Mostly asking because I’ve never used these before due to never needing to. That, and I have a few old disc based PC games that I’d love to be able to straight up boot without the game disc. These are games I could just pirate, but I figure I already own them in disc, so I’d rather see if there are any reputable places with no-disc patches. The places I’ve looked in the megathread don’t have what I’m looking for.
Closest they have is either a link to the game on another platform in the case of My Abandonware due to it being sold, or a link to just straight up pirate the full thing in the case of Magipack Games. I’ve also done some digging on the Internet Archive but have yet to yield results (probably because I suck at finding things there). Still gonna keep looking there, but any helpful info would be much appreciated.
I don’t think I can share the game names, even in DM, due to the rules here, so site mainpages are my best shot.
You can use something like InfraRecorder to save your existing CD into an ISO file, and then use Virtual CloneDrive to emulate having a CD-ROM drive and mount the ISO.
I used an older form of this method in the past as I was tired of finding no cd patches whenever I had game updates break the functionality. Depending on the game’s DRM, it may not allow using an emulated drive, so ymmv. I have personally not had issues with the method myself. Since then I have digitally bought titles from Steam.
Hope this helps!