My Libretto doesn’t have a CD-ROM drive in it. Sure there is an external drive that I can plug in and run but why would I want to haul around a drive that is almost as large as the whole computer just to play some old game that requires a CD-ROM drive to function? Many of the old CD-ROM games are around 10mb anyways so it makes no sense to use a CD-ROM drive for them. Even on a desktop, do you really want to monopolize your CD-ROM drive with a disk just to play one game? I figured that someone out there must have a solution so I found one. The problem was that I couldn’t find any documentation, just odd hints scattered across the web.
The program you need is SHSUCDHD and SHSUCDX. These are part of a package called SHSUCD that is available here. The whole package is pitched as a replacement for mscdex but the feature I’m interested in is just the emulation. What’s nice about it is that it doesn’t require any TSR’s in your config.sys file. You can either start it on demand or in the autoexec.bat file. My goal was to run Wizardry 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant. So I put a chain of commands into a batch file that I run when I want to start that game. The lines related to SHSUCD are as follows:
shcdhd86 /f:wiz.iso
shsucdx /d:shsu-cdh
This assumes that SHCDHD86 is in the same directory as wiz.iso. SHCDHD86 is the same as SHSUCDHD if I’m not mistaken so hopefully that isn’t too confusing. The first lines points the virtual cd-rom driver at the iso you wish to mount. The second line specifies what drive letter bind the image to. After all of this is done, you should be able to go to the D:\ drive and there will be the contents of your ISO.
In my spiffy batch file, I put commands to unload the cd-rom drivers after the game is done using them:
shsucdx /u
shcdhd86 /u
If you like the content on this site, please support it by using this link to order from Amazon. You know you were going to go there and buy stuff anyhow so why not help me pay the hosting bill.
Very interesting. I’m building a 286 dos game box and this is going to solve a lot of problems.
What model is that palmtop in the picture?
That’s a Toshiba Libretto 50ct. Not sure if it’s a palmtop or a subnotebook. It’s in an interesting and under developed category.
Huge thanks on this one! There’s a lot of complex data how to mount .iso files on native dos environment. This is so simple and appears to be working without problems.
Thanks again !!
Thanks for the explanation 🙂 seems to work fine in the dos environment, but what I would like to do is to mount an iso at the server, say I want shsucdhd be on my image for pxe booting and the driver should be network capable to mount the iso on the main server. Do you think that is possible ? have you done some workaround about this issue ? would be great if you have any idea if this could work.
Many thanks anyway and best regards from joshi 🙂
What is your client machine? Does it not have any drive at all or a USB perhaps? What OS are you trying to boot/install over the network. This seems like something that has been solved by the Linux guys already.
Hello Geordy and many thanks for your prompt reply. I apologise for the brief description of the problem i want to solve. Yes, the linux guys can solve that issue, but windows users have some severe problems doing that. Here is what I want to do.
Primarely I want to boot a windows PE over the network. Within PXE this can be done in a very tricky way. It works allright on my netbook, but trying to port it to a normal amd or intel PC breaks down the download of the iso the netbook however, boots with no problem.
The issue is to make backups of a crashed OS AND/OR boot a windows PE onto a guest PC when this is necessary. I can boot the ISO, but it takes an awfull lot of time to download the ISO first prior to the real boot. So I figured, that it should be possible to execute the necessary files from the ISO just in the same way, like the cd-rom drive does itself, just with the difference that my files are on the TFTP server and not on a physical medium.
Client PC is a MSI netbook with 1,5 Ghz and 1 GB of ram, no disks, only USB
Server is a e9300 (core with 4.7 Ghz, 16 GB of ram running all servers needed here plus an extra NAS storage device, unfortunately not supporting TFTP and DHCP, that is done by the server itself.
I can boot a DOS image over PXE and with some effort get the RIS running to install any OS on the client, but in the end I want a functional Windows to run over the network when the main (local) OS crashes, to save data and do a restore of ths after successfull reinstallation/repair of the local OS.
I hope you now know what exactly I want with this, I tried also ISCSI service, but was not able to activate the ISCSI drive on the server, for what reasons ever.
Well, enough for this time, thanks again, If you need more information, please let me know, would be glad hearing what you think.
Kind regards,
Joshi
Hello Geordy 🙂
It seems that I will reach the solution soon. I have now build a PXE boot disk with network facillities. Unfortunately, the RAM space is flooded with files, so I cannot yet connect to the mapped drive on the server, but I will cover that later. Please let me know, if you also are interested in my solution, if yes, I will post everything here for you to try out.
Kind regards,
Joshi
Definitely interested. Please feel free to post the solution. Sorry I didn’t have more to suggest.
Hello Geordy 🙂
No problem, I will try to work it out today. I will keep you updated on this issue
God bless you for this! I’ve been trying for months to mount my dos isos on my dos rig and I’ve always failed. Now I can play the cd version of dune without needing a cd drive! Thank you so much Geordy!!!
Glad to help! I use this for Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant. I’ve been playing it off and on for nearly 25 years now and still haven’t beat it.
I have not used dos since 95 and never messed around with bat files and such
so im a little unshore on how to set this up.. I have tryed doing it on the fly but i get
an error saying that shcdhd86 in not installed???
sorry to bring up such an old post so and for dummies help would be appreciated
Thanks in advance
J
Just a moment ago I was frustrated on trying to install MS DOS 7.10 with the additional addons (Sound Blaster drivers, Norton, etc.) since it was exclusive to the .iso version and for some reason my external CD-ROM drive wasn’t working correctly with my L100…
However with this method, I was able to copy and paste the lines you wrote but replaced the desired .iso within the bat file and I was able to successfully install 7.10 with Sound Blaster support for my favorite DOS games and music trackers, Adlib Tracker II.
Coming across this blog post was a saving grace really.
Thank you.
Enter your comments here…hello and thanks for this, I was wondering if I could bother you for assistance.. I can’t quite seem to get this working and I’m wondering if the fact that I have a cd-rom occupying the D: Drive is why? When I run your commands it says it’s installed (exit code is 0 but with a warning about file and volume sizes being different but it’s happened on all 4 ISO’s that do work and we’re made w sector checks etc). Anyway I tried substituting D: for the E: drive since my D is occupied (not in real life) (sorry) but no luck- not that I’m sure if I’m doing that right. From what I’ve read /D is to set the drive letter so I used various takes on this idea- /D:E:shsu-cdh
Anyway any advice would be greatly appreciated, Thank you 🙂
Howdy from 2021. Thank you so much for posting this solution. Actual IDE CD-ROM drives that work properly are getting harder and harder to come by. I’ve been trying to find a decent solution to this for quite a while.
For anyone looking for these files now, you can download them here: http://adoxa.altervista.org/shsucdx/index.html