STEX Collections - ISO Linkys Guide

[CorinaMarie 29,923]

Introduction

The STEX Collections are an elite compilation of files which represent the best content shared on the exchange in the period of 2007-2013. There is more info about them here.

 

Receiving the Linky(s)

Once @Dirktator has processed your donation he (or I) will send the information via email and/or a Private Message (PM). It is imperative to check your Spam Folder as that is where many email services toss the message. There are some email providers which delete the entire email because their automated system believes the linkys are dangerous. (They are not.) If you have a way to whitelist @simtropolis.com prior to donating that might help.

Please keep in mind these are processed by hand after the donation is received, but if you haven't received a message from us in a reasonable amount of time after donating, it is likely the email got clobbered. If you are a guest then feel free to use the Contact Us thinger which sends an email to the administrator's account. (I check that at least twice a day.) If you are a member here it's better to send a PM directly to me.

Here's a sample of the PM you will receive. For illustration I'm presuming you made a full donation for all 3 discs.
 

^ Note: The expiration date in the sample is as of this writing. It'll be updated in the message you receive.
 

Downloading the Files

Clicking one of the linkys will show a popup like this in a new tab of your browser. You'll want to select Save File.
(Images are while using Firefox. Other web browsers may provide slightly different options.)

^ The file name will have a bunch of gibberish as a prefix. (The above isn't the real name, but similar.)
 

Once you click OK, you will need to browse to wherever you plan to save the file:

 

I recommend (tho it's not necessary) to delete all the pre-gibberish and save it like so:

 

Mounting the ISO Images

Spoiler

 

There is an excellent article: How to Mount an ISO image in Windows 7, 8, and 10. If you have Windows 8, 8.1, or 10 then that's the place to see how to mount the files.
(Since I have Win 7 myself, I'll show that method below.)

From that article they recommend WinCDEmu. That linky will take you to this page:

^ Once there, click the big green Download button.

That brings up this page:

^ Click the big green Download button again.

Then Save the file somewhere you can find:

 

Double click the file you just downloaded and click Install. Your OS will likely try to protect you by popping up another box. Click Install for it too:

 

Wait whilst it does its thing:

 

And all done:

 

Now comes the useful part. Go to wherever you saved the .ISO files. Right click on one of them then click Select drive letter & mount from the popup menu:

 

Click OK in the next box:

 

Running the Installer

Spoiler

 

Locate the newly mounted drive and double click it:

 

Provided you've left autorun enabled when you mounted the drive, you will then see this screen. Click the Install STEX Vol. 3 button:

 

Now it's going to pop up a folder browser box for you to select where you want to install the files. I had previously made a folder under My Documents called STEX Discs Installed and that's what I clicked:

 

The installer then appended STEX03 to that folder name as part of a new folder to create:

 

Here I ran it again and selected My Documents:

 

It then decided the new folder to make would be one level higher and called DocumentsSTEX03:

 

Anyhow, once clicking OK to install you wait while it first does this:

 

Then it'll do a bunch of this:

 

And finally it'll show this:

 

The next screen (shown below in "Running the Launcher") will auto popup after clicking OK.

 

Running the Launcher

Spoiler

 

This screen is what you see immediately after install or when double clicking the icon made on your desktop:

^ Click the Launch button.

 

Browsing the Collection

And now you are in the main file browser window:

 

Here's a sample having clicked a picture from the list:

 

And here's what you see if clicking the Open File linky:

 

At this point it's all the same as if you were downloading a file from the online STEX. There are a lot of good ideas in the How Do You Organize Your Plugins Folder? thread.

 

Those Recalcitrant Dependencies

As the discs are snapshots of how the board software was at the time of their original creation there's likely to be many of the dependency linkys which will toss an error.

In these cases Google will be the best way to find them. If they are on the STEX use this format in Google's search box:

xxx site:simtropolis.com/files/

 or if on SC4 Devotion's LEX use:

xxx site:sc4devotion.com/csxlex/

 replacing the xxx with whatever you need to find.

I suspect you'll also run into some deps that are neither here on the STEX nor on the LEX. For those you can try Googling without the site: and the rest of the line part. Should all that fail I'd suggest posting a new reply in the Can't find it?... Ask here! topic as that'll bring the full power of all our members to help out.

 

Dismounting the Disc

Spoiler

 

If you want to dismount the disc, simply right click it and select Eject:

^ Otherwise it gets auto dismounted when you restart or shutdown your computer (unless you selected the Keep drive after restart option when mounting the drive). Since all the files were installed in a new folder, there is no benefit to keeping the drive mounted.

 

Final Step

The installer will have created an Icon on your desktop. Move that to wherever you like:

 

The process should be the same for STEX volumes 4 & 5. (I'll edit in more info after I test them if there is anything different to mention.)