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Trying To Run WC In OS/2 Warp

Man, that McDowell cast is creepy. Anyhow, akula65 has discovered some interesting settings for Wing Commander buried in the OS/2 Warp operating system. More than just a compatibility mode for running old games, there are preset configurations included for specific titles.

I recently re-installed IBM's OS/2 Warp Version 3 on an old machine with a 486 motherboard, and I found out that this version of OS/2 Warp has some interesting support for the DOS versions of early Wing Commander games. OS/2 Warp Version 3 has a built-in DOS/Win3.1 application settings database what is installed as part of the OS. If an application is installed which is listed in the database, then the OS automatically uses the settings listed under that game for execution in a DOS session. Here is the excerpt from the settings database file C:\OS2\INSTALL\DATABASE.TXT for the Wing Commander games:

Wing Commander II Special Operations 1 Origin
 NAME                     SO1.EXE
 TITLE                    Wing Commander 2
 TYPE                     DOS
 ASSOC_FILE               WC2.CFG
 DEF_DIR                  \WING2
 SESSION_MODE             FULLSCREEN
 DOS_BACKGROUND_EXECUTION OFF
 DOS_HIGH                 ON
 IDLE_SECONDS             60
 IDLE_SENSITIVITY         100
 HW_ROM_TO_RAM            ON
 HW_TIMER                 OFF
 INT_DURING_IO            OFF
 VIDEO_RETRACE_EMULATION  ON
 FOLDER                   GAMES