I just got a netbook! Now about that CD drive...
Community Forums/General Help/I just got a netbook! Now about that CD drive...
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| I just picked up a Samsung N120 over the weekend. So far it's great; Blitz3D/Plus/Max installed easily and Visual Studio runs fine on it. I've put most of my coding tools onto it and it's really nice to type on, so for programming related stuff it's great! I was thinking of trying to put a game or two on it, when I realized that the lack of a CD/DVD drive, and the annoying necessity of some games to always have the disc in while playing, may make that harder to do. (In case anyone's curious I was thinking of Star Wars Battlefront 2 to start with, since it looks like the N120 (just barely) meets the system requirements and has a pretty small install) I had read somewhere about making an ISO file of the disc and mounting it in a drive you create on the computer to trick Windows into thinking the disc is in a tray, so that you can install and run games on computers that don't have an optical drive. Unfortunately I can't find it now, and Google hasn't turned anything up (that looks safe to do). I've burned ISO files before for installing some MS programs, so that won't be a problem. However, what do I do once I have the ISO of the disc? |
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| PowerISO is what you need. |
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| Thanks, that looks good! Before I buy it, is there a free or open source version that does the same thing? (I'm cheap ;-) ) |
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| I don't think that will work for a game that actually checks for the existence of the CD as an anti-piracy method. It will know the ISO is not the actual thing. Just like these games know a Copied disc. |
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| I dunno, but PowerISO is great. Well worth the £30. |
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| Daemontools allows you to mount the ISO as a drive. |
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| Buy a usb cd rom, they are cheap as chips these days. |
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| Yeah I may have to, although the whole point of getting a netbook was for it to be small and lightweight... If I have to lug an external cd/dvd drive around I may as well have gotten a full size laptop (oh wait, the battery life is abysmal on most of them which is why I got a netbook - I can't win). I guess I won't be playing many games on it... Probably a good thing for my productivity! ;-) |
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| Ah right i thought you were trying to install something. Is it running linux or windows? because linux can both mount and extract an iso, and for windows you have poweriso like gfk said (although there may be a free alternative knocking about). |
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| It's running Windows XP. I'm actually considering installing Linux on another partition so I can safely browse the web (do you happen to know of any tutorials for doing that? Google hasn't turned up much). I had only hooked it up to the internet just long enough to download Visual Studio since I didn't feel like letting Windows install a million updates that will slow performance to a crawl. But Linux won't play games, which was the original point... I'll keep looking for a free version of PowerISO since I'm not even certain it would work for games with copy protection. |
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| Well, it plays some games (and a few windows ones with wine that have an OpenGL option) but you are right it is largely not for AAA gaming. You could either: Dual boot (no instructions needed, the ubuntu live normally goes on fine with windows on there first, just pay attention on the bit where it asks you where to install) You can also find a guide on the forums, but i dont think you will need it. -or- Run it in a VM (probably not reccommended on a netbook :) -or- If your netbook has an SD drive, buy an 8 or 16Gb card and install ubuntu on that (or a USB stick). This method is a little more complicated because you need to make the SSD bootable. You should be able to find loads of instructions for this on the ubuntu forum. If it is an EEEPC there is a special version of ubuntu just for that (which also works well on the asus aspire one). NOTE: If installing on solid state memory disks, always format to ext2 not ext3(default), (likewise with XP on SSD use fat32 not NTFS) -unless you want to burn it out quickly. |
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| Good ideas! If your netbook has an SD drive, buy an 8 or 16Gb card and install ubuntu on that (or a USB stick). This method is a little more complicated because you need to make the SSD bootable. You should be able to find loads of instructions for this on the ubuntu forum. If it is an EEEPC there is a special version of ubuntu just for that (which also works well on the asus aspire one). I was just looking at that, but on the Ubuntu site it says that it doesn't recognize wireless LAN on the Samsung N120. :-( There are a couple games I play that don't require a CD in the drive... The tricky part will be installing them, but maybe an ISO mount would be good enough for that if I can't copy them directly. Still looking for a free ISO mounting tool then. |
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| daemon tools lite is free. It is a good tool to mount ISOs. And don't mind the name, there is nothing malevolent about it. |
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| e Ubuntu site it says that it doesn't recognize wireless LAN on the Samsung N120. :-( Thats a pity, perhaps 9.10 does (its available in beta atm). Edit: Aparently you can get that card working with ndiswrapper! from the ubuntuforums.org site: Hi. I got wifi working on Samsung n120 with Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty UNR by using Ndiswrapper. Just install ndiswrapper with Synaptic, download Windows XP driver for Samsung n120 wifi card Realtek 8192 (samsung webpage) and unpack it, and then just find net819xp.inf file with ndiswrapper and it should work (off course you need to set up your wifi functions like ssid, password etc.) Ndiswrapper may say that it couldn't find the device, but it works. ndiswrapper allows you to install a windows driver. Its a last resort but might work. :) |
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| You could check www.gamecopyworld.com for a no CD patch if the game won't run from a mounted iso or after a full install from cd/dvd using a USB drive. (In case anyone's curious I was thinking of Star Wars Battlefront 2 to start with, since it looks like the N120 (just barely) meets the system requirements and has a pretty small install) If everything else fails just to play SW BF2 you could consider to buy it on Steam. |
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| I think 7zip can open iso's. Handy if a fake drive is not needed. |
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| WinRAR can open them too, but unless all you want is copy files off of the image, it won't do you as much good as daemontools and the likes. |
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