Ahh, wall of text.

If I'm not mistaken, DOSBox does not act any differently if you mount a folder as a floppy or if you mount an actual floppy drive (or virtual floppy drive) as a floppy. If you want accurate floppy emulation, you have to use IMGMOUNT.

Pretty much the sole benefit to Virtual Floppy Drive is that it lets you swap disk images on the fly, which used to be impossible in DOSBox, but now that functionality is in SVN.

Well, I actually only wanted it for 3 reasons. The swapping disks on the fly. The SVN says nothing about adding this in to imgmount usability, it still says I can only do this with CD-Rom images. The image I downloaded was from 1-13-14, so I guess it could have been added into the source code in the last 12 days. The second reason is to have an A drive available to my Win3.1 boot without having to drop to DOS every time, just alt-tab out, mount the image and go on. If I just use a folder as A:, I might still run into problems if the disk checks the label. Finally, the VFD allows access to non-standard formats. Formats that the "drive" reads fine but that DOSBox doesn't support. Since DOSBox doesn't read real floppy disks at a low level, but only at a higher level, the VFD acts as a great buffer for those. It won't work for some copy protections, and I'm not expecting it too, but it works for everything I need.

Basically, it seems to me that DOSBox is attempting to just read the contents, instead of first asking the system "is there a disk there?" first (like the command prompt or the disk icons do.) DOSBox already seems to properly detect the disk insert notification fine (as it updates just great on floppy insertion.) I was hoping that there was, or could be in the near future, a way to tell DOSBox, "this is a drive, don't just read it, first as if a disk is present, then read it." It seems to me that that would be better anyways.

I'm not asking for it to be a perfect emulation (though I'd prefer if the numbers matched what the "drive" reported.) I'm really only wanting it to do what it already does, just without the windows error. I can't seem to get a hold of the writer, and it's been 6 years since the last version was released. The error message could be caused by either the way DOSBox is treating the drive, or by the way the drive is coded. I asked here, I also asked there, but have yet to have received a response. Finally, sorry about the wall of words, when I'm sending a technical request, I try to be a complete as possible, so if someone wants to help, they don't have to ask 100 questions before the get the info they need.

Your wall of text makes it very hard to extract the information needed.
Can you do a lighter version along with mountings:
Mount bla
Imgmount bla
Started Windows 3.x
What you see
What you expect to see

Try difference between imgmounting a floppy vs mounting the virtual floppy drive.
Your mounting commands are never mentioned before or are hard to make out.
And if you work wit more returns your wall of words gets easier to read, too.

Sorry, the text from the bottom of the config file I included....

MOUNT C C:\Emulation\DOSBox\Win31 -freesize 500
MOUNT D F:\ -t cdrom -ioctl_dio
MOUNT A A:\ -t floppy
WIN.COM
EXIT

removed all the set & path stuff, it's standard. When the MOUNT A command executes, the error pops up "Windows Error - No Disk" which turns DOSBox into a window. My mouse will not leave the window area and I cannot capture or free it. If the error box isn't in the window area, I have to alt-tab to the error box (DOSBox still has focus,) and use keyboard to select continue. After that everything works normally.

I don't use any IMGMOUNT commands, and would prefer not too. The whole purpose is to have a floppy & cd-rom drive that I can change on the fly without knowing in advance what I will need to have mounted. Though, if I did IMGMOUNT a floppy image instead of the virtual drive, I would think there would be no problem.

If I access the drive and forget to mount an image, it will sometimes do it again, sometimes not. It will always do it again if I first try to access the virtual CD while ejected, then immediately try the virtual floppy. If I remove the -t floppy, the error goes away completely, but the drive does not appear in windows (which is one of the reasons I want it there in the first place.)

Have you been pressing CTRL-F4, which tells DOSBox to refresh its directory cache? (Yes, CTRL-F4 is unfortunately used by Windows 3.x. You might have to change it using the keymapper.)

FeedingDragon wrote:

The SVN says nothing about adding this in to imgmount usability, it still says I can only do this with CD-Rom images.

Perhaps it's only in ykhwong's version, then. Either that or whatever documentation you were reading hasn't been updated to correspond with the actual program features.

I can't seem to get a hold of the writer, and it's been 6 years since the last version was released.

The SVN version is being updated frequently. And I daresay if he had the time to personally respond to every feature request, he wouldn't get anything done. 😜

First of all, does the Windows pop up thing happen with a real empty floppy drive? And/or the 0.74 version of Dosbox?

Second, and that's more about the free space thing you mentioned, I'm always a bit biased against things like that. If I need Windows 3.x with a floppy, I'll drop back to prompt, mount/imgmount, do what needs to be done and then next time I use Windows 3.x it's no longer mounted. The point is, after setting things up you barely need to have a floppy drive mounted. Just having it there because you might maybe, once in half a year, need the floppy, is below the scope of Dosbox.
DOSBox is for playing Dosgames, maybe for playing windows 3.x games, not for making the floppy/cd drive look good in Windows 3.x 😉

Jorpho:
No, I haven't been pressing <CTRL>F4, that's one of the reasons I like using a virtual drive, you don't have to press that after changing the disk. As for the SVN I'm using, I'm using the one the FAQ pointed me too to use (on the WIKI.) As as for not being contacted and no updates in 6 years, I'm talking about VFD, are you? As for the source code of VFD, I didn't check that.... Just did, last update Feb 14, 2010... So only 4 years since the last source code update.

Dominus:
I have no idea if the error comes up with a real floppy drive. I don't have one. I've never been able to get one to work on this system (or the last 2 motherboards for that matter.) I have 8 or 9 drives here, and at least that many floppy cables, I gave up on trying to get a floppy drive to work since I left the P4 systems. As for needing a floppy drive in Win3.1, I have about 15 or so CD's that are Win3.1 specific, and a large box of Win3.1 floppy games (between 100 and 200 disks.) For the floppies, I go to the library, pay $1.00 and spend half an hour putting a ton of them on my thumb drive. Haven't started going through them yet, and many of them will probably get tossed aside, but I don't know yet. Once I've gone through them all, then yes, I'll no longer need an A drive, but for now.

Maybe it helps

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/124873

msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff805117(v=VS.85).aspx

FeedingDragon wrote:

No, I haven't been pressing <CTRL>F4, that's one of the reasons I like using a virtual drive, you don't have to press that after changing the disk.

Well, perhaps if you did press it, you wouldn't be having this problem?

To be clear: CTRL-F4 isn't just for swapping mounted images; it is also necessary in order for DOSBox to know that something external has made a change to something mounted in DOSBox.

As for the SVN I'm using, I'm using the one the FAQ pointed me too to use (on the WIKI.) As as for not being contacted and no updates in 6 years, I'm talking about VFD, are you? As for the source code of VFD, I didn't check that.... Just did, last update Feb 14, 2010... So only 4 years since the last source code update.

What? I thought you were talking about the DOSBox source. I'm getting very confused now.

I said, "Pretty much the sole benefit to Virtual Floppy Drive is that it lets you swap disk images on the fly, which used to be impossible in DOSBox, but now that functionality is in SVN". What I meant is that it is possible to swap floppy disk images on the fly in the SVN version of DOSBox when you mount them with IMGMOUNT.

As for needing a floppy drive in Win3.1, I have about 15 or so CD's that are Win3.1 specific, and a large box of Win3.1 floppy games (between 100 and 200 disks.) For the floppies, I go to the library, pay $1.00 and spend half an hour putting a ton of them on my thumb drive. Haven't started going through them yet, and many of them will probably get tossed aside, but I don't know yet. Once I've gone through them all, then yes, I'll no longer need an A drive, but for now.

I'm getting even more confused now. Are you saying you're using Windows 3.x in DOSBox solely read these floppies?

OK, clear some things up...

The "person" I tried to contact and haven't gotten an answer from was the creator of the "Virtual Floppy Drive v2.1". I'm not "that" surprised since it's been 4 years since the code, and 6 years since the build had been updated. I made 2 contacts.. Here (I'm not trying contact a DOSBox developer directly,) and on the VFD sourceforge page. I accept that the problem could be coming from either end, I just don't know enough to know.

I want Win3.1 in DOSBox to "play" the games, or the ones I like. I go to the library and make images of the floppies, because I don't have a physical floppy drive. I use the images in DOSBox to install the game in Win3.1 and try them out. I like them, I leave them and set their disks aside (archiving the images.) I don't like them, I move the disks to the sell if I can box, delete the game from Win3.1, and delete the images. The CD's aren't a problem. I make the image myself because the virtual CD-Rom works better than the physical drive. Do the same if I like/dislike. I have no problems with the virtual cd-rom drive, and this way I don't have to make an IMGMOUNT of 10-20 ISO files, then when I want to play a particular game play cycle image roulette.

<CTRL>F4 has DOSBox reread the directory structure. This will actually cause the error to re-occur most of the time.

Etil:
The disabling error message might actually work, I am given a long string of numbers that might point me to the correct place. It's not like that error is likely to occur under any other circumstance. I'll give that a try. The Error Mode looks like program code instructions. Not a programer, but it could be that the VFD programer didn't do that completely correctly for the "No Disk" error (didn't cover all the possibilities.) And one of the ones (or THE one, if he only missed one in the first place,) is the one that DOSBox sometimes triggers, but normal WinXP and CMD don't.

Well, it turns out that fix isn't actually a fix but more of a band aid. It did however lead me to the real fix.

The problem, a process or thread is trying to access a drive that doesn't exist or does not contain media. Apparently, from what I'm reading, and I'm not a programer, so I may not be reading it 100% correctly. There are ways of suppressing Windows from throwing a fit over this, but not all programers do it correctly. The correct method is to use "uint = SetErrorMode(0x0001)" to tell Windows NOT display error messages but to just pass the error back to the program that caused it (let the program handle errors, not windows.) SetErrorMode returns an unsigned integer of what it was set to before your change so you can change it back afterwords with "SetErrorMode(uint)" This is in C++ I believe. What many programers use is 0x8000 which only stops windows from handling missing file errors.

I'm thinking, that since DOSBox was origninally designed around using directories (non-removable,) it could have been programmed with 0x8000 in the beginning (when all it handled was directories,) and even using real floppy drives wasn't a priority. And that this usage stayed in, at least in part, from that time, even after virtual drives and such started getting more support. I don't know enough about programming to be able to check. For now, I can use the band aid, though I really don't like too. It isn't a "single error" fix like I originally thought, but stops ALL critical error my system may generate - even ones I would WANT windows to jump on 😒

NOTE: I used the actual values given, since I don't know if "handles" would be the same from system to system or even compiler to compiler or language to language. The handles were
0x8000 SEM_NOOPENFILEERRORBOX
0x0001 SEM_FAILCRITICALERRORS

A non-programmer unfriendly page that describes it more fully is http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windo … v=vs.85%29.aspx if you want to look it up yourself.

I think I'm starting to understand. This seems like a very strange and obscure request.

I do notice that ImDisk appears to have the same functionality as VFD but has been updated more recently. Perhaps that may suit your needs?

Otherwise, doesn't ykhwong's build have a menu bar that supports mounting images on the fly?

ImDisk won't work, I'm afraid. Unlike ImDisk is more like IMGMOUNT for Windows. It works pretty much identically, pick an image, pick a drive letter, pick a drive type, etc... It suffers the same issues as dropping to DOS in Win3 and running the imgmount there manually.

This AutoIt script starts DosBox without displaying 'No Disk' error message box.

1#NoTrayIcon
2
3#include <WinAPIDiag.au3>
4
5$Progname = "dosbox.exe"
6
7If @Compiled Then
8  If @ScriptName = $Progname Then Exit
9Endif
10
11$Command = $Progname
12For $i = 1 To $CmdLine[0]
13  $Command = $Command & " " & $CmdLine[$i]
14Next
15
16_WinAPI_SetErrorMode($SEM_FAILCRITICALERRORS)
17Run($Command,"")
18
19Exit

That might work, I'm looking into it now (AutoIt.) Reading your code, it looks like it should work, though I don't understand a lot of what you are doing there. The main concern is that the Error Mode is restored after. Everything I read on it, was in some other language (C I think,) says that the routine (SetErrorMode) returns the current value. In those examples it would set up something like (forgive my lack of programing knowledge here.)

1$OldValue = _WinAPI_SetErrorMode($SEM_FAILCRITICALERRORS)
2Run($Command,"")
3_WinAPI_SetErrorMode($OldValue)
4
5Exit

Or something like that. It turns it off, then sets it back to normal when DOSBox exits (before exiting itself.

OK, that seems to do the trick....

1    #NoTrayIcon
2
3    #include <WinAPIDiag.au3>
4
5    $Progname = "dosbox.exe"
6
7    If @Compiled Then
8      If @ScriptName = $Progname Then Exit
9    Endif
10
11    $Command = $Progname
12    For $i = 1 To $CmdLine[0]
13      $Command = $Command & " " & $CmdLine[$i]
14    Next
15
16    $OldError = _WinAPI_SetErrorMode($SEM_FAILCRITICALERRORS)
17    RunWait($Command,"")
18    _WinAPI_SetErrorMode($OldError)
19
20    Exit

Used the RunWait so that it wouldn't reset the Error Mode until after I exited DOSBox. I would still prefer if it was process specific. There's supposed to be a way to do that, but I don't know how. This just turns off all windows error control. Maybe just with the processes that DOSBox is using, maybe not. I would still sort of prefer it if DOSBox would treat the virtual floppy drive more like it does the virtual CD-Rom drive. It reports itself as empty, and Win31 says please insert a disk. With the floppy it just shows an empty directory, as if there's a disk there that has nothing on it. I don't get an error until I try to actually write something to it. At this point I get "Directory A: does not exist, do you want to create it?" And, of course, saying "yes" just causes the same box to come up, over and over.

I guess using the "Drive" pull-down menu in ykhwong's build is not a suitable remedy, then?

It would be, except stupid Windows 3.1 won't see the drive unless it's there when it starts up. I have the config set to go straight into Win3, then exit when I leave Windows. It would be the same as using Windows' MS-DOS prompt to mount, unmount, mount each image as I get to them. Yes, suddenly there is an A drive, but Windows still says "no there isn't." I'd much rather just eject and insert physical media, but cannot get any of my drives to work with this motherboard, haven't for at least the last 4 or so upgrades. As it stands, I just got back from the library with my first 10 images.... OK, 8 images, 2 of the disks were bad it seems. This is going to take a while 🙁

On the bright side, this fix is better than the first one I was using. At least this one only shuts down error checking while I'm actually in Win3, and not all the time. If I was a better programmer, I'd check the source on how DOSBox accesses the physical CD-Rom and the physical floppy devices and see if I could transpose some of the code without breaking floppy access. Other than a couple of completely random error messages (from DOSBox,) the CD-Rom access works like a dream. 99% of the time it's perfect, but twice DOSBox has complained that the drive is empty, but continued on with a mouse click. Its only happened twice so far, and I was in a hurry so didn't mark the exact message. I'll mark it down if/when it happens again.

FeedingDragon wrote:

It would be, except stupid Windows 3.1 won't see the drive unless it's there when it starts up.

Yes – so you can mount an image (any image) before you start Windows, and then swap out the image when you need to using the menu.