New PopMundo city

I've updated my PopMundo tools at http://www.xs4all.nl/~jjokkema/popmundo/
It now includes the new city Manila. There are 2 new travel routes, Manila-Shanghai and Manila-Singapore.
I upgraded the tools so I'll only have to update an xml file with all travel routes instead of adding the travel routes in the code and recompiling and uploading it all.
Xml and google web toolkit was a pain right now, but in the long run, I'll reap the fruits.

How to play Championship Manager 01/02 on Linpus Lite

Last time, I showed how to mount an ISO file. My intention was to install Championship Manager 01/02, a Windows 95 football manager I was addicted to at the time. I'm playing it now again. Many say the 01/02 version is the most playable version.

As a promotion for the newest version of the game, the creators decided to give the 01/02 game away for free. You will have to register on their site, though. Once you're registered and logged in, you can download the original cd from this page.

In order to have our Linpus Lite be able to run Windows applications, we'll install Wine. The yum repository doesn't have the newest version (I have 0.9.47), but it's new enough to run CM01/02. Install it in a terminal screen by typing
sudo yum install wine

I have mounted my ISO of the game on /mnt/iso/. I now can install the game with
sudo wine /mnt/iso/Setup.exe
Just install the default directories.

Wine installed the game in ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Championship Manager 01-02/
We can now start the game by typing
cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Championship Manager 01-02/
sudo wine cm0102.exe
Unfortunately, when the guys at championshipmanager.co.uk decided to release the free version of the game, they didn't remove the cd check. If the original cd isn't in a cd drive, the game won't start. Since the Aspire One does not have a built in cd drive, it is impossible to have a cd in a drive. So i'm afraid a no cd crack is necessary. Although I don't like hacks en cracks, I don't see another option.
But first we're going to upgrade the game to the latest version.

The best site to find all kind of things for Championship Manager 01/02 is the fan site www.champman0102.co.uk. It's here I downloaded the SI Games Official Patch v3.9.68 which is the newest patch. All other patches and updates on the champman0102.co.uk site need this patch. I installed the patch:
sudo wine /home/user/Downloads/242.exe

I'm thinking about downloading and installing the Tapanified March 2009 Patch, which includes the current players (to start the season at 2008 instead of 2001). The game on my desktop computer also has this patch. It should enable me to use the other savegames, maybe save them to a server so both games can access them.

What is necessary is a no cd patch. I downloaded the file ppfcm68.rar from gamecopyworld. Unformtunately .rar was the only choice, so I extracted the file on my Windows desktop computer and rename the old .exe files and replaced them with the patched ones.

You can now play the game. Unfortunately you can't alt-tab in and out of the game, it will lock up. Windowed mode (cm0102.exe -windowed) also didn't help. So I'll play the game without multitasking. You can get the Linpus taskbar out of the screen by clicking on the arrow in the bottom left of the screen, the left of the taskbar. You'll have a full screen game then.
You can play the game:
sudo wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Championship\ Manager\ 01-02/cm0102.exe -nosound
I disabled the sound, I guess you will too.

How to mount iso files in Linpus Lite, a script

This page showed me it is really simple to mount an ISO image in Linux, just type in the following line.
$ sudo mount -o loop <iso-file>
Of course, the blog adds some code around it to create a new directory and such.

I decided to use the mount call and create a script, for my -and maybe your- convenience. First, I'll give the script, then I'll explain, in case you're interested.
#!/bin/bash
FILENAME=$1

if ! [ -f $FILENAME ]; then
echo "ISO file does not exist, exiting."
exit
fi

if [ $# != 1 ]; then
echo "No ISO file given, exiting."
exit
fi

if ! [ -d /mnt/iso/ ]; then
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/iso/
echo "/mnt/iso/ did not exist, created."
fi

if [[ $(mount | grep -c /mnt/iso/) -ge 1 ]]
then
sudo umount /mnt/iso/
echo "/mnt/iso/ was already mounted, unmounted."
fi

sudo mount -o loop $FILENAME /mnt/iso/
echo "$FILENAME is now mounted on /mnt/iso/"


A script always starts with #!, this script uses /bin/bash.
The location and name of the iso file the user is required to give is begin remembered in a variable, FILENAME.

The script starts with two tests. Is a file given and does the given file exist. If the tests (or one of the tests) fail, the program exits.

Then the mountpount is being checked. The script mounts the iso by default at /mnt/iso/. If the directory doesn't exist, it's created.

Next we have the block which checks if there's already a mount active on /mnt/iso/. If so, it is being unmounted.

Now we're finally ready to mount the iso file. A message is printed the mount was successful.

You can place the script in your homedir, for example. Don't forget to make it executable by (I called the file 'mountiso')
$ chmod 755 mountiso
I placed an iso on a usb stick, which mounted as /media/UDISK/ (the name of the usb stick was UDISK, don't ask me why), and mounted it with the command
$ ./mountiso /media/UDISK/iso/CM0102.iso