Emulating the Setup

DID’s Air Dominance Fighter and Total Air War.
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Krishty
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Joined: 2022-Jan-09, 00:59

Emulating the Setup

Post by Krishty »

We know the stinky old 16-bit setup won’t run on modern 64-bit systems.

Here is a hack around it, though, if you just need the files that are to be installed!

Abstract: On the ADF/TAW disc, you will find a file named data.z. This file is an archive containing the files to be installed (minus those that are already extracted on the disc, like did.dat). It’s not the ZIP you’d normally find, but some proprietary crap for InstallShield. The Internet Archive lists a few programs to open it, but many are bound to Linux or must be compiled manually. I found Universal Extractor to run easily, portable, out-of-the-box.

1. Download Universal Extractor
Go to https://www.legroom.net/software/uniextract#download and choose the Binary Archive. This will give you a RAR archive. Extract it somewhere.

2. Start Universal Extractor
Double-click UniExtract.exe.

3. Select data.z
Click the ellipsis below Archive/Installer to extract to navigate to your ADF/TAW CD-ROM:
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Then select data.z.

4. Select Output Directory
UE will propose an extraction directory. It’s rarely the right one, so click the other ellipsis to select a directory of your choice (or create a new one):
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5. Extract
Click OK. UE will recognize an InstallShield archive and ask for the extraction method.
For me, the first method seemed to work well. YMMV, let me know!
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6. Done!
A console window should flicker up for a second, and then all files should be extracted to the selected directory. Including original timestamps.
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