wine users - Sep 2011 - How to load an ISO as a “CD” to satisfy “insert CD” prompt?

I am trying to run my own legal copy of Propellerhead
(http://www.propellerheads.se/) Reason 2.5 through Wine on latest Ubuntu on Asus
(http://www.asus.com/) netbook, which has no optical drive.  When the
application starts, it asks me to ?Please insert the CD?, which I thought I knew
how to do because after all, I had to mount the one of the three ISOs to start
the installation.

I run this

Code:
wine Reason.exe


, and get this (output of wine Rebirth.exe &> /tmp/log.txt 2>&1.)

Code:
fixme:ntdll:server_ioctl_file Unsupported ioctl 24000 (device=2 access=1 func=0
method=0)



This code repeats itself once a second while the GUI of the application Reason
prompts me for ?Please insert the CD <cd name>, Waiting for CD...?.  There
is only a button for ?Quit?.  This is the normal behavior, just like how Windows
does it.  In fact, after this CD load, it will request I load another CD before
it lets me enter serial number

This is how I mount the CD prior to executing the command line wine Reason.exe.

Code:

netbook at netbook-901:~/.wine/dosdevices$ ls
c:  e:  e::  f:  h:  z:
netbook at netbook-901:~/.wine/dosdevices$ unlink e:
netbook at netbook-901:~/.wine/dosdevices$ unlink e::
netbook at netbook-901:~/.wine/dosdevices$ ls
c:  f:  h:  z:


netbook at netbook-901:~$ cd ReBirth/
netbook at netbook-901:~/ReBirth$ ls
demos                            Propellerhead
Reason2.5_Disc1.iso
Reason2.5_Disc2Orkester.iso
netbook#1.rbs                     Reason2.5_Disc3Sound_Bank.iso
netbook #2.rbs                    Reason Installation wine errors.txt
mountng.txt                      rebirth_iso_installation.iso
netbook at netbook-901:~/ReBirth$ sudo mount -o loop Reason2.5_Disc2Orkester.iso
/mnt/reason2



netbook at netbook-901:~/.wine/dosdevices$ ln -s /mnt/reason2 e:
netbook at netbook-901:~/.wine/dosdevices$ ln -s
~/ReBirth/Reason2.5_Disc2Orkester.iso  e::
netbook at netbook-901:~/.wine/dosdevices$ ls
c:  e:  e::  f:  h:  z:




Rebirth 2.5 is not in the AppDB
(http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=811), but
the subsequent versions are (i.e. 3.x, 4.0,5.0).  I?d like to run 2.5 because
that is the version I own and run on my Windows Digital Audio Workstation
counterpart.

I?m running wine version 1.2.3

I do not understand the switches of the link and mount commands very well, nor
do I understand how wine ?sees? the virtual CD-ROM drive.  I am adapting
instructions from this page
(http://createdigitalmusic.com/2010/10/how-to-install-rebirth-in-linux-get-a-free-rack-of-beat-machines/),
which I successfully completed to run ReBirth (http://www.rebirthmuseum.com/),
Reason?s predecessor.

I believe this will work.  Could someone just help me mount the ISO CD
correctly?  I also will need to know how to put in a 'second CD' while
"ingame".  I assume I could just create two virtual CD-ROM drives and
am willing to do that.

I recreated the ISOs from the original CDs again when all of this failed the
first time, but that did not help.  The same CDs works in Windows.  I even
copied the entire subdirectory from "Program Files" and dropped into
the corresponding wine folder thinking these files were 'activated', and
I get the same as stated above.

Thank you for your time.

Use winecfg (Drives tab) to map the mounted isos to drive letters. 

Mounting an iso is not true cd emulation, and if your app wants to communicate
directly with the cd hardware it won't work. You may need cd emulation
software such as CDEmu. Search the forum for more details; this has come up many
times.

Since we've already gone here...

> How about useing an external CD drive to do the install? Easier, 
> unless the program requires a CD to run.

It probably will. And CDEmu + gCDEmu are easy to use and install.

Personally, I avoid optical media whenever possible. I make images of my
originals and store them on my external hard drive.

The originals go in a drive once.

That way they don't get scratched. And I have a backup if the disc is lost,
damaged, or destroyed; which they shouldn't because I leave them in a
cabinet and use the images instead.


A loaded image is mounted instantly, whereas a physical disc takes a while to
rev-up, assemble frames into sectors, apply error correction, extract digital
data from analog data, fight to maintain constant linear velocity, and all the
other uniquely weirdly slow things they do.

I don't have to face the organizational hazard of optical discs.
I don't have to get up, get my optical disc "book", flip through,
get the disc I want, put it in the computer, and reverse the process to put it
back. That would defeat the purpose of having files on a computer.

Of course, there is the chance of accidental image file deletion, or the hard
drive that was storing them to otherwise loose one or more than one image file.
So the discs in the cabinet aren't pointless.

And md5 hashes are your friend.
Jake

Jim Hall wrote:
> How about useing an external CD drive to do the install? Easier,
> unless the program requires a CD to run.

I ended up using these method too. All frustrations gone in a sec.

Good luck !!!