Mechwarrior 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, so tonight I sat down and spent the time to get it running again on my current operating system of choice (Kubuntu 8.04).  Here are (what I hope are) easy-to-follow instructions that should let you do what I did.  This should work with the original DOS version of Mechwarrior 2 (with the audio tracks in cd-audio format on the disc).

Step 1: Install DOSBox.

• Click Add/Remove Programs in your K menu.  Select DOSBox from the list of available applications, click ‘apply changes’.

Step 2: Rip the original game disc to an image on your hard drive and convert that image to a format that DOSBox can use.

• Insert the CD then open a Konsole window and run the following commands:

cd ~/Desktop
cdrdao read-cd --datafile image.bin --driver generic-mmc:0x20000 --device /dev/cdrom --read-raw image.toc
toc2cue image.toc image.cue

Step 3: Start up DOSBox and give it some virtual drives to work with.

• At the DOSBox command prompt, run the following commands:

mount c ~/Desktop
imgmount d c:\image.cue -t iso

Step 4: Install Mechwarrior 2 from the command prompt just like you would have on your old DOS machine and enjoy (commands below if you don’t remember how you used to install things in the “good ol’ days”).

d:
install
(follow the installation prompts)

A little warning, my Core 2 Duo E6600 machine has some trouble running this game at 1024×768, so I run at 800×600.  If you have a less modern machine you may have to resort to 640×480 or less :(