Running Chuckie Egg under emulation on your PC is great, but sometimes you need to be able play without all the messing about (no pun intended), even with the instructions from this site which enable you to run all bar one of the 8-bit Chuckie Egg releases from one emulator. What if you want to play during your lunchtime, but your work or school refuse to allow you to install MESS on their PCs? Or, what if you want to go round to a friend's and show them the wonder of Chuckie Egg but they're over-cautious and won't let you install it? You could run the new J2ME version on your phone or PDA, but the screen is small and hard to show off. The answer, my friends, is simple. You need The Chuckie Egg Professional's Resource Kit: Bootable CD-ROM!

Unfortunately, due to the legal issues surrounding the distribution of the MESS BIOSes, detailed on the Emulation page, it is not possible for this site to host a convenient CD-ROM image. So, in true Blue Peter style, here are the instructions for rolling your own under Windows. Push your sleeves up and sharpen your web browser, as the challenge of building a bootable CD-ROM is laid out below ...

Note: The Bootable CD-ROM outlined below is based on the FreeDOS and MESS projects. As a consequence, DMESS cannot take advantage of your soundcard because DOS requires custom sound drivers for every specific soundcard installed. There is, unfortunately, no generic DOS sound driver or any easy solution to auto-detecting a soundcard under DOS. It should be possible, though, to modify the CD below to load DOS soundcard drivers for a specific soundcard, if they are available.

1) Download the FreeDOS OEM CD-ROM disc builder assistant framework, FDOEMCD.builder.zip, from fDOS.org. Extract the ZIP file with directory names, to a local directory.

2) Download this copy of mkisofs.rc and save it into the FDOEMCD\ sub-directory of the framework, overwriting the generic version already in place.

3) Download the latest FreeDOS implementation of CHOICE and extract the CHOICE.EXE file into the FDOEMCD\CDROOT\ sub-directory of the framework.

4) Download and save this AUTORUN.BAT batch file, overwriting the default file in the FDOEMCD\CDROOT\ sub-directory of the framework and this BOOTMSG.TXT file, overwriting the default file in the FDOEMCD\CDROOT\isolinux sub-directory of the framework. Note: the AUTORUN.BAT file *must* be in a DOS file format, not Unix.

5) Edit the default ISOLINUX.CFG in the FDOEMCD\CDROOT\isolinux sub-directory of the framework, and change the ontimeout parameter from "hd" to "BootCD".

6) Download the binaries from the latest release of the DOS port of MESS. Create a FDOEMCD\CDROOT\DMESS sub-directory within the disc builder assistant framework directory, and extract into it the DMESS zip file, including directory names. For any MESS-specific problems, your best option for support is the MESS Message Board.

NOTE: MESS is an evolving emulator. Occasionally, drivers can break and stop working, even though they had previously been stable. This can happen for a number of reasons - further development of the driver or one of its clones, or sometimes updates taken from the MAME core which MESS is built on interfere with the workings of a driver. If you find the latest version of MESS does not work with the images supplied here, this should be fed back to the MESS team, NOT this site. ALL of the Chuckie Egg images listed on the menu of this Bootable CD-ROM have been tested and confirmed to work with DMESS 0.89, the latest version at time of writing.

7) Download the latest release of Charles Sandmann's DOS Protected Mode Interface binary zip from DJ Delorie's public FTP server, csdpmi5b.zip at the time of writing. Extract the BIN/CWSDPMI.EXE, without the directory name, and save it in the FDOEMCD\CDROOT\DMESS sub-directory, alongside DMESS.

8) Follow steps 2) and 3) in the MESS instructions on the Emulation page, to install the required MESS BIOSes and The Chuckie Egg Professional's Resource Kit into the DMESS installation.

9) From a Windows Command Prompt, change (cd) to the FDOEMCD sub-directory within the directory you extracted the FreeDOS OEM CD-ROM disc builder assistant framework to in step 1). Run makeiso.bat to generate the ISO image for The Chuckie Egg Professional's Resource Kit: Bootable CD-ROM.

10) Burn the FDOEMCD\fdoem.iso image to a normal, mini or even business card-sized CD-R with your favourite CD writing software, such as Nero (free demo available) or CDBurnerXP Pro (free). It is also possible to convert this CD to boot off a USB stick, although only the latest PCs will boot from these devices at the time of writing.

That's it! Place the disc in the CD drive of a PC configured to boot from a CD-ROM and reset the machine. Once the disc boots and FreeDOS has loaded you will be presented with a menu offering a dozen Chuckie Egg releases. If the PC will not boot the CD, check that it's BIOS is configured to boot from the CD-ROM drive first. If the PC is very old and refuses to boot from the cd, you may need to boot first from a floppy disk such as the Smart Boot Manager, sbootmgr.dsk, supplied by The Slackware Linux Project.

Once you've made your CD, you might wish to display it proudly on your shelf using this sleeve which fits neatly into a DVD style case (5.08 MB download):