1. Image all disks and copy files into a folder, make it easy: 1.img 2.img 3.img
2. Create a disk with the backup program
3. Download this and unpack it into a folder
4. Copy program disk into the emulator folder as fd0.img
5. Copy data disk into the emulator folder as fd1.img
6. Start the emulator
7. Run A:\ backup program
8. Point to B:\ to restore

Try it and let us know.

thank you for replying.

without reading the instructions of pce emulator so far, will the commands and steps to follow be similar to dosbox?

also, should all .ima really be renamed to .img for this task as you stated?

please bear with me, you can see, i am not very familiar with all of this 😉

p.s.: what we did not think of when using dbgl+dosbox - is it possibly important to run cpbackup from floppy (-> .ima), or even change further settings, like the filesystem settings for the floppy drive?

dbgl-user wrote on 2021-01-18, 10:06:

without reading the instructions of pce emulator so far, will the commands and steps to follow be similar to dosbox?

Depends, the DOS commands are, but DOSBox commands are not (mount is not).

dbgl-user wrote on 2021-01-18, 10:06:

also, should all .ima really be renamed to .img for this task as you stated?

Not really but PCE has a config that uses fd0.img and fd1.img

dbgl-user wrote on 2021-01-18, 10:06:

please bear with me, you can see, i am not very familiar with all of this 😉

Np.

dbgl-user wrote on 2021-01-18, 10:06:

p.s.: what we did not think of when using dbgl+dosbox - is it possibly important to run cpbackup from floppy (-> .ima), or even change further settings, like the filesystem settings for the floppy drive?

I think not, but we use PCE to verify that it actually uses functions that are not implemented in DOSBox.

so, we finally had time to test pce emulator.

following your guide, we could not manage to get cpbackup running though, unfortunately. pce seems to be ready to go ootb, even offering a preinstalled config file including 2 active floppy drives (autodetecting image files), which is invoked by simply running the batfile.

i also renamed the imas to fd0.img (cpbackup) and fd1.img (backup.001 disk). no need to convert anything 😉

from the c: prompt i switched to a:, but dir lists no files at all? i hoped for the imgs to get fetched automatically, so i can run cpbackup.exe.

we seem to be missing something?

dbgl-user wrote on 2021-01-18, 17:03:

i also renamed the imas to fd0.img (cpbackup) and fd1.img (backup.001 disk). no need to convert anything 😉

from the c: prompt i switched to a:, but dir lists no files at all? i hoped for the imgs to get fetched automatically, so i can run cpbackup.exe.

we seem to be missing something?

Yeah that was the general idea .

Send me a PM with the cpbackup program disk, I will look for the EXE inside the image manually.

EDIT:
I found an old archive that had CPBACKUP 8.0 and I can confirm that it writes directly to disk.
Which means that you have to run it in PCE or an equivalent that has the functions emulated.
DOSBox does not work with CPBACKUP. However PCE comes with another set of problems,
disk switching being one of them.

ok, i see.

it's a pity that it won't work with any of the programs, but it was worth a try. maybe dosbox will support this function one day 😉

thanks again for your help.

You may want to give dosbox-x a go, it has more accurate emulation of floppy and hdd.

@rob: thank you for the hint.

we felt like experimenting a bit, as long as our limited tech-skills allowed 😀

i came to think of an alternative to emulation - dos livecd!? and indeed, with freedos 1.3 rc3 there exists a candidate.

the good news, we could boot to r: (ramdisk) prompt, even 1 floppy drive was utilized under b:!

next we booted cpbackup from disk, fine.

here comes the hook:

for restoring, the tool obviously needs the data disk to be placed in an extra drive (which exists, but is not avaiable in livecd mode).

therefore we copied it to ramdisk and started cpbackup from there on.

attaching the data disk to floppy drive instead turned out to be pointless, though.

i am not sure why, but in the process of accessing the data disk, we are always greeted by the welcome screen of the tool.

it can't be the settings themselves, they are very clear.

You need to configure it to use either 'one' or 'two' 3.5" drives from what I saw in v8.

thanks, will have a look when there is more time around.