Is there any reason not to limit it to 25 so that every letter A-Y could have a CD drive mounted at the same time?

Why make more than needed?

Found this in the changelog today:

2006-01-27 08:54 qbix79 […]
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2006-01-27 08:54 qbix79

* src/dos/dos_mscdex.cpp: increased amount of simultanious cdrom
drives. Makes a few people happy with games that have lot's of
cdroms.

I don't care enough to argue, but I just don't see the point in artifical limitations. I can't think of why someone would need to mount more than 10 CD images, but that doesn't mean someone won't come up with a reason at some point.

I think Qbix's reasoning which is pretty much how dosbox development works is that they only support what needs to be supported. In this case a user reports that they want to mount a certain # of CD's. So why support something that no one has reported yet?

Examples:
What video mode is used by most DOS game? VGA or VESA modes? Why bother with messing around supporting VESA when the games would work incredibly slow and they have tons of VGA games that need to be fixed.

What sound cards/features need to be support? Some obscure sound card or the soundblaster 16/PC Speaker which most DOS games used.

Also there's the danger of going out of spec of original MS-DOS which may cause problems elsewhere.

I thought of the issue of following the original behavior as well; the spec issue it definitely the main thing that should matter. The other examples aren't really the same thing, as this is a case in which the only limitation is a hard-coded number that was determined arbitrarily as far as I know (which also makes me wonder if it could be a dosbox.conf option?)

HunterZ wrote:

this is a case in which the only limitation is a hard-coded number that was determined arbitrarily as far as I know (which also makes me wonder if it could be a dosbox.conf option?)

My thoughts exactly, mate. Why not just simply allow a user to select the maximum number of drives via a dosbox.conf option like this:

MaxCDROMDrives=8

Have the ultimate maximum that the user can select be 24. After all, you need at least drives Z: and C:, thus leaving 24 slots available for CDROM drives (if the user so desires).

I don't know about other users, but I can certainly see myself mounting two-dozen CDs for games that require them. Kind of makes me wonder why I never thought of mounting more than one drive before. [shrugs]

Kind of a lame thing to have configurable. Might as well just make it the maximum then instead of having yet another option in DosBox.conf to explain.

Agreed, but I was trying to comprimise 😀

I can see the logic behind the Guest's suggestion of making the maximum number of mountable CDROM drives user-configurable. I'd say that his logic was that by allowing the user to set their own limits on the maximum number of drives that will be emulated would be simply a way for the user to limit the drive-support emulation to what they need.

Now, I don't know how DOSBox's emulation of CDROM drives works, but I suspect that a higher limit on the number of emulated drives would require more CPU power as the program would have to deal with possible extra drives being added. Am I right, or am I off by a long shot with this reasoning?

I don't see any need for it.
it doesn't take much cpu power. it does take some memory though

Qbix wrote:

I don't see any need for it.
it doesn't take much cpu power. it does take some memory though

Out of curiosity, how much CPU power and memory is needed per additional drive?

I know that some users will want to try and milk every last cycle out of their CPU and devote every last byte of memory to their favourite emulator. I do like the Guest's idea of being able to select the maximum number of CDROM drives that can be emulated, though. You could even turn off CDROM support and save on emulating hardware that's not needed by setting the maximum number of CDROM drives to 0 if you don't have any games that need CDROM support to run.

I think it's a nice idea, and probably one that could be implemented fairly easily if you know your way around the DOSBox code. Alas, I don't, and I don't have a C++ compiler for Windows. I only have one for DOS.

Qbix said it won't require any CPU cycles to allow more drives, which makes sense. Probably the only difference is that it would (as Qbix said) require more memory to keep track of some things for each drive.

This is in context with this thread, so I'll ask here.

For multiple CD games such as Gabriel Knight 2, how would I go about switching the CDs in dosbox? I mean, without having to use daemon tools I can't think of a way. Mounting multiple CDs will only confuse the game, as there is no way to change which letter it looks for. Once it looks to say "D:" for CD1, and then asks for CD2....I can't direct it to "E:" for instance.

Anyone know a way around this?

Don't know if it's just my version or not, but when I install GK 2 the resource.cfg has a line at the bottom
CD:=D:;
that allows for additional cd drives.

Unfortunately most other games don't seem to allow this. From the README I've heard that the Ctrl-F4 or alternately the RESCAN command allows re-reading (never used it myself so I can't say).
*My mistake. Re-read the README and that is for disk-images. Sorry*

Also using the -ioctl option might help as when I changed CDs it read the right files with the DIR command without me doing anything (Never tried it playing a game as I don't have my Linux set up with automount, meaning if some file is being accessed while playing a game I can't umount it)

Sorry for getting off-thread.

dougdahl wrote:

Don't know if it's just my version or not, but when I install GK 2 the resource.cfg has a line at the bottom CD:=D:; that allows […]
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Don't know if it's just my version or not, but when I install GK 2 the resource.cfg has a line at the bottom
CD:=D:;
that allows for additional cd drives.

Unfortunately most other games don't seem to allow this. From the README I've heard that the Ctrl-F4 or alternately the RESCAN command allows re-reading (never used it myself so I can't say).
*My mistake. Re-read the README and that is for disk-images. Sorry*

Also using the -ioctl option might help as when I changed CDs it read the right files with the DIR command without me doing anything (Never tried it playing a game as I don't have my Linux set up with automount, meaning if some file is being accessed while playing a game I can't umount it)

Sorry for getting off-thread.

Ah silly me, that gave me an idea.

Copy each of the game's CDs into seperate directories and then mount each one with a seperate letter. Then add each letter to that CD:=D line..... 😅

avatar_58 wrote:

Ah silly me, that gave me an idea.

Copy each of the game's CDs into seperate directories and then mount each one with a seperate letter. Then add each letter to that CD:=D line..... 😅

Exactly.

Though I only played a little way into the second disc this way. And I used my actual CD # 1 to save hard drive space. Though someone had problems using this method with loading games not from Chapter 1
Gabriel Knight 2 - CD change problem
No idea if it ever got solved, how specific a problem it was, or if a CVS version might help.