This article covers the steps to create an installation of EF2000. It will involve, installing the EF2000 base game, installing the TACTCOM upgrade and installing the 3DFX GFX+ upgrade. It will also cover cleaning up the installation and optimising libraries.
This is also an update of the previous article, 'DID you know? Installing & Patching EF2000 on Windows 10'.
This will give us a fully patched DOS installation of EF2000. As it is a DOS installation, there are no Windows registry entries or dll's to register making it a portable installation that can be copied, zipped up or moved and used with the EF2000 Reloaded app, DOSBox or PCem.
I'll also cover some quicker methods using EF2000 V2.0.
This article doesn't cover the Windows 95 version, Super EF2000 (or EF2000: Special Edition). That will be in a later article.
The EF2000: Evolution edition isn't explicitly covered, however, since has 2 cds, one cd may contain the base game and the other cd, the TACTCOM upgrade, so the steps should be similar (if not identical).
The approach
A PCem virtual machine running Windows 98 will be used to create the installation. This is necessary as the GFX+ update is a 16 bit Windows installer app. The DOS based EF2000 base game and TACTCOM upgrade will be installed through a DOS command prompt. The steps required are:
Create a PCem virtual machine running Windows 98.
Install EF2000 and TACTCOM upgrade with a DOS command prompt.
Install the GFX+ upgrade for 3DFX cards.
Clean up the installation.
Update the DOS/4G library.
Copy the EF2000 installation onto Windows 10.
CD or CD image?
My personal preference is to rip my cds to cd images to save wear and tear on the disc and more importantly the physical drive. The PCem emulated cd drive supports both physical cds or cd images.
The EF2000 base game cd contains red book cd music so this should be ripped to a bin/cue image pair to preserve the cd audio, allowing it to be played during gameplay, if desired.
The TACTCOM upgrade cd can be ripped to an iso data only format as it does not contain cd music.
Creating the PCem virtual machine
If you're completely new to setting up PCem or need a refresher, I highly recommend the excellent YouTube tutorial video by PhilsComputerLab, PCem Windows 98 Setup. This guide assumes the latest version, PCem v17.
As we are using PCem to create a DOS installation the graphics and sound capabilities don't really matter, although all the drivers used in the video can be found on the PhilsComputerLab website, making PCem setup a lot easier. It also means it will be a clean Windows 98 machine, that can be used for other games.
Once you have a basic, clean Windows 98 virtual machine and hard disk image, I recommend:
Taking a copy of the basic virtual machine to create a game specific virtual machine.
Taking a copy of the basic hard disk image to create a game specific image.
Use PCem and reconfigure the game specific virtual machine to use the game specific hard disk image.
If things go badly wrong, you'll always have the basic image to try again with and it'll save a lot of time and effort if you ever want to try a different game with PCem.
Installing EF2000 and TACTCOM
Start the PCem virtual machine you want to use to create the installation.
To install EF2000:
Mount the EF2000 base game cd or cd image in PCem.
Open up a dos prompt in Windows 95 and run the EF2000 Installer (install.exe), select a full install to hard disk, this will automatically install it to c:\EF2000.
Once installation is complete hit enter to continue, the config utility will automatically run, simply quit out for now.
To install the TACTCOM upgrade:
Mount the TACTCOM cd or cd image in PCem.
Open up a dos prompt and run the TACTCOM upgrade (tactcom.exe), this will default to the c:\EF2000 installation directory and apply the upgrade.
Once complete the upgrade should quit with the message 'TACTCOM: Installation successful'.
These steps should be similar (if not identical) for EF2000: Evolution. The EF2000 V2.0 release can use different steps below.
Installing the 3DFX GFX+ upgrade
The GFX+ upgrade can be found at the Internet Archive. To install the upgrade:
Shutdown the PCem virtual machine, if it is running.
Mount the virtual hard disk in Windows 10 by opening the .vhd file used by the PCem virtual machine.
Unzip the GFX+ upgrade and copy the tactpat.exe file into the EF2000 folder of the mounted virtual hard disk.
Once copied, eject the mounted virtual hard disk and start the PCem virtual machine.
Go to the EF2000 folder and run tactpat.exe.
Choose the 3DFX option, be patient, it can take a while to get started.
The upgrade occurs in two phases a DOS window will appear and it will patch EF2000.
Once finished, you should see a 'patch successfully applied' message.
Close this DOS window and another should open, it should patch TACTCOM. Once complete, you should see another 'patch successfully applied' message
Close the DOS window and exit the GFX+ Upgrade.
Cleaning up the installation
During the upgrade process the clump_3.txt file in the EF2000 folder was updated with a few non-existent files. If you try and run EF2000 you should see an error:
clump: no file './3/paul.3'To fix, open up the clump_3.txt file in Notepad and remove the following lines:
paul
paulpaul
temp_83If you try and run EF2000 this time, you should see the Intel Pentium intro movie and get to the EF2000 menu screen, there won't be any sound but it proves the installation is working.
EF2000 V2.0
The EF2000 V2.0 Windows installer app can be used to combine installation of EF2000, TACTCOM and the GFX+ upgrade into a single installation step. Despite running through a Windows type install, it still installs the DOS version and the default installation folder becomes: C:\Program Files\Digital Image Design\EF2000 V2.0 for 3DFX
To use this method:
Mount the EF2000 V2.0 cd or cd image in PCem.
If autorun doesn't open the installer, from PCem, run setup from the EF2000 V2.0 cd (or cd image).
Select the 'Install for 3DFX' option.
You can test the installation by running EF2000 from the Start menu. You should see the Intel Pentium intro movie and get to the EF2000 menu screen, there won't be any sound but it proves the installation is working.
Updating the DOS/4G library
The DOS/4G library is a 32-bit DOS extender which allows DOS apps to use memory above the 640k conventional memory limit. You can read more about it on Wikipedia. The DOS/4G library bundled with EF2000 is obviously quite old now and newer more advanced DOS extenders with fewer bugs now exist.
A modern replacement is DOS/32 available from GitHub. The latest release of DOS/32 is v9.1.2. The executable is dos32ang.exe. To replace DOS/4G there are a couple of options:
Mount the PCem virtual hard disk and replace DOS/4G in the EF2000 installation folder. The PCem virtual machine can be run afterwards to check the installation still works.
Get the EF2000 folder into Windows 10 and then make the replacement, (you may find this an easier option).
Whichever method you choose, the steps are essentially the same, once you have downloaded the file, do the following:
Copy dos32ang.exe into the EF2000 folder.
Rename the existing dos4gw.exe file (e.g. dos4gw.bak). It's useful to keep around in case you have issues and want to switch back.
Rename dos32ang.exe to dos4gw.exe.
There are other options for running DOS/32 in preference to DOS/4G but this one seems the easiest. If this version gives you trouble an alternative v9.1.2 is also available on GitHub.
Getting the installation
All that remains is get the EF2000 installation from the PCem virtual machine and into Windows. To copy the installation:
Shutdown the PCem virtual machine, if it is running.
Mount the virtual hard disk in Windows 10 by opening the .vhd file used by the PCem virtual machine.
Copy the EF2000 installation folder onto a suitable Windows 10 disk (and zip up the folder if you wish).
Once copied, eject the mounted virtual hard disk.
Installing EF2000 V2.0 without PCem
A quicker way to install EF2000 V2.0 edition only, without PCem is to replace the 16-bit Windows installer app (which is unsupported in Windows 10) with a 32-bit installer app which is still supported and then just run the 32-bit installer. This is equivalent to choosing the 'Install for 3DFX' option from the cd, so it's still a DOS version. To do so:
Copy the \GFXPLUS\3DFX folder from the EF2000 v2.0 cd (or cd image) onto a Windows 10 drive.
Download the generic InstallShield 32-bit installer app from PCGamingWiki.
Unzip and place the setup32.exe file in the 3DFX folder.
Run the setup32 installer as Administrator. Be patient it takes a little while to start.
Choose an appropriate installation folder for EF2000 and complete the install.
Complete the installation by updating the DOS/4G library (described above).
Finally...
This article has covered creating a DOS install of EF2000 for earlier EF2000 DOS releases and two alternative methods for EF2000 V2.0. This DOS install can now be used with the EF2000 Reloaded app, DOSBox or PCem and that'll be covered in the next article.
Good hunting...
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