Access to Interactive DVDs using VirtualBox

In the world of CD-ROM emulation jobs, sometimes you may encounter with some formats like 'Enhanced, NTSC', which means it's not that compliable on the Mac-based Virtual Environment like SheepShaver, but rather more suitable running on a Windows OS system.

In this circumstance, I'll recommend using VirtualBox instead. Here're the steps you might need to set-up the VirtualBox environment.

Step 0. Look if your windows set up for virtual environment. 

• Press "Ctrl-Shift-ESC" on your windows machine, go to "Performance" on the sidebar, click "CPU".

• On the bottom right you should see "Virtuality: Enabled"

• If it is not, go check the begging part of this video

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvdnQX9UkMY&t=310s

  
  

Step 1. Download the virtual box by going into the VirtualBox download website - https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Step 2. Download the iso file of the environment/OS you want to emulate. I’ll use the Windows 2000 professional iso as an example here. You can go to whatever iso you want to download by simply google it.

• Go to the download page

  • https://archive.org/details/win2kproiso

• By clicking the ‘ISO image’ download, you’ll have the ISO file you want. 

  
  

Step 3. Set up the virtual environment in VirtualBox.

• Open the VirtualBox Manager. Press "New" on the top bar.

  
  

• Name your virtual machine as the environment you are installing, mine is “windows2000” here for example. 

• Choose the ISO image, which is the downloaded iso image just now. 

• Check Skip Unattended Installation if you want.

  
  

• In the next page, check the “Guest Additions”. Set up the username and password.

  
  

• If you are installing the Microsoft environment like me, you might want to know the product key. They are usually at the address where you downloaded them. 

• In the hardware part you can alternate the base memory and processors. Just don’t go too high on them cause they will make your own machine sluggish by eating up too much of its performance force. 

  
  

• Same for the virtual hard disk size, you don’t want it to go too high, 4GB is a good size for emulating a disk since the game files years ago might not be as big as the current game files. 

  
  

• Now you’re all set for the setup of your own environment. You can revisit the virtual machine by selecting it and clicking “Start” on the top bar of Virtual bar. 

  
  

Step 4. Set up windows 2000 in the virtual box

• You hit setup and see what it tells you to do. It varies largely for different environments you install so the install time might be varied as well. It can take some time so just leave it alone in the background, go grab a cup of tea, and have some rest. 

  
  

• If you can’t find your cursor, press the “Host” button or “Host-F”, or check for shortcuts the “View” bar on the top left of the Virtual box screen. 

• There are some issues for the VirtualBox to run on Win 10/11, if it seems tooooo slow for you, go check this video to make some fixes. 

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-mgigPjKJI

  
  

• If You want to adjust the View Size of the window, go to "View - Virtual Screen - Scale” to adjust the screen size. 

• There’s a few things you need to do after installing the virtual environment. Including changing the color from 8 bit to 32 bit and setting up the Guest Additions. I would say go check this video

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OweWfjeXleA for details. 

  
  

Step 5. Mount the disk and starts emulate

• You'll need to extract the disk image of the CD-ROM you want to emulate first. By that, you can refer to the article below

  • https://patchbay.tech/blog/2017/09/29/classroom-access-to-interactive-dvds/

  
  

• You might need to transform .cdr files to iso file since Windows does not natively support .cdr files.

• I would suggest you convert a .cdr disk image to an .iso format on your Mac using macOS's built-in hdiutil command.

  1. Open Terminal on Mac.

  2. Enter "hdiutil convert /path/to/your/image.cdr -format UDTO -o /path/to/your/image.iso" (Replace /path/to/your/image.cdr with the full path to your .cdr file and /path/to/your/image.iso with the desired output path for the .iso file.)

  3. The above command will create a file with a .iso.cdr extension. To rename it to a standard .iso file, use the following command "mv /path/to/your/image.iso.cdr /path/to/your/image.iso"   

  
  

• Or you can do it utilizing a third-party tool like AnyToISO on windows.

  1. Download and install AnyToISO.

  2. Open the application and select the "File Extract/Convert to ISO" tab.

  3. Click "Open Image" and select your .cdr file.

  4. Choose an output location and click "Convert" to generate the .iso file.

  
  

• Finally, you need to mount the disk into the virtual machine of yours.

  • Go to VM's “Settings - Storage - Add Attachment - ADDs”.

  
  

• You can follow the following video for specifications.

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL_ORgxmfaI

  
  

• Now reboot your virtual machine and check “my computer”, the disk should be there. 

Congrats, you've made it! Get a beer.