SimHealth - original floppy disk image?

First, apologies for not being able to speak russian.

Second, sincere thanks for the list of all those classic games, especially for keeping them in their original, untouched floppy/cd/etc images.

I was just wondering - has anyone actually managed to install SimHealth using the two floppy disk image files? Are they original, untouched game disk images?

I tried installing and running the game from DOSBox (almost every build); the game starts for a second, but then immediately crashes with the error message - "error in obj_find_blk_by_addr".

I tried installing on a "real" DOS-6.22 in VMWare, Virtual PC, QEMU, PCem..... no luck. They all give either the same or a different error message - "General Protection Error"

It's unfortunate because this version appears to be version 1.1 of the game - the latest version and this site is the only place (it seems) that has this rare copy of the original disks. There are other versions - version 1.0 and a Prerelease version - I can play them but even they are not original disk image and they come as preinstalled zips.

If you can get the game running using version 1.1 floppy disk images, please let me know. Thank you.

 

@the_grumeti, you are right!
Running the game installed from the disk images gives only that error...



I think that's some copy protection issue rather than defective disk images - unfortunately too many disk images on this site are there just for display, not for actual usage. There are other copies of this game in the wild, some even labeled "1.1", but they have different data files, so I can't see how to solve that problem for now.
Maybe some of our experienced hackers could help!

 

Thanks for the response, Uka.

I thought about that too, that's why I wanted to try it on a "pure" DOS environment - like VMWare and PCem which (I assume) are close to a 100% accurate, bit-precise emulation. So if it doesn't work even on those software, it would be quite sad if the only way to get the game running is on real hardware.

Yes, there are other copies (just preinstalled versions, not disk images) of this version 1.1 of this game (on the exoDOS and TotalDOS collections). I can get the game working if I take the file "DATA" [3.58 M] from those installations and use that by overwriting the [5.62] MB size file from this installation.

But to me, the most fun is to get it working without using any form of crack, just play it the way it's meant to be played (but also without using the actual hardware of course).

 

That's because somebody mixed up floppy images from different versions of this game. First one (with INSTALL.EXE executable file) is a 1.1 version image, second one (with packed game main DATA file) is a 1.0 version. And DATA file from v1.0 is not compatible with v1.1 HEALTH.EXE executable. So just play preinstalled version (with "DATA" [3.58 M]).

 

Ah, so it's not the original v1.1 disk image then. I guess I'll stick with the preinstalled version. Thanks for clearing that up. Hopefully someday, we can get a original, untouched floppy disk image.

 

@ThisSuXX, you are right!
But it is not the whole disk. The file "data._" on disk 2 is indeed of version 1.0 and is dated 05.11.1993, while the other file there (shlth16._) is 1.1 from 15.04.1994. Too bad, no fix then until someone finds the real disks - could it even be a mistake of the original 1.1 edition?

 

@Uka, you are right too!

v1.0 installation script:

v1.1 installation script:

Mr. X replaced original files. Now, I'm curious about where are this images came from?

 

I should probably mention there are different versions of 1.1 out there.

Version 1.1 from Total DOS collection has a modified AILXMI.DLL and SIM.CFG.

Version 1.1 from eXoDOS (and Abandonware DOS) Collection has the older timestamped AILXMI.DLL and SIM.CFG (I guess this must be the more authentic version)

But the eXoDOS version has a DELTA.TMP file. This is a temporary file generated by the game when it crashes. So it can be safely deleted as it's not part of the installation.

BTW, incidentally, both Version 1.1 and Version 1.0 use VGA graphics. But the older Preview version uses superior SVGA graphics! Which makes it another mystery why the developers decided to "downgrade" the graphics.