I have a handful of old enhanced CDs that will no longer load the “enhanced” portion on a modern PC. In most cases it’s of no consequence other than wondering what low-resolution goodies I might be missing out on. I have found an exception with this release.
I don’t know how this disc would have loaded on an older PC, but on my Windows 11 machine the CD loads as a standard audio cd with 12 tracks (the 3 missing are listed as “bonus” on the back). I tried to just add an additional discID, but was unable to because of the difference in track #s. I also tried editing the entry to show the last 3 tracks as enhanced, but that was a no-go as well. I’m wondering if I should add this as an additional release or if there might be another workaround that I’m not aware of.
The reason you can’t edit the release you linked is because the existing release has a 15 tracks disc ID assigned (which is even unique to this release). This indicates that there actually was a version with 15 audio tracks.
So I would say either your release is maybe one of the existing 12 track releases (and they just miss the data track bonus songs) or you actually need to add yours separately. If in doubt, I would do the latter.
Thanks outsidecontext, I dug a little deeper and I made a foolish mistake. I checked the catalog # on the media itself and it differed from the jacket. I was able to verify via discogs that the catalog #s should match. I probably bought this CD used online and got the wrong media. Thank you for your help, and I apologize for the mistake.
Sometimes you can go dig into the CD via Windows Explorer and find the old .avi videos. Tiny resolutions of 300x400 pixels but can still play in VLC. You loose all the menus though.
If you want to put geek effort in, then what you can do is install a Win98 or XP VM on a computer. Now you can run the old apps in their “native” OS and do the full time travel. Yes, I have done this for some releases… To add a few other geeky steps it is often simpler to rip the CD to ISO, and then mount that ISO in the VM.
It’s also a fun use of a VM. I had to put an XP VM together for someone, and while testing it turned round to some old releases. I had found ISOs for the following Release on the Internet Archive that ran perfectly in a XP VM
I expect it would be as simple as copying the folder of Extras from an Enhanced CD and just running them as loose files. I doubt you’d even need to bother faffing around with mounting the CD player. All this to get the wonders of Flash running and look at some pixelated art on a 4K monitor.
The Douglas Adams “Last Chance to See” was well worth the effort. That was a highly interactive creation. And a kinda ironic title as XP OS was the last chance to see that release.
I had started recording some “play throughs” using OBS. That worked well to preserve what I saw, but I never finished it due to distraction by other projects\life. Must get back to that. May try the OBS recording out on some Enhanced CDs.
Your ISO suggestion is something I definitely want to try. I don’t have much VM experience, but I have tinkered around and set up a Mac machine on Windows. I gave up on it relatively quickly because I had so much difficulty getting peripherals to work, but ISO would seem to be a nice workaround for that.
An ISO can just be mounted through the VM software before booting up. Was real easy to pull off. Quicker than getting the CD to work. If I get some spare time I’m going to try just running the folder of extras in that VM.
It was funny walking through the install pages of XP. You forget how many questions you had to answer during setup. Modern OS installs are far too simple \ lazy now.
If you need any help send me a PM via the main site. Though I am away from a computer for the next few days.
Thank you, Ivan, that is much appreciated. I have a (very) large pile of releases I’m going through so it will likely be some time before I give it a try. Again, thank you very much for the help.
