

I hope this helps anyone with a similar problem.

Thanks for the update. I was working from this statement: "Mixed mode CDs contain two sessions, one for audio tracks, and the second one for data. ISO images can only contain one session, so it's not possible to create an ISO of a mixed mode CD." Beats me! I'm no expert as to what Nero or that utility are doing.

I guess it means that either the music is missing or the file pretends to be an ISO image, but is actually something else, like a CCD image. The program's web page indicates that the program cannot deal with music, but does not contain a statement about mixed-mode CDs:
http://www.roland-illig.de/lang.delphi.nrg2iso.html

I would like to know whether you get music in the simulation when playing from the image.

I guess you guys are right, sorry for the lack of faith . I hadn't played MW2 in more than a decade (this is my excuse for missing the fact that there's no in-game music). I get music for example at the register sibko screen, but I guess that's midi -- not cda. Although the iso image is 716,744 KB, when I mount it with daemon tools I can only access the data part of the virtual cd (which is about 109 MB). I'm guessing the image mounted with imgmount under dosbox has the same limitation.

Anyway, at least the game runs smoothly, so it's an option for anyone having trouble making a bin/cue version of the disc.

Once again, I humbly apologize for the mistaken info.

No need to apologize; it's still interesting information to me at least.