Welcome all.
I am a great fan of Cakewalk since the early 90's and for that reason, and because of my interest in MIDI, I backed up all my MIDI applications, utilities and files onto CD in the latter part of 1997. I am also an expert in DOS having cantributed articles and solutions to problems in Experts Exchange (I literally do have the T-shirt proving my credentials). I also write programs both high level (C++, VB, VBscript and advanced Batch File code) and low level (assembly code). So, I have an extensive understanding of some of the issues posed in this thread, as well as an unfading interest.
Firstly, I DO have a copy of Cakewalk Professional 3.0 on CD. I will address the following issues:
- HOW TO STORE / TRANSFER CAKEWALK ONTO A CD
- HOW TO INSTALL CAKEWALK FROM A CD
- HOW TO RUN CAKEWALK 3.0 IN WINDOWS 8 AND 8.1
- HOW TO ASSIGN DRIVE A: TO WHERE CAKEWALK SETUP FILES ARE STORED
- HOW TO OBTAIN CAKEWALK 3.0
PLEASE NOTE: Because of time constraints, I will not give guidance to individuals relating to specifics such as configuring MIDI devices nor installing hardware drivers. The information given here is of general interest and aims to provide a means to get you on your way to installing Cakewalk 3.0 from a CD. Before we look at these solutions, it's worth mentioning a point which I feel has been unjustly ignored. While most people would advise to move with the times and not look back at legacy software running on newer operating systems, I say the opposite. There are many options for running Cakewalk 3.0 on newer systems including Windows 8.1 however, there is absolutely nothing wrong in purchasing a refurbished 386, 486 or early Pentium computer and running Cakewalk in Windows 3.x, 95 or 98 as a dedicated networked workstation.
On a personal note, I have Cakewalk installed on an early Pentium computer with two ISA sound cards: a Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold (for audio and sound effects) and a Roland SCC-1 (for MIDI music). Playing games such as Doom is absolutely awesome. I also have Cakewalk installed on a 64-bit Windows 8.1 box sporting 6-cores.
CAKEWALK FILESCakewalk 3.0 comprises of 75 files which amount to 1.24MB - small enough to fit onto a single 1.44MB high density floppy diskette or two low density floppy diskettes.
With the exception of three files, SETUP.EXE, SETUP.LST and OEMSETUP.INF, all other files are packed files (compressed) whose extension names end with an underscore character.
HOW TO STORE / TRANSFER CAKEWALK ONTO A CDCreate a folder on your hard drive. Name it
DISK1. Copy all of Cakewalk's files into the newly created folder. When creating your 'Install CD', ensure the
DISK1 folder is burned to the root of the CD. Also, ensure you include a copy of
SETUP.EXE in the root of the CD as well. So, if your CD drive letter is say
E:, then your file structure would look something like this:
E:\ \DISK1\ \{
Cakewalk's 75 files}
\SETUP.EXE HOW TO INSTALL CAKEWALK FROM A CDDuring installation, Cakewalk searches for it's files in a folder named
DISK1 of whatever drive letter you install from. So, if you install from say drive
G:, then Cakewalk will expect to find it's install files in
G:\DISK1. Even if you attempt to install directly from within the folder containing Cakewalk's files, it must be named
DISK1.
Similarly, if you decide to copy the install files to your hard drive prior to installing Cakewalk, then they must be copied into a folder named
DISK1 off the root of the drive you are installing from. So, if you are installing from drive
C:, then create a folder named
DISK1 in the root of
C: and copy Cakewalk's files into it.
To install Cakewalk, locate the file
SETUP.EXE and double-click it or invoke it from DOS or from the 'Run' dialog box by entering the following command:
C:\DISK1\SETUP.EXE HOW TO RUN CAKEWALK 3.0 IN WINDOWS 8 AND 8.1Cakewalk 3.0 is a 16-bit legacy program which will not install directly on to Windows 8.1. In the past I have successfully ran Cakewalk 3.0 from Windows 3.x, 95, 98, XP and 2000 and now, Windows 8.1.
For Cakewalk 3.0 (and this applies to any legacy software) to work on Windows 8.1, it must run in a virtual machine such as VirtualBox created by Oracle Corporation and freely downloadable from:
https://www.virtualbox.org/ Once you install VirtualBox, you can create multiple virtual machines. You can then install whatever operating system you desire in each virtual machine (great for setting up multiple sandboxes). Don't forget to install the extension pack which is a separate download.
Once you create a virtual machine and install your prefered operating system such as Windows 3.x or Windows 98SE onto it, fire it up and hey presto! you have a fully fucntional Windows 3.x or whatever you've chosen to install running in a box.
Now you'll need to install drivers for your soundcard and other multimedia devices. This can be tricky at first and all I will say on the matter is post your queries in VirtualBox.org's online forum.
Once your drivers are properly installed and working, you can go ahead and install Cakewalk 3.0.
When you run Cakewalk for the first time, don't forget to configure it's MIDI Devices under Settings.
That's as much as I will say on this subject because no two computers are the same and therefore, everyone's setup will be different and unique to their hardware build.
HOW TO ASSIGN DRIVE A: TO WHERE CAKEWALK SETUP FILES ARE STOREDThis is in reply to the following question (see previous post):
"
Why can't someone write some code into the setup file of Cake 3.01 and make it bootable from a CD/DVD drive ??? instead of having it "look" for the a:drive ????"
Not many people will know DOS contains a command named
SUBST. What SUBST does is substitute a folder's path for a drive letter. That means, you can access a folder as though it were a drive. Let me make this clearer.
Suppose you have some files in a subfolder named MYFILES whose full path is:
G:\Documents\Downloads\MYFILES\ What you can do is assign that location a drive letter and from thereon treat it like a separate drive. Suppose you want to use the letter '
J' as your SUBSTed drive letter, you would enter the following command in DOS:
SUBST j: g:\documents\downloads\myfiles You can confirm this by firing up Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer). If you look at your drives you would now notice a drive
J: as well as your drive
C: and a drive
D: (or whatever your CD's drive letter is, assuming you have one). Wow! How can this be? you might ask. Well, it's just part of DOS and has been around for a very long time.
So, how does this relate to the question? Well suppose you have some install files on a CD whose drive letter is
E:. Suppose the files are in a folder whose path is
E:\Applications\Cakewalk. Also, suppose when you run the installation setup program from that folder the program throws a wobbly because it expects to find it's associated installation files in drive
A:. Then this is where SUBST comes in handy.
If you enter the following command in DOS:
SUBST a: e:\applications\cakewalk Drive
A: now points to the location
E:\Applications\Cakewalk. You can now enter the following command in DOS:
A:\SETUP And hey presto! The setup program will work faultlessly. Or you can just navigate to drive
A: using Windows Explorer and double-click on the
SETUP.EXE file.
To fire up DOS, go to Windows' menu and enter either
CMD or
COMMAND in the Run dialog box.
NOTE: Many modern computers do not have a physical drive A: nor drive B:. In such cases I would suggest configuring the computer's BIOS to indicate the absence of these drives so as to release their resources back to the system. Thank you if you have made it this far...