Playing ISO and BIN/CUE Games on the Deck?

[ThorN]

I'd love to play some of my older disk-based games on the Deck, but I'm not sure how I could do this under Linux. If Windows Dual-Booting is ever coming I'm sure it'll be less of an issue, but for Linux I only know of CDEmu and a few others which work fine in Pop!_OS but there are no flatpak versions available and they all require system file access from what I can see. Is there any way?

[Prezidentas]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Marlock:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Red Star Gopnik:

well games that cannot run on DOS-Based windows came out from around 2002, which is a lot more modern and it's possible that such new games don't use CD Audio anymore.

Sid Meyer's Civilization II, is an unfortunate example of a game that is native windows, not DOS, yet also relied on CD tracks for better audio

if it was DOS, I would be able to run it without headaches today...

It also used several other era-appropriate bad tech that makes it THE most frustrating challenge to put it running in modern machines, including a very niche and ancient proprietary video codec, cd-checking DRM, all in-game help in the form of a hyperlinked precursor to PDFs...

If only I hadn't seen that Elvis cosplay as a cultural advisor, maybe I would now be able to let that game go...

But Civ II came out in 1996, which means it runs fine on DOS-based Windows 95, which can be used with DOSBox-X.

[Marlock]

I've never heard of DOSBox-X before this thread, so now I'll just have to try it

[ThorN]

Is there any reason to use DOSBox-X over PCem or 86box? Does that perform better? I'm really not that excited about emulating PC games just because the disk doesn't work otherwise, I knew that was an option but yeah

[PXL]

Fascinating thread for many reasons. The popularity of the Steam Deck will maybe help solve this problem in the future. I’m sure retro enthusiasts would have ideas.

[Marlock]

Oprindeligt skrevet af leveller:

Fascinating thread for many reasons. The popularity of the Steam Deck will maybe help solve this problem in the future. I’m sure retro enthusiasts would have ideas.

oh, rest assured they already had a TON of ideas

because the Steam Deck is linux, almost anything aimed at retrogaming on linux can be used on the Deck as well... and on top of that, the main retrogaming apps have been busy making special adaptations to run better on the Deck (eg: retroarch)...

...and there are even a few linux apps made specifically with the Deck in mind (but usable elsewhere too)

[jenergy]

Hi, I've just read all the thread..I'm not sure if you still need help to install cdEmu on the steam deck, just in case I installed pretty easily:

sudo pacman -S linux-neptune-headers libmirage libao cdemu-client cdemu-daemon vhba-module-dkms

sudo modprobe vhba

It works also mounting bin/cue.

And with:

sudo pacman -S libcdio vlc audiocd-kio

you can listen it with vlc as cd audio

About CDROM dosbox..if you buy Mortal Kombat 3 (I have the gog version) and install it, you will have an example on how to 'transform' an old dos cdrom game (mixed mode with audio tracks) into files mounted and read as music during the game

[maxRunner]

I'm not going to read 8 pages, but I just want to add my 2 cents.

God Saven't the Queen, relax, lol.

Repackaging my old dos and early win games is a hobby of mine. I promise you in the vast majority of cases it can be done without drive emulation. It's usually preferable to having to mount a disc every time using cdemu anyway, it's how GOG does it.

- If you have a bin/cue you use bchunk to break the bin into iso + wav files. bchunk is just a binary you probably don't have to "install" it. Just extract the contents of the arch tar package and add ~/.local/bin to your path. If you are missing a dependency it will complain, extract those packages also into ~/.local/lib and use LD_LIBRARY_PATH. You can also use the "strings" command to sneak a peek at which libs are linked.

- if it is a dos game, there is a flatpak for dosbox and my preferred dosbox-staging. both support mounting a cue of iso + wav files directly.

- if it is a windows game extract all the file from the ISO and see if the game will install in bottles. if not you'll have the most control using wine directly, for which there is also a flatpak. you may have to symlink a drive in [wine_prefix]/dosdevices or something. It's very situational.

- if it's windows and has multi-track iso + wav, now you are in a bit of a pickle. There are some hacks to get the game to recognize the wavs such as replace a special winmm.dll, but it's very hit and miss and specific to each game. Barring any solution like that you'll be playing without cd music or be back to cd-emu.

- I could write 100 pages on each of those bullet points. Fact of the matter is there is going to be some learning involved, and it won't all fit on this forum post.

EDIT: I forgot a bullet

- many older games have had their engine rewritten by the community to make them native. Examples to look for scummvm or openxcom. or sometimes there are wrappers like dxwnd that can help fix display issues even under wine.

[Umino]

Sorry for necroing this one but it's just too silly ...

A whopping 8 (EIGHT!!!) pages of back and forth and people accusing each other of not being able to read and understand the problem and whatnot ... but no one really provided a clear cut solution.

Ironic as the solution is dead simple:

The goal is to run old games that came on a CD-ROM which had a data track and redbook audio tracks ... right?

There is software made exactly for that - it's called "86box" and is available as flatpak - and thus can be installed via discover.

And if you ask "Why install an x86 emulator when the steam deck is perfectly capable of running x86 software" - here is why:

Because todays x86 might very likely be too different from the x86 these old games expect and your game might straight up not work or at least be unplayable even after you wasted hours on the "no CD music" issue.

I found games from the "CD-ROM with Redbook audio era" (which loosely equates to 1999 and earlier) to be the most problematic in terms of CPU speed and requiring specific hardware to be present (like an ISA sound card or specific 3D card)

Before 86box and PCem was a thing (and computers actually had enough power to run it)
I was wasting way too much time trying to get old games to run on modern computers with modern operating systems.

Even if you may get many of them to start up using a "compatibility layer" like wine, proton or windows "compatibility mode" - some of them might either run too fast or have severe graphics glitches on modern hardware - so I think emulation of era appropriate hardware is the least painfull option.

Another thing to keep in mind is that wine and proton, as far as I know, mainly focus on being compatible to the NT based family of windows (NT, 2000, XP and everything that came after XP).

But games that used redbook audio are usually made for DOS or the DOS based 9x family of windows.

Once we get into games from the 2000's, redbook audio is rarely used any more and the games also got less picky about CPU speed and hardware since there was so much variety in the PC hardware market now, the games had to support a broad range of different configurations.

so ... TLDR:

- If the game has redbook audio on disc and only runs on DOS or windows 9x ->86box
- if the game has no redbook audio and can run on NT, 2000, XP..... -> proton

no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ around in the terminal, no fiddling with package managers that don't work on the immutable file system ... none of that ... it's as simple as 1-2-3

1. install 86box on the deck, configure it to your liking and install old OS of your choice
2. make image of your game disc and transfer it to the deck
3. start 86box, load game disc image, install and play the game.

bonus objectives:
add 84box as "non steam game" so you can launch it from gamemode ... and give it a nice looking banner while you are at it
if you want to have a separate entry for each individual old game in your steam library, that should be possible too but may require a bit of tinkering

[ThorN]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Umino:

There is software made exactly for that - it's called "86box" and is available as flatpak - and thus can be installed via discover.

I am aware of this solution and was aware of the solution when I posted this thread, and have been using it for various games. But it's not always a great solution. Emulating means you can't take advantages of certain modern features like higher resolutions and framerates, though that depends on the game.

Worse are games that are sort of stuck in the limbo era – too new to really emulate at decent performance, but still too old and relying on redbook audio.

What's really frustrating to the point of pulling my hair out is that I've found several people in various forums and social media platforms who said "I got it to work!", then they provide a vague solution or no solution at all, and when you ask them what they did specifically, they never answer

Usually it involves the Nix partition that Valve specifically added to the Steam Deck specifically for software like CDEmu which would otherwise require the OS to not be immutable. And it should work, but there are always errors that various people have claimed to know how to solve but never actually provide the correct solution. Very unfortunate

Oprindeligt skrevet af Umino:

1. install 86box on the deck, configure it to your liking and install old OS of your choice

It would be awesome if I could just do that, but I was a kid during that era that knew nothing about actual hardware specs. My PCs were provided by my parents.

I would just love to know the best hardware configuration that works at full emulation speed on the Deck

Oprindeligt skrevet af Umino:

if you want to have a separate entry for each individual old game in your steam library, that should be possible too but may require a bit of tinkering

No, that's as easy as adding 86box multiple times to Steam and just giving it the name of the specific game each time.

[Wren]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.