ARTICLES

(1) External CD or DVD drive - expect $30-$50
(2) Networked CD or DVD drive - If you already have a home network, it should be free
(3) Burn an ISO of your CD or DVD - Requires 3rd party software that can cost money (Alcohol 120% is best, costs about $50US)
(4) Buy and Download a digital copy of your game - cost depends on game, but in some cases well worth it.

First things first, though. Consider where you want to install your games. If you have an Eee 900 or 901 you probably have spare room on your second SSD either 8GB, 12GB or 16GB in size. Otherwise, consider a removable SD or SDHC card, or even a small external hard disk drive the the Western Digital Passport. The external hard drive is good because it has mass storage, but it is still an extra peripheral to have to lug around, and draws extra power from your Eee, which can degrade battery life significantly if you can't connect to an external power source. I prefer the SDHC card because it is very small and I can install games on one card, apps on another, etc, and it won't take away storage space on my Eee's SSD drives that's used for other pertinent tasks.

Also, once games are installed, I recommend finding a no-CD patch or a min ISO (minimum files required for the game to run - usually 10MB or less) that can be mounted to your virtual drive. This will keep your file sizes to a minimum so you won't have to carry around your full ISO's on an external hard drive, or consume valuable space on your SD cards. I would recommend specific files for games, but since they are in the legal gray area, I don't want to endorse any specific file or method. Visit www.gamecopyworld.com for details for these files.

If you bought a Linux version of an Eee like the 900 with 20GB SSD, then you may already have an external drive that you used, unless you managed an install via SD card or USB thumb drive. I'd just recommend using your external drive you already have.

External Drive

There are a couple options for an external optical drive. One is a dedicated external USB drive, or an external 5.25" enclosure that has a USB connection and will accommodate any standard 5.25" drive that goes inside a PC. Usually the enclosure with the standard drive is the cheaper route. And in many cases, you or someone you know will have a spare optical drive lying around that you can use for this very purpose. You can easily find an external 5.25" IDE enclosure for under $30 and a refurbished or even new DVD drive for under $20. Just slide the optical drive in the external enclosure, make the power and IDE connections, plug in the external power adapter to your enclosure (don't get one that isn't powered), and plug in the USB to your Eee.

Dedicated USB optical drives can be expensive, but also can offer much smaller sizes if you want a portable drive. Personally, I wanted a portable external DVD drive, and found this refurbished Sony DVD-RW drive which works wonderfully. It's compact, has a small power supply, and is USB. Something you might want to consider if you're going to invest in an external optical drive.

External Enclosure with DVD drive installed Slim External Sony DVD-RW Drive

In either case, your USB should automatically detect and assign a drive letter to your new DVD drive. Just plop your CD or DVD in the drive and go!

This is your best option if you intend on installing Windows XP on your machine through a CD-ROM. The other options won't work for that, or require a good understanding of alternate operating systems and file manipulation.

Networked Drive

Chances are you already have a notebook or desktop PC with a DVD drive. You can easily use your existing optical drive if you have a home network set up (through a router or otherwise) and have file sharing enabled (which it usually is by default). I won't go into details on how to set up a home network, but here's the basics. Setting up a home network is fairly straightforward. It basically entails plugging your PC's into a router, and using the same workgroup name (System Properties/Computer Name Tab/'Change' Button/Workgroup). For now, visit Microsoft for info on setting up a home network.

With your home network set up, to share your CD or DVD drive, follow these steps:

(1) Go to your notebook or desktop PC with the DVD drive you want to share.
(2) Open "My Computer" (or Windows Explorer). Right click on your DVD drive and select "Properties".
(3) Click on the "Sharing" tab. It may give you a sentence asking if you're sure you know what you are doing with file sharing (figure 1). Just click on it.
(4) Then there will be an options box (figure 2) called "Network sharing and security". Click on the check box for "Share this folder on the network" and name it whatever you want in the "Share name:" box. Make it something that you can easily identify it as from your Eee (like DVD-RW on Desktop) or something like that. I called mine E-DVDRW.
(5) Click "OK" and the box will close. It is now shared on your network.

Figure 1: Yes, you understand the risk	Figure 2: Click to share the folder and name it what you want.

Now go to your Eee PC. You should have an icon on your desktop called "My Network Places". Right click on it and select the option to "Map network drive". It will bring up a dialog box (figure 3) where you can assign a drive letter. Choose whichever you please, it doesn't matter really. Then you get to find your DVD drive on the network. To do this follow these steps:
(1) Click on the 'Browse' button.
(2) Find "My Network Places/Entire Network/<your network name>/<your pc name>/< your DVD drive name>".
(3) Select it and click "OK".

You can choose to reconnect at logon or not, your preference. If not, then you will have to reconnect again if you want access. Keep in mind that if you are not on your home network or your desktop or notebook PC with that drive on it is not powered on when you boot up your Eee, then it may give you an error message at bootup that it can't find the drive. No big issue, just an annoyance.

Figure 3: Mapping your DVD drive through your network

Now you should be able to install your game:

(1) Place your game CD or DVD in your notebook or desktop PC where you mapped the drive to
(2) Open "My Computer" or "Windows Explorer" on your Eee
(3) You should now be able to find your network drive letter. Open that drive and you should see the contents of the CD or DVD
(4) Just run the "setup.exe" or "autorun.exe" file and your game should now install.

Burn an ISO of your CD or DVD

There are CD and DVD drive software emulators freely available. Most common is the one called Daemon Tools. Simple interface and free to use. This will let you mount your ISO image as if it were an actual CD or DVD drive. Now the tricky part, getting your existing CD or DVD's converted to an ISO. Unfortunately there's not much available freeware-wise that will do this reliably. But a nifty little program called Alcohol 120% is a great addition to anyone's software library that wants to manage CD's or DVD's. It will typically bypass any copy protection too. It will cost you about $50US.

Install Alcohol 120% on your desktop or laptop with the CD or DVD drive so that you can burn the ISO.

Here's the quick and simple way to use it:

Figure 4: Alcohol 120% - Image Making Wizard

Just click on the "Image Making Wizard" link in Alcohol 120% in the upper left corner. It will bring up the dialog box shown above in Figure 4. In most cases, you can just use the default settings that Alcohol picks, and it will work fine. In case it doesn't you can try to select the specific Data type from the pull-down menu in the lower left. You can determine the game data type by visiting Alcohol's game listing site, or Daemon tools site. Just be sure the "skip reading errors" option is checked, which it is by default.

Clicking the 'Next' button will take you to a screen asking you where you want to store your image file. Select your favorite location on your hard drive. Just be sure you have enough free space, since CD's take upwards of 700MB and a full DVD takes 4.7GB. You can also select the type of file you'd like to save it as. Default is a '.mds' extension (media descriptor file). ISO is an option as well. Either one will work, ISO is more universal. Click the Start button and it will initiate the copy. You will get error messages during the process if there is copy protection, this is ok. It will take a while to get through the disc copy protection, but afterwards the remainder of the copy process should be quick.

Figure 5: Disc Read Errors or OK and Normal when copying a disc with copy protection.

When the procedure completes, you should have a fully functional ISO image. You can copy this file to an external USB HDD (I use a Western Digital Passport) or SD card to use on your Eee.

Now the fun part, running it as a virtual drive. Alcohol comes with its own virtual drive software. Or you can use Daemon-Tools Lite (it's free). Daemon-Tools Lite is preferred on the Eee since it is free, has a small memory footprint, and doesn't require the full install of Alcohol on your Eee. But for the sake of consistency, I'll show both.

Alcohol
For Alcohol, click the 'Virtual Drive' button at the lower left corner. Select '1' virtual drive from the pull down menu for 'Number of Virtual Drives'. It will set up default parameters. You can change the drive letter, DVD region, and other parameters if desired. I'll leave that up to you. Click 'OK' and your virtual drive will initiliaze. You may have to reboot. Now that drive will show up on your system, just look for it in 'My Computer' or 'Windows Explorer'.

Daemon-Tools Lite
Daemon Tools Lite is a standalone, freeware, virtual CD/DVD emulation utility that is configured through a right click interface through the icon in your system tray. Once installed, it automatically mounts and installs a single virtual DVD drive. You can add extra ones or change drive letter and other attributes through the right click interface (see Figure 6).

Figure 6: Daemon Tools Right-Click Interface

In order to mount an image, start by right clicking on the Daemon Tools icon in your system tray, go to 'Virtual CD/DVD-ROM/Device 0:[Drive Letter]' and then select 'Mount Image'. Just point to your ISO file you created earlier (stored either on your external HDD connected to your Eee or through your home network). Your system will then treat the ISO as if it is an actual CD or DVD inserted into your virtual drive. Just keep in mind that some CD or DVD copy protections can detect a virtual drive, preventing its use, but games that run on the Eee typically are much older and don't really 'know' this type of technology.

Finally, if autorun is enabled on your virtual drive (either Alcohol or Daemon Tools), it will bring up the game menu automatically. Otherwise, just double click on your new virtual drive in 'My Computer' or 'Windows Explorer' and double click on setup.exe or autorun.exe to start the installation process.

Buy and Download Digital Files

If there are older games you'd like to play but is difficult to find in the store, there are a few sites that offer the more popular games for purchase that can be downloaded. GTA: Vice City is a good example. Great older game the runs very well on the Eee that is well worth the $10 for the digital download. Just download, run the executable, and install. Very easy. This type of execution won't require any no-CD patches or other workarounds to get it to work without the normal CD or DVD copy protection. The problem is that very few older games are available through this method, but thankfully many quality ones are.

A few digital download places to try:

Most Popular / Reliable:
www.direct2drive.com
www.steampowered.com (requires Steam install on a fixed drive, not possible on SD card)
www.gamestop.com or www.ebgames.com (they are the same stores)

Other Sites:
www.terragame.com
www.trygames.com
www.bigfishgames.com (typically simpler, smaller budget games)
www.matrixgames.com (self publisher)
www.stardock.com (self publisher)

Some game developers or publishers sell directly through their own services like stardock.com (makers of Galactic Civilizations and Sins of a Solar Empire), Matrix Games, and the ever popular Steam.

Final Thoughts

Ok, so that's it. Hopefully I didn't confuse you more than help! For the most part it is straight forward, it will likely cost you a little bit of money, but money well spent IMHO. I find that portable peripherals like a hard drive and optical drive will get more use than I anticipated just by the nature of being portable. If you don't have a home network setup, it's a good investment to make if you plan on using something like the Eee since it is really an extension of your existing PC, somewhat akin to a PDA. Daemon Tools Lite is pretty much a requirement as well, but it is free. With the simple interface to mount ISO images to both install games, as well as run them