Across working in DOS in XP

General

This article was originally written by mr in 4 February 2006.

We don't take any responsibity to any harm of your system! Be careful!

With help of this document you are able to play Across (and as well some other dos based games) with your PC using NT based operating system like Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Reason for making this help is that Across is not working well on NT based systens and DOS hasn't support for current and widely used file system NTFS.

Requirements

• knowledge of what file system your hard disks are using
• Action SuperCross placed on hard disk
• floppy drive & empty WORKING floppy OR Virtual Floppy Drive (2.1) (http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html) Only for 32-bit systems)
• Avira NTFS4DOS Personal (http://www.free-av.com/antivirclassic/avira_ntfs4dos.html) (Free for personal use)
• Nero 7 (http://www.nero.com/nero7/eng/nero7-demo.php) (30-days trial)
• Blank CD-R/CD-RW disc

Instructions

1. Making bootable DOS-floppy in system using NTFS file system.

1.1. If you have a floppy drive just put an empty floppy to the drive. Skip 1.2 and continue from 1.3.

1.2. If you DON'T have a floppy drive you have to download and extract Virtual Floppy Drive (VFD). Run VFD clicking vfdwin.exe from folder you extracted the program. Be sure that vfd.sys is selected from VFD folder in Driver tab. Let the start type to be Manual if you don't want to keep using VFD for other things. Click Start. Select Drive0 tab. Click Change. And select drive letter you want to use for VFD (I selected B:). Let Persistent/Global to be checked. Click OK. Click Open... Make sure Media Type is 3,5" 1,44MB. Click Create. Now you can see VFD drive in Windows Explorer. For some reason it seems to be 5,25".

1.3.

• Install NTFS4DOS and make a bootable floppy using shortcut
• Start -> Programs -> NTFS4DOS -> Create NTFS capable boot floppy

Select the Drive letter of your floppy. Click Next>>. Uncheck the "Add check disk command line utility". Click Next>>. Uncheck both additional tools. Click Create Floppy.

2. Making bootable DOS-floppy in system using FAT32 file system. You can use the same concept that told in step 1. But if you don't want to use Avira NTFS4DOS you can just format disk to DOS-bootable using Windows' own format tool.

3. Converting bootable floppy to bootable CD. This help uses Nero 7 to burn bootable CD. There's no reason why not to use any other burning software to do that. Just download and install Nero 7 (or at least v.6 has this bootable CD-ROM option). Run Nero Burning ROM. Select New Compilation -> CD -> CD-ROM (Boot). Select drive of bootable floppy (real or VFD)) as Bootable logical drive. Then click New. Click Burn from toolbar.

4. Placing Across to hard disk. It's recommend to place Across to some "easy path" like C:\Across if you aren't familiar with command line.

5. Booting the computer. Depending on media you wanted to use booting (CD or floppy). You have to set computer BIOS to boot from selected media. Then just boot the computer and your computer should start to "DOS". Then change to drive Across is located with command "C:"(for example) and then change to Across directory with command "cd Across". It's recommend to run Across setup before running the game. Just type "setup". Disable sounds. And configure VESA SVGA modes. Save Settings & Quit. Now type "across" to play the game. Enjoy!

6. When you want to exit

When you stop playing and want to get back to normal system. Just remove bootable media (CD or floppy) and press CTRL+ALT+DEL and system boots back to normal.