XT Era Games won't load on IBM XT Computer

[motley2659]

I have an IBM 5140 computer with a 4.77mhz 8088 processor and 640kb of ram. Recently I've done multiple tests of software and games and the following not only fail to execute but suffer the same symptoms:

Borrowed Time (aka Time To Die)
Portal
The Fourth Protocol

All three work flawlessly when run from DOSbox on a Vista era laptop, Windows 98 SE on a Pentium III, and run from pure DOS 7.1 on the same system. These are all XT 1984-1986 era games.

For example:

Borrowed Time has only two files: time2die.com (1kb) and game.dat (320kb)

In A: drive, I type in the executable, press enter and the floppy drive light stays on for about 3 seconds and then it stops and shows up a blank a: drive prompt on my IBM 5140.

On all the other aforementioned setups, the game starts right away.

 

[Maverick1978]

These are all PC Booter games. Your rips may not be patched to work with real DOS loaded from the command line.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PC_booter_games

 

[SomeGuy]

In many cases patched booters will not run from a floppy drive. This is because the patches work by hooking the disk BIOS and emulating the floppy drive. So the actual floppy is not available while the program is running. You will need to run them from a hard drive, or obtain original, unpatched disk media.

 

[deathshadow]

You will need to run them from a hard drive, or obtain original, unpatched disk media.

Which could be even more difficult since they are also 360k floppy games... and last I checked the 5140 doesn't have 5.25" drives... nor is it an XT for that matter.

5.25" 360k booters are hard to use on a machine with 3.5" 720k floppy drives.

That's a BIG detail right there. The OP said 5140 -- that's the PC Convertable, most decidedly NOT an XT.

 

[motley2659]

In many cases patched booters will not run from a floppy drive. This is because the patches work by hooking the disk BIOS and emulating the floppy drive. So the actual floppy is not available while the program is running. You will need to run them from a hard drive, or obtain original, unpatched disk media.

I guess that's what the problem is. The three I mentioned are patched, although other patched booter games work on 720kb disks on the system, like Hacker and Mindshadow. Once I get my zip drive in, I'll give it a shot on that.