1

I'm trying to play this old game of mine, The Lost Mind Of Dr.Brain. I have the CD and CD case, on which I found the following:

PC / MAC CD
WIN'3.1 / WIN'95
Installation:
If you have Windows 95, Autoplay is included. Simply insert the CD to run Dr.Brain.

The problem is, my laptop doesn't run Windows 95... I'm running a 64-bit Linux (Ubuntu-9.04).

I tried installing Windows 95 in a virtual machine (virtualbox) but I can only get it to boot in safe mode (and it's in some weird language..). I don't know if this can be a problem. So good, I have win95 now, but the problem is, it doesn't seem to find my CD drive, so I can't install the game...

I also have a virtual machine with Windows 7 on it, but it can't read the CD (Says I should check if I need the 32bit or the 64bit version of the software.. Well I don't think a 64bit version of Dr.Brain exists..)

So what are my options? Should I go looking for windows 95 CD drivers? Where could I find these? And then how would I install them?

Or can I do something in windows 7 to allow it to read the CD?

Or maybe there is a Windows 95 CD driver emulation for ubuntu somewhere that would allow me to read the CD directly from linux?? ( I doubt it)

Or maybe there is a way to create an .ISO file from the CD and open it with win95 from a shared folder... problem with this is that neither ubuntu nor windows 7 can even read the cd..

So, any clues?

3 Answers 3

1

Have you tried installing WINE in Ubuntu?

If you don't know what WINE is, it stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator, that allows you to run some Windows programs within Linux.I don't know how well this came would run in it, but I'd say that it's well worth a shot if you haven't tried yet.

5
  • Assuming you mean "The Time Warp of Dr Brain", it runs flawlessly: appdb.winehq.org/…
    – Mala
    Nov 30, 2009 at 8:21
  • No I mean The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain.. but your game looks good too, I might give it a try :) btw, I'm installing WINE now to try this out, I'll post back when I've teste this out.
    – Shawn
    Dec 1, 2009 at 21:33
  • Well well well, it seems to be working!! It originally said that something something it runs on 256 colours, but following the instructions here: wiki.winehq.org/… it finally started working. The only problem now is that the colours are messed up.. making certain things quite ugly and the rest unreadable.. Do you have any suggestions to solve this?
    – Shawn
    Dec 1, 2009 at 22:23
  • I noticed that in the steps I followed (see link in previous comment), I use xsetroot -solid gray50. Is there another colour I could use that would somehow help me get the original colours?
    – Shawn
    Dec 1, 2009 at 22:30
  • Well, I tried experimenting with a whole lot of different colours and they change nothing.. Do you have any other idea as to how I could solve this color issue?
    – Shawn
    Dec 5, 2009 at 1:06
2

Since the game is runnable under DOS as well I recommend Dosbox (http://www.dosbox.com/) to run it. It's a very lightweight compatibility layer for playing old games and has worked flawlessly for me in the past (even under Mac and Linux if anyone would need that).

3
  • I've just tried dosbox, and each time I try running the game, it says "This program requires Microsoft Windows". Even when I try running dosbox from my windows 7 virtual machine (virtualbox). Note that I have the 64 bit version of windows 7, if that changes anything. So, does this mean that dosbox won't work for this game? Or does it mean it won't work with windows 7??
    – Shawn
    Dec 1, 2009 at 23:07
  • Well, I played Dr. Brain under DOS, that's why I assumed it should work. I just checked again and there are 4 Dr. Brain games - I only knew about the first two. So it is possible that you either have one of the newer two versions or that you have a remake that was published later and only runs under Windows. In either case, I apologize for not checking thoroughly enough before answering your question :( Which of the 4 games (The Castle of dr. Brain, The Island of dr. Brain, The Time Warp of dr. Brain, dr. Brain: Action Reaction) do you have? It might help with further answers..
    – GregC
    Dec 2, 2009 at 6:46
  • Stangely, none of these... It's called The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain... I'll edit my original question with this information. I also didn't know there were other "versions" of this game before posting here :p
    – Shawn
    Dec 5, 2009 at 1:04
1

Try making an ISO of the CD with the dd command on Ubuntu:

dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/home/drbrian.iso

Then in the VirtualBox settings, mount a virtual CD/DVD drive with the Dr.Brian ISO for Windows 95. You do not need an actual CD/DVD drive:

alt text

1
  • ok, all this is done. Yet I still can't find the mounted CD in My Computer in windows 95...
    – Shawn
    Nov 29, 2009 at 21:50

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .