CD-ROM emulator

How the fug there is no CD emulator for OLD PC:s? Simple thing really: it would have a USB port which takes in a USB stick and the stick would contain CD ROM images in ISO format. Then this USB thingy is plugged into very old PC:s IDE cable and the computer would think it is a CD ROM drive. And it would contain buttons for next CD and previous CD and in actuality this would browse the images in a USB stick.

Other urls found in this thread:

iodd.kr/wordpress/
notanon.com/retro/how-to-use-an-iso-as-a-virtual-cd-under-ms-dos/2010/09/15/
web.archive.org/web/20120502092044/http://adoxa.110mb.com/shsucdx/index.html
web.archive.org/web/20120422152337/http://johnson.tmfc.net:80/dos/shsucdx.html
dosbox.com/wiki/MOUNT#Mounting_a_CUE.2FBIN-Pair_as_volume
math.uni-rostock.de/~nfa506/fakecddr.html
hooktube.com/watch?v=FjHon6yg-r8
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Bro... just take a look at these guys
iodd.kr/wordpress/

I got my external drive a month back.
It's now loaded with ISOs I can boot from and a few VHDs to boot several operatiing systems.
This thing is amazing.
Drive not included though

...

There is.
It's called a PATA/IDE USB bridge.
You plug in the FAT formatted USB flash drive with the ISOs content and the PC won't know the difference.

>PATA/IDE USB bridge
aren't those for connecting actual drives through USB though?

where it is being sold?

just ... 7zip an iso and extract it , most games will happely install from that , for everything else , get virtual disk software or a nocd crack

wtf are you shilling for this shit for
first of it wont do anything he is talking about
second of all i can literally do all of that from my phone for free

Im talking about OLD computers that run MSDOS, not Windows. There are no CDROM emulators made for DOS so you need to use real CD rom discs, burned or original. But nevertheless you have to use real discs. But it would be in technical perspective to be quite easy to create a device that looks like an CDROM drive to an old computer but in actuality it just pretends to be a CD drive. This is why we already have a floppy emulator device. CD drive is actually a simpler system than a floppy. You cant write on CD:s. But floppies need to be writable, not only readable.

> implying you're not one person shilling a product
At least you were smart enough to leave some time between posts.

mount -o loop?

uh.. what?

Why not just install a virtual cd program of some kind that mounts CD/DVD images as if it were a real drive and point it to images stored on a USB stick? Shit like daemon tools and VirtualCloneCD have been doing that for years and it's pretty much exactly what you described because as far as the machine is concerned it's an actual physical CD ROM drive with a real disc inside.

This has existed for years for the purpose of installing pirated games and such.

Because of MSDOS. If I wanted a Windows PC for retro stuff, I would just use one of the many CD ROM emulator softwares made for Windows

>floppies need to be writeable
I can confirm that you have never used a floppy

notanon.com/retro/how-to-use-an-iso-as-a-virtual-cd-under-ms-dos/2010/09/15/

Those links are dead, here are the archives:

web.archive.org/web/20120502092044/http://adoxa.110mb.com/shsucdx/index.html

web.archive.org/web/20120422152337/http://johnson.tmfc.net:80/dos/shsucdx.html

Just use Easy2Boot.

Or get that IDE adapter.

becuase basically anything that is new enough for a cd drive, probably has a hdd and/or is powerful enough to run a software virtual cd drive

>cd emulator

it's called disc mount

there you're just mounting an iso9660/udf filesystem, this isn't the same as emulating a cd drive

why isn't it? the iso when mounted acts as a cd drive. that's emulation.

you mean emulator that reads a harddrive as a cd drive?

it might claim to be a cd drive, but things like "mount" don't attempt to emulate any cd features, such as subchannels, audio tracks, cd-g, etc
it generally won't work for something that really needs the original cd, like things with copy-protection systems (which often use subchannel information) or mixed-mode cd's that have the game/program in track 1 and audio tracks in the others
in linux, there's cdemu, which actually emulates a cd drive
dvd is a different story, they work more like hdd's (no subchannel/mixed-mode hackery). cd's are weird as they started off as purely an audio format, cd-rom and other purposes are hacks

It'd be kinda a waste because on a lot of old operating systems CD drivers are a pain in the ass to find. A better one would be USB to floppy emulator.

then use WinCDEmu

He means a hardware emulator you connect to a IDE cable for old PCs.

fuck i hate weebs

Yes, other kind of things just won't werk
Trust me, I know as I got an Pentium from 1995 which uses the following;
IDE CDROM (needs to use physical discs)
Floppy drive (needs to use physical floppies but there would be gotek drives available for purchase if I want to)
Hard Disk (this was changed into compact flash with an adapter so no need to think about hdd moter dying out)
MS-DOS (the original operating system with thousands of games but virtually no virtualization options and emulators so you could use CD ROM images for games, many games are CD ROM games, I calculated I have almost 100 games that needs CD ROM)

why? literally no point.

you can boot usbs just fine, cds are deprecated and should be left behind.

tfw half of the posters didn't even read OP or understand what he's asking, but they're still posting their stupid opinions

I really hate the internet sometimes.

what for? if your PC can't read USB drives get a less obsolete one.

>oh no my legacy computer equipment isn’t supported anymore
It’s either emulator or the real thing dude. Do you realise how small the market is for what you’re asking?

There's no such thing because there is no real demand for it, it's a real tiny market and nobody is going to make something just for you and perhaps two other people in the whole world.

And there's not any real need for it either. If you're using modern hardware then just add some ISO file as a CD drive in QEMU, MS-Dos or whatever DOS variant won't tell the difference. If you are using very old hardware then get a very old CD drive.

Though.. honestly, I can't really remember using CDs at all back in the MS-Dos days. I'm fairly sure I didn't have a CD drive until my first Windows computer. I'm not saying nobody used CD's with MS-DOS - just that I don't remember anyone having one or using one back then, they came later. It was all about the 5.25"'s and later the 3.5" 1.44 MB floppies.

I guess the real question is... what are you trying to do anyway?

>virtually no virtualization options and emulators so you could use CD ROM images for games
dosbox.com/wiki/MOUNT#Mounting_a_CUE.2FBIN-Pair_as_volume

the reason floppy emulation is a popular option is because floppies aren't made anymore, and they're unreliable
cd-r and cd-rw are currently still being made, so there's little need for an in-place replacement as of yet

there was a number of years where DOS games came on cd's, approximately around 1993-1997
that said, much of those will also run under windows 95/98 as well

>I never used CD:s in MSDOS

I guess you didnt play games then.
I have almost 100 CD ROM games for DOS.

How to change / set the default file picker?

But you probably also had Win 95 at that point.

Remember when you had to keep a DOS boot floppy for some games? Those were the days.

Yes I remember the boot floppie but non of the very good games were this old. Bootable games are from 80s. I wonder if gotek drives would support them?

I already had a cdrom drive when win95 released, I got the win95 cdrom version in August 95. pic related is an ad from a gaming mag from September 92 with cdrom drives.

Zalman has been making USB HDD enclosures that can emulate a USB DVD-ROM for a while. They are brittle, poorly manufactured fuckers, though. You shouldn't buy one unless it's for work.

There is software to mount images in DOS. I remember using this years ago when cd rom technology was newer

>There are no CDROM emulators made for DOS
Yes, there are. I've used one. This may or may not have been it: math.uni-rostock.de/~nfa506/fakecddr.html

First CD ROM games came out already in 1992 I think. The drives of course were available for some time before any games were released.

>selling an adlib card with DUNE
pretty good decision
hooktube.com/watch?v=FjHon6yg-r8

>lly: it would have a USB port which takes in a USB stick and the stick would contain CD ROM images in ISO format. Then this USB thin
jesus fucking christ this is the most backwards thing vie seen in a while.

go download a copy of slysoft virtual clone drive and mound the image

It would, discs are formatted to UEFS, while flash drives to FAT/32 or NTFS.

*UDFS

you're thinking of UFS, but cd's don't use that, dvd's do. don't confuse cd and dvd, they're completely different

DOS doesn't even know the difference between a HDD and CD-ROM