Sample usage of a harddisc image in DOSBOX

that list is user maintained.
win98 isn't supported

Sample usage of a harddisc image in DOSBOX

Yes I red that. The problem is that after doing a 'boot' all my previous mount points disappear and fdisk doesn't do anything it could't do before the 'boot'.
So I guess my question is; How can I access any drives other then the boot img after doing a boot within DosBox?

that list is user maintained.
win98 isn't supported

I suspected something like this. No worries though. I know some people pulled w9x off and I want to see how far I get.

You can't mount your host file system if you boot from an image in DOSBox.

You can mount your image and your host filesystem at the same time tho.

Yeah, it's not worth it to try to do much of anything in DOSBox that requires booting from a disk image because you lose any ability to mount other stuff. Would be cool if the mount stuff could happen at a lower level, but I guess DOSBox probably doesn't emulate that level :p

Now you guys got me confused.
HunterZ's comment and mirekluza's guide that was linked by robertmo can not both be true at the same time, can they?

The guide tells you to boot from a floppy img and then use fdisk on your hdd img, but if you can't mount anything when booting from an img you can't possibly do that.

My memory might be faulty, but what I do know is that you'll always lose your CD or ISO mounts as soon as you boot off of an image of any kind.

You can't mount anything once booted from an image but you can mount anything before you boot.

you can, but there's no way to access a mounted CD or ISO after booting from an image. i wanted to install FreeDOS to a bootable HDD image last year in DOSBox but couldn't because of this.

I used Bochs instead.
Patitioned, formatted and installed Win9x with it.

Then fed the image to Dosbox to boot.
It runs. In safemode. With a random freeze occuring sooner or later.
But I got to use Notepad and Explorer 😀

You can install w98 on c.img from w98 installation files copied on d.img.

bximage, (hd,flat,492MB,c.img) (bximage tells: 999cyl) = ~500MB
bximage, (hd,flat,1024MB,d.img) (bximage tells: 2080cyl) = ~1024MB

Get w98.ima image of installation floppy. If you have "real" fdd or "exe" image you can use "Winimage" trial to convert it to ".ima" format or maybe use some other way to obtain w98 floppy image.

Assume you can run "Winimage" trial on wine on your OS.
I assume you have all files (c.img,d.img,w98.ima) in the directory v:\t\ (you will have different paths under linux)

Contents
(1) preparing drive "c"
(2) preparing drive "d"
(3) backup
(4) prepare w98 installation files on "d" hdd
(4) installation

(1) preparing drive "c"
format c, and make it bootable with w98 (which will allow 1GB hdd as drive "d")
dosbox
imgmount 2 v:\t\c.img -fs none -size 512,63,16,999
boot v:\t\w98.ima
start without cd support
fdisk, create primary part. & make active, full-size of disk
quit dosbox, and start dosbox again
imgmount 2 v:\t\c.img -fs none -size 512,63,16,999
boot v:\t\w98.ima
start without cd support
format c: /s
quit dosbox,
Check if c hdd image is bootable:
start dosbox again
imgmount c v:\t\c.img
(if you have dosbox 0.70: imgmount c v:\t\c.img -size 512,63,16,999)
boot -l c
The W98 system should boot now!

(2) preparing drive "d"
Now prepare d hdd (~1GB large) for w98/other installation files:
dosbox
imgmount 2 v:\t\c.img -fs none -size 512,63,64,520
boot v:\t\w98.ima
start without cd support
fdisk (enable large disk support: Y), create primary part. & make active, full-size of disk
quit dosbox, and start dosbox again
imgmount 2 v:\t\c.img -fs none -size 512,63,64,520
boot v:\t\w98.ima
start without cd support
format c: /s
dir c:
(you should have ~1GB free space)
quit dosbox,

(3) backup
Now compress the two files: c.img and d.img in case you need these files clean in the future. The files compress to less then 1MB, because they almast entirely filled wih zeros.

(4) prepare w98 installation files on "d" hdd
Now, using winmage trial, copy W98 installation files starting from "root" into "d.img" (you can drag&drop all files at once using winimage trial).
You can also paste "w98lite45" into "d.img" if you intend to use it.

(4) installation
Now add the following lines into c:\Program files..\DosboxXXX\dosbox.conf,
(in [autoexec] section) or start dosbox and enter the lines:
imgmount 3 v:\t\d.img -fs none -size 512,63,64,520
imgmount c v:\t\c.img
(in dosbox 0.70: imgmount c v:\t\c.img -size 512,63,16,999)
in dosbox:
boot -l c
The W98 "dos" should prompt
dir d:
You should see w98 installation files on ~1GB drive d.
d:
w98lite45, or run w98 setup directly.
If you use w98lite45, when it asks for directories, give it directories on "c",

Now the problem is that under my OS (W7 x64 Ultimate) I get explorer crash after the whole installation.
This is disappointing, because I rally need W98 in dosbox for my mobile in order to run one english teaching application.
There are ready images on net, but I need my (Polish) installation and with IE6 neccessarily. I even bought w98 se (Polish) box at an auction in order to have a licence.

I look forward to your suggestions how to have W98SE Polish and IE6 under dosbox.

Use either Vmware Player, Virtualbox or Virtual PC. They are free and can do what you want for Windows 9x support instead of DOSBox.

If you persist on using Windows 9x in DOSBox then try Windows 95 instead of 98. Windows 95 should be more stable in DOSBox.

Again Windows 9x isn't supported in DOSBox so unless you plan on fixing the bugs yourself don't bother with reporting that Windows 9x doesn't work. You aren't telling us anything we don't already know.

This is especially true for DOSBox on mobile devices since those ports were created by other people and NOT the DOSBox devs. Go bug the creators of the port for Windows 98 support.

I look forward to your suggestions how to have W98SE Polish and IE6 under dosbox.

If you don't care about sound, network connectivity or any kind of fancy graphic acceleration then Bochs is definitely your friend.

Again Windows 9x isn't supported in DOSBox so unless you plan on fixing the bugs yourself don't bother with reporting that Windows 9x doesn't work. You aren't telling us anything we don't already know.

Well I hope it will work some day 😉
VBox and VMWare kicked the Win9x support and the ARM proc is becoming more powerful and common. The current Glide support offers a stepup to limited OGL and early D3D.
All in all it seems to me that Win9x on DosBox has the potential to kick some serious ass.

QEMU and Win98 always worked well for me.

VirtualBox doesn't support Win98 properly. (Do you like 640x480x4?)

Do any of them support host hardware-accelerated 3D with Win9x as the guest OS? I've been running old Win9x games on Linux via Wine, but it might be less quirky to run a full emulator/VM.

No. VBox and VMWare simply never made 3D drivers for a Win9x guest. And they prolly never will as support for 9x in general is dropped anyway. The 3D support that IS present is for an XP+ guest for OpenGL and D3D8+.

Bochs can run you a rock solid Win9x, but no 3D and no proper sound.

I don't know about QEMU. I haven't checked it out yet, but from a quick look at the site I am quite sure there is no D3D support.

Lame, that's my only possible use case for a VM (other than DOSBox of course).

VMware or Virtual Box may not have 3D acceleration support for Windows 9x, but at least VMware supports it officialy. VMWare has a 3D acceleration feature for Windows 2000 and above. They do install and run just fine. But i think that if one day DOSBox manages to support Windows 9x there will be a 3D acceleration feature.

Running Win2K in a VM with hardware 3D acceleration doesn't really help, though, since I already have 2 actual XP machines.