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by Xirdus 50 days ago
I basically had this setup back in the day. I don't really know how I ended up with it, I was 7 at the time and none of it was intentional - but my bootloader had two entries: I could boot into Windows 98, or I could boot into Worms.
3 comments
Dwedit 50 days ago
It's a similar idea, but that's a DOS menu. At the point when the menu appears, MS-DOS 7.1 has already been loaded.
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tetrisgm 50 days ago
Stupid question but... would bundling the binary with an ASM port of something that could run this technically make it possible to run without the OS?

I realize this is basically doing docker for DOS games and incredibly stupid, I'm just curious about the thought experiment

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Xirdus 50 days ago
Well, the "ASM port of something that could run this" would be the OS...
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tetrisgm 50 days ago
Right. I guess I mean like an app specific OS haha
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ahartmetz 49 days ago
Possibly stripped down to only support that game, but basically yeah
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dale_glass 50 days ago
Probably your parents setting it up?

As far as I know, Worms is a normal DOS game, so the only way for that to happen should be a DOS install configured to just auto-start Worms on boot. Which makes sense as a way to keep a kid away from anything that could cause trouble.

I very vaguely recall that there used to be a very few PC games that worked as boot floppies and possibly didn't use DOS at all, but it was a rarity and Worms definitely wasn't one.

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Induane 50 days ago
I bet it wasn't actually the bootloader but something with autoexec.bat - you could setup choices in it and windows was just one launch option.
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Xirdus 50 days ago
Well, if you treat DOS as a bootloader for Windows 98 - which it was actually - then modifying autoexec.bat would count as setting up the bootloader.
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Xirdus 50 days ago
No, I set it up. My parents were non-technical. I had a CD-ROM re-release of Worms for DOS from one gaming magazine or another. I guess the installer set it up somewhere somehow but I remember it wasn't easy to get it installed and there were further problems trying to launch it. It's possible the installer itself was a DOS program, not a Windows program.
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bigfatkitten 49 days ago
MS-DOS Shell was one popular option to do this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_Shell

Brown Bag PowerMenu was another.

https://forum.winworldpc.com/discussion/15739/software-spotl...

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