Installing Star Trek: Judgment Rites from the original 3.5" 1.44MB disk media is pretty tough to do as the installer program is a product of the era it was programmed in.
Judgment Rites' installer uses a fairly complex early 1990s era ARJ decompressor to extract the files stored on the disks; and you will run into the dreaded:
"[file] is not the same date/time, Skipped [file]"
Error if you use stock DOSBox, which makes the installer error box out around "Decompressing Sounds Part 2" or thereabouts; giving you this:
The reason for this is that the stock DOSBox build doesn't support preserving the original date/time stamp for copied over files, via INT 21/57.
This is a very obscure DOS specification which was used very rarely, so it isn't supported by DOSBox.
This BTW, is why the DOSBox team says you should NEVER use it for anything other than games.
ykhwong's unofficial DOSBox build(s) support this INT 21/57 spec, so the Judgment Rites installer will now work correctly.
References:
VOGONS
Link 1
VOGONS
Link 2
Here's the LINK to ykhwong's page to get his specialist DOSBox version.
Step 1: Copy all the files off your 11 x 1.44 MB floppies (or the disk images you made of them) into a folder. (I called mine "JR_All".)
You should have the following 28 files in that folder:
DEARJ.EXE
DISK.001
DISK.002
DISK.003
DISK.004
DISK.005
DISK.006
DISK.007
DISK.008
DISK.009
DISK.010
DISK.011
FILE00.EXE
INSTALL.COM
MISC.ARJ
REACH.EXE
README.DOC
RITES.A01
RITES.A02
RITES.A03
RITES.A04
RITES.A05
RITES.A06
RITES.A07
RITES.A08
RITES.A09
RITES.A10
RITES.ARJ
Step 2: Load up ykhwong's DOSBox and mount your "JR_All" folder as a floppy drive, along with your usual C:\ drive.
Step 3: Making sure that cycles are set around 6000; start up the Judgment Rites install program (INSTALL.COM)
Step 4: Wait.
Step 5: Wait some more.
Step 6: Wait even more.
Step 7: The README.DOC file says this (no joking):
Star Trek: Judgement Rites
Stardate 12/09/93 21:18
Readme and Addendum
2. Initial installation takes approximately 20 minutes to read all eleven disks. After this, additional installation processing will continue for approximately 1.5 hours. The computer will beep when it is done. You do not need to be present during the additional 1.5 hours processing.
Don't you miss the closing days of floppy disk based installers?
If all works, you should eventually see this screen:
From there on, it should be a hop skip and jump to a working install of Judgment Rites.
Once you’ve done all this, make a ZIP of the installed version, and burn it to a disc or something, to preclude having to go through all this again, particularly if the SFX pack is corrupt somewhere!
FIRST, BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING:
ZIP UP and make copies of your stock Judgment Rites install. It took so long to install, you want to have a backup before you install the SFX pack!
OK, well with your backup done...follow the same procedure as before:
Copy all your files from the 5 x floppies to a folder that you mount as a floppy.
You should have 13 files named:
DEARJ.EXE
DISK.001
DISK.002
DISK.003
DISK.004
DISK.005
INSTALL.COM
README.DOC
RITES_CP.A01
RITES_CP.A02
RITES_CP.A03
RITES_CP.A04
RITES_CP.ARJ
As before, INSTALL.COM starts the installation procedure.
I ran ykhwong's DOSBox build at 8,000~ cycles this time around and everything worked.
As before, a lot of text scrolling and it will appear to hang on "Decompressing Sound Effects"; then you'll get this screen:
Zip up your finished complete install (JR+SFX) so you don’t have to do this again in the future.
This concludes your guide on how to correctly install the floppy version of Judgment Rites.