I have been following two paths (cul-de-sacs).

I now have a VirtualBox host running FreeDOS. The problem I ran into there is that I could not share a drive between virtual and real PCs. I am sure this is possible as I have seen
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Sharing_files_with_DOS
But my brain is not large enough to make it work - on a 64 bit (Windows 7) PC.

I also have another track whereby I have bought an NTFS driver for DOS so that I can see my big disks when I boot off a floppy. The problem I have run into with this scenario is the error message "Stacker not installed". This despite having a CONFIG.SYS that includes
DEVICE=A:\STACKER\STACKER.COM
I can't just copy the whole of CONFIG & AUTOEXEC from the original failed DOS v5 image as when I type VER I get
Windows Millenium [Version 4.90.3000]

I feel sure this shouldn't be so hard. I could try again with the VM on a 32 bit XP machine, but I am really struggling to understand the what the instructions from the above web page are telling me to do and why.

eugeneg wrote:

I also have another track whereby I have bought an NTFS driver for DOS so that I can see my big disks when I boot off a floppy.

I hope you didn't actually spend money. Those things are freely available these days.

The problem I have run into with this scenario is the error message "Stacker not installed". This despite having a CONFIG.SYS t […]
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The problem I have run into with this scenario is the error message "Stacker not installed". This despite having a CONFIG.SYS that includes
DEVICE=A:\STACKER\STACKER.COM
I can't just copy the whole of CONFIG & AUTOEXEC from the original failed DOS v5 image as when I type VER I get
Windows Millenium [Version 4.90.3000]

So you think there might be some kind of DOS version problem? I'm sure you can find a bootable MS-DOS 5 floppy image on the Internet somewhere.

I am really struggling to understand the what the instructions from the above web page are telling me to do and why.

Can you be a little more explicit about what you do not understand?

I really wonder, if anyone has ever seen the Stacker compression hardware accelerator card in reality as shown in this advert:
http://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/w … 7/stac-card.jpg
And what PC is of equal speed compared to using such a card?

Sure, there's a blurb about them at http://www.oldskool.org/shrines/carny . But next time start a new thread.

The original problem was resolved as follows:

First I downloaded a dos boot floppy creator from www.bootdisk.com and then created a boot floppy image from Windows XP booted inside Qemu. I then used a 200MB file that I had created with dd as a disk image in Qemu and then booted up from the DOS floppy image that I had created.
Once DOS was booted I then used fdisk to partition the image and then formatted it and then made it bootable using the sys command. I then mounted this image in XP and copied the files from the ISO image onto this image and then when I booted up from this image the stacker driver was initialised and I could see all the files.
I then used a 500MB file that I had created with dd as an extra disk image in Qemu and formatted it. I then started Qemu with both disk images attached , and then used xcopy to copy the files over. I then attached the 500MB disk image to XP booted in Qemu and copied the files off so that I could compress them.
When I copied the files from the Acronis ISO to the 200MB image, the most important thing that I had to remember was to not overwrite any files that were already there.