don't use /dev/disk2...

dosbox emulates it transparently

so you have to mount /dev/disk2 to /mnt/example
and mount /mnt/example in dosbox

Hello QBix,

sorry, but it sounds like developers chinese. Can you please explain what I have to write in the command lines to let a cdrom and the floppy mount in DOSBox in my case?

thanks
huggo

huggo - if you can list your (logical) mount points for the CD-ROM and the diskette instead of their (physical) device names ( /dev/fd.. & /dev/disk...) then I think we can help.

The mount point for your CD-ROM will be whatever path/directory where you can say

$ ls -l /some/path/to/my/cdrom

and get a listing of the CD-ROM

Thanks MiniMax,

for the CDROM I think the logical mount point is:

/Volumes/Dos

where "Dos" is the label of my cdrom.

When I enter mount or df in Terminal, I get the info:

/dev/disk2s0 on /Volumes/Dos (local, nodev, nosuid, read-only)

so I think it should be /Volumes/Dos.

For the FLOPPY I can't find any logical or physical mount point as the floppy doesn't give any sound after I inserted it into the drive. I don't think MacOS X doesn't see the floppy at all. After what I read, MaxOS X doesn't support Floppy drives any more. I can use it in MacOS 9 and in Linux I can mount any floppy on

/dev/fd0 and the mount point is /floppy there.

May be somebody can find out, how to mount a floppy in MacOS X.

I hope you can help me now which command line/s I have to use in DOSBox.

huggo

The reason why the diskette is not automagically mounted is that it probably do not contain a recognized file sytem. Speaking of auto and magic, do you have some kind of auto-mounter running on your system? A process called something like 'automount' or 'amd' ??

Let's get the CD-ROM to work first, okay?

Try this from DOSBox:

1mount d /Volumes/DOS -t cdrom -usecd 0 -label Dos 

Hello MiniMax,

Perfect!

When I used your recommended commandline:

mount d /Volumes/Dos -t cdrom -usecd 0 -label Dos

in DOSBox, the cdrom mounted and I could access any subdirectory there.

For the FLOPPY, I have automount and amd both in the /usr/sbin/ directory. I never used them and don't know what to do with them.

I don't think that MacOSX doesn't recognize the floppies because of a strange filesystem (hfs, and fat). The drive itself doesn't seem to run at all in MacOSX. In MacOS9 and Linux it runs. It's like the drive is dead. So may be we have to find out how to resurrect the drive under OS X first.

thanks in advance
huggo

Anonymous wrote:

For the FLOPPY, I have automount and amd both in the /usr/sbin/ directory. I never used them and don't know what to do with them.

I hope you don't have to use them. If you are lucky (but I doubt it), they should already be running. Do you see them in the process list?

1$ ps -ef

or

1ps -a

Note: I have absolutely no real experience with MacOSX 😀 Many eons ago, I had a Mac IIse with System 7. With MacOSX I am just guessing that it behaves like any other Unix-system...

The auto-mounters - if running and configured correctly - simply monitors selected directories (like /mnt/cdrom and /mnt/floppy) for someone trying to access the directory. If/when this happend, the automount process magically mounts the device, giving you access to it. But if they are not running, none of the magic happens 🙁

Anonymous wrote:

I don't think that MacOSX doesn't recognize the floppies because of a strange filesystem (hfs, and fat). The drive itself doesn't seem to run at all in MacOSX. In MacOS9 and Linux it runs. It's like the drive is dead. So may be we have to find out how to resurrect the drive under OS X first.

Yeah - do you see a running automounter (ps -ef / ps -a) in Linux?

You could try a manual mount (from MacOSX - not DOSBox). Something like:

1# mkdir /tmp/my-diskette
2# mount -t hfs /dev/fd0 /tmp/my-diskette
3# ls -l /tmp/my-diskette

You need to be the super-user/root-user/admin-user or whatever MacOSX calls it. If it is a MS-DOS (FAT) formatted diskette, you need to use "mount -t fat ......" (t = file system type).

Hi MiniMax,

thanks for your suggestions which I tried:

1Do you see them in the process list? 
2
3$ ps -ef
4or
5$ ps -a

I can neither see automount nor amd there.

1Yeah - do you see a running automounter (ps -ef / ps -a) in Linux? 

No, I don't see any automounter in Linux aswell.

1You could try a manual mount (from MacOSX - not DOSBox). Something like:
2
3# mkdir /tmp/my-diskette 
4# mount -t hfs /dev/fd0 /tmp/my-diskette 
5# ls -l /tmp/my-diskette

I tried to manually mount with the commands:

# mkdir /tmp/untitled
# mount -t fat /dev/fd0 /tmp/untitled and
# mount -t fat /dev/fd /tmp/untitled

and the answer was:
mount: exec /usr/sbin/mount_fat for /private/tmp/untitled: No such file or directory

When I looked for mount_fat in /usr/sbin, it wasn't there. So either mount_fat or /tmp/untitled seems to be missing.

huggo

The filesystem type is msdos in OS X. (There ought to be a mount_msdos in /sbin.

However, OS X should automatically mount DOS floppies. It sounds as if it isn't recognizing your drive. It has generic USB floppy support, but check the manufacturer's website for drivers.

I assume you've already tried removing and reconnecting the drive while everything's running. It probably can't hurt to run:

tail -f /var/log/system.log

in a terminal while trying it. It might possibly be informative.

Hi jl8e,

sorry I first answer now, but I was busy with other stuff.

Yes there is a mount_msdos in /sbin. The floppy drive I use is the original Expansion Bay drive of the Wallstreet, so no need for special USB drivers etc. But may be an external USB floppy drive would work anyway which I don't have.

When I try:

tail -f /var/log/system.log in MacOSX while mounting

1) the CD in the CD-ROM drive I get the reply:

"Oct 19 18:00:10 localhost diskarbitrationd[112]: disk2s0 cd9660 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 Dos /Volumes/Dos"

and

2) the floppy in the floppy drive I get the replies:

"% mount_msdos /dev/fd0 /tmp/untitled
mount_msdos: /dev/fd0: No such file or directory"

"% mount_msdos /dev/fd /tmp/untitled
mount_msdos: /dev/fd: Operation not supported"

without the quotes.

So it looks like, the floppy drive is really not supported in MacOSX. I read about this on several occasions. But somebody might have a clue how to make it run anyway as it runs in MacOS9 and in Linux on my machine.

huggo

Attempting to mount /dev/fd0 won't work, because if the OS has a special device for floppies, it's not named that. /dev/fd is something else entirely.

There's probably no floppy device at all - they're treated like any USB removable-media drive.

A little Googling suggests that you're right, and non-USB floppy drives aren't supported by OS X. Much as I like the hardware and OS, Apple can be morons at times.

The Googling found that people have written a driver that claims to
work. (http://www.darwin-development.org/floppy/) Last release date
given is pre-10.3, so it may not work. It also claims to be alpha
software, so handle with care.

You may be better off booting into OS 9 and making disk images of your floppies.

(You may also find better assistance on different fora, as this isn't a DOSBox problem.)

Thanks jl8e,
The driver you mentioned I have checked out some times ago. It doesn't work.

But I found a workaround:

I burnt single ISO9660 CDs of the floppies in question and could mount them as described above from the CDROM drive. The installer of the program I wanted to install started, but came with an error message. I think the installer needs a Windows 9x operating system despite the program is a DOS program. So no luck!

huggo

huggo - If the installer is Windows based, you could try to find someone with a working Win9x, and do the install there. Stuff/zip the DOS-files and copy the archive to your Mac. Then un-install on the Windows system, and unstuff the files in a suitable DOSBox directory.

If you are really into the emulation business, you could also try to get Bochs up and running with Win9x on you Mac 😀

Just a warning: Bochs is really a program for experienced users ...
People are sometimes complaining about DOSBOX usage being complicated - well, they would praise its simplicity and user friendliness if they had tried Bochs before...

Mirek

Fair warning, Mirek 😀 (which is why I said: "If you are really into the emulation business"). Personally, I am both impressed and amazed that stuff like Bochs and DOSBox is possible at all...