Corrupt/Missing WC2 Special Ops Disks :-(

[Sheppard]

A long time ago, I bought WC2 Special Ops 1 and 2 in a combo pack for I think $19.99 from the CompUSA that was at Federal Plaza on Rockville Pike.

It was awesome. Then around 2000-2002; I cleaned out my old computer stuff, and tossed a lot of boxes and 3.5" / 5.25" disks that I had kept up to then.

Stupid me; given that SpecOps boxed versions now go for $100+ for each box

Anyway, I got lucky on Amazon and snagged a non-boxed near-complete version of WC2 which was just the disks (no documentation), which didn't bother me since I never threw my documentation away; and it turned out that:

Special Operations 1, Disk 2 was missing
Special Operations 2, Disk 2 was probably corrupt -- my imager hung up for several seconds around the 1350 kb mark.

 

[Aginor]

Well, now it depends on the purpose. If you want to have those disks for nostalgic reasons I can't help you, but if you want the game you can get it here: https://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/Category:Downloads#Add-ons_2
On the same page you can also get the patches.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Those are the Kilrathi Saga versions, he needs disk images for the original release. Which I don't have available here or I would offer.

... that said, probably the easiest (and most permanent) solution is to get a copy of Wing Commander 2 Deluxe CD-ROM, which is still readily available while the individual mission disks are not.

 

[Sheppard]

... that said, probably the easiest (and most permanent) solution is to get a copy of Wing Commander 2 Deluxe CD-ROM, which is still readily available while the individual mission disks are not.

I have the WC1 Deluxe and WC2 Deluxe CD-ROMs -- the big difference between the two games is that WC1 Deluxe CD-ROM includes the installers for the Game and Secret Missions, allowing you to install the EGA version; whereas WC2 Deluxe CD-ROM does not include the installers for the game/speech pack/Special Ops, just an installed complete VGA version that's been patched.

As someone who grew up on Space Quest IV EGA because his family had a Tandy 1000 well into the early 90s, I like to track down the specialist EGA versions of games, just because...

 

[AD]

As someone who grew up on Space Quest IV EGA because his family had a Tandy 1000 well into the early 90s, I like to track down the specialist EGA versions of games, just because...

I remember buying Space Quest IV only to get it home and discover that the store only had the EGA version... however Sierra had an exchange program where you could send in the disks and get the VGA version at no extra cost.... only in the process they replaces our 3.5" disks with 5 1/4"... that kind of sucked. And once we dropped the 5 1/4" drive in exchange for a CD-ROM that mean we couldn't install it any more.

Of humorous note, before we had the CD-ROM we had an adlib card in the machine, so we upgraded to a soundblaster at the same time. Kind of scared the pants off me because I wasn't expecting Vohaul to speak near the end of the game having not had that enabled before.. The talky CD just wasn't the same.

 

[Madman]

I have the WC1 Deluxe and WC2 Deluxe CD-ROMs -- the big difference between the two games is that WC1 Deluxe CD-ROM includes the installers for the Game and Secret Missions, allowing you to install the EGA version; whereas WC2 Deluxe CD-ROM does not include the installers for the game/speech pack/Special Ops, just an installed complete VGA version that's been patched.

There's an ancient EA top 10 pack that contains the seperate installers (so you can opt not to have the speech pack for instance. I might have the floppies somewhere though, let me hunt around this evening, if not, and if it's okay, I could give you the relevant folders from the top 10 pack.[/quote]

 

[Sheppard]

sure, check your inbox

 

[Madman]

So i dug out my old discs, and used MagicISO to make images of them, but strangely the data on SO2 disc 1 and Speech packs discs 1 and 2 is actually larger than the standard for a HD-floppy! I had to make them into 2.88Mb images - odd. What this will mean though is that it will be difficult to re-write them to a floppy. However, since the wc2 discs don't care where the files are (you can copy all the files into a tidy folder on your pc and mount that as the A drive in dosbox and it will work fine) it's not a problem.

Loaf, did you want a copy of these for posterity? I'd actually recomment getting the EA Top 10 pack anyway, theres some classics on there (Indianapolis 500, PGA Tour Golf and the PC verison of the 3DO classic "Lost files of Sherlock Holmes").

 

[Sheppard]

Thanks for the disk images, Madman. With some jiggery pokery, I was able to get them working, and installed Special Ops 1/2 in EGA!

Word of note though, I think your Special Ops 2 Disk 2 is bad -- it was missing PEOPLE.V31 -- the installer quit, telling me to contact origin customer service.

I was able to finish it using my Special Ops 2 Disk 2; but I'm still unsure about corruption; as my SO2 Disk 2 might be missing the last 90 kb of data on that disk.

 

[Sheppard]

So, disk #2 of my new boxed copy of WC Academy for me is corrupt -- even though I already have Academy on CD-ROM...the completist in me wants to have a complete floppy set as well.

-- Decided to post in here, instead of creating a new thread -- perhaps a moderator can rename this to "Bad/Corrupt Disk Thread" or something like that.

 

[Worf]

So i dug out my old discs, and used MagicISO to make images of them, but strangely the data on SO2 disc 1 and Speech packs discs 1 and 2 is actually larger than the standard for a HD-floppy! I had to make them into 2.88Mb images - odd. What this will mean though is that it will be difficult to re-write them to a floppy. However, since the wc2 discs don't care where the files are (you can copy all the files into a tidy folder on your pc and mount that as the A drive in dosbox and it will work fine) it's not a problem.

Not that odd actually - a lot of software distribution formats do that - they adjust the floppy timing so that they can fit more data on the outer tracks of the disk (like a hard drive). It's how the original Mac got 800K on a 3.5" floppy, for example. They can do this because a floppy controller is an incredibly stupid device and with some clever software, easy to write a non-standard disk. I think you could get up to 2MB doing things this way.

Microsoft used this with great effect - their floppy distribution for later versions of DOS and Windows were in "DMF" format - distribution media format. Again, they stored more than the usual 1.44MB per disk.

It's pretty obvious why - the fewer disks needed to distribute, the cheaper it is to produce. If you can fit 2MB per disk instead of 1.44, a 6MB install needs only 3 disks instead of 4. It's one less disk that has to be sent to the disk duplicator, one less disk for users to switch, and as a side benefit, installs go faster because the outer tracks have more sectors and fly by the head faster.

The modern equivalent that some people do is arrange the files on a DVD so the drive doesn't have to seek when reading or installing

 

[cff]

It also was a quite efficienct copy protection in the days. Relatively few programs could do 'image copies' and a regular copy/xcopy/diskcopy couldn't transfer them.