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3.5" Floppy Drive a:\ not accessed with Dosbox

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First post, by Kiwi Dazza

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Hi, I'm a noobie here and not too techie but ok with the basics.

I am unable to access my 3.5" floppy drive (a:\) using Dosbox 0.74 (but I can access it outside of Dosbox).

I am trying to run some Brother Word Processor conversion software to convert some .WPT files to Microsoft Word. Everything loads up and runs ok until I get to the part where I have to select the SOURCE drive (a). My computer does not look at or see my a:\ drive in Dosbox.

There is a good description of using the conversion software (with screenshots) here: www.8bit-micro.com/downloads/pn-convert.doc

I am using AMD Athlon 64 x 2 4600+ 2.41Ghz 2Gb RAM.

Dosbox works well for me running an old DOS game.

Many thanks, Dazza

Reply 1 of 12, by collector

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First of all, DOSBox is intended for games, not applications, don't look for much help with your application. That said, did you even mount your floppy in DOSBox? Check the README to see how.

The Sierra Help Pages -- New Sierra Game Installers -- Sierra Game Patches -- New Non-Sierra Game Installers

Reply 2 of 12, by Kiwi Dazza

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Thank you for your prompt reply. I am still getting my head around "mounting". I mounted the c drive when I first set up Dosbox but I struggled to get my game (Cosmo's Cosmic Adventures) to run until I stumbled across a comment in a Youtube video that I could drag the game EXE file onto the Dosbox shortcut on the desktop - then it worked very easily.

I have been reading the instructions but I am not sure if I just type Mount a a:\ (then what?)

because I have read that if you are using a cd rom then:
(Note: If you want to mount a CD-Rom instead of a folder, type this: mount D D:\ -t cdrom. In my example, D:\ -t cdrom tells DOSBox that my D:\ drive is a CDRom drive, at the first D, tells DOSBox what my new drive name should be called. Then, in the step below, you'd write D: instead of C:. You can find instructions on how to mount other devices, such as floppy drives, in the Readme file)

So I am a bit confused. My Brother software runs in Dosbox, it is just a matter of getting it to read the WPT files from the a:\ floppy, or wont Dosbox be able to handle this step?

Thanks again 😉

Reply 5 of 12, by Kiwi Dazza

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Thank you. I found those instructions in the ReadMe file.

I typed: mount a a:\ -t floppy
and I heard the a:\ floppy drive reading, but when I ran the Brother software, it still showed that the a:\ was empty.

Is it because the actual Brother software is on my c:\ drive, but the word processor files I want to convert are on the a:\ floppy drive? Will Dosbox only work with the one location?

Just to be clear, I want to convert Brother .WPT files from 3.5" floppy disks to Microsoft Word (either back onto this disks, or preferably to save on my hard drive.

Thank you

Reply 6 of 12, by Jorpho

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According to the screenshots, the program only cares about a drive letter and doesn't necessarily require a floppy.

So, you can copy the files off your floppy to some folder on your hard drive like C:\whatever , and then type "mount a c:\whatever" in DOSBox.

If you want more details, please specify everything that you are typing after you start DOSBox.

Reply 7 of 12, by Kiwi Dazza

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Thank you Jorpho and others for all your help. I am pleased to say I have had some success by copying the WPT files from the floppy disk to the same folder as the Brother WP conversion software. The conversion program was then able to find the WPT files via Dosbox, and I have been able to convert the files to Microsoft Word v 6.0 (and save to the same folder).

The next problem is that when I try to open the DOC files with MS Word, I get the following message:

“You are attempting to open a file that was created in an earlier version of Microsoft Office. This file type is blocked from opening in this version by your registry policy setting” (OK).

I am using Microsoft Office Word 2003 (11.8328.8333) SP3 (Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003).

Does anyone know how I can change this setting so that I can open the earlier version 6 in MS Word? (I have looked in Tools > Options).

I did find another way. I am able to open the DOC files with Open Office. All the formatting is exactly as it should be so this provides a solution, but it would be nice to be able to open with Word.

With Dosbox, do I need to keep the original WPT files in the same folder (directory) as the Brother conversion software, or can I put it in a sub-directory? I did try this at first, but I didn’t have any success until I put them all in the same folder. Am I missing something? (It is no real problem if I cant, I will just cut and paste the converted files to a different location).

Once again, thank you for your help. I have many WPT files on several disks and Dosbox has allowed me to transfer those files. The only other option seemed to be a programme called Wordport, but the full version costs about US$150.00. (I have the trial/free version, but it introduces typos to the converted file).

Regards

Dazza 😀

Reply 8 of 12, by Jorpho

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Kiwi Dazza wrote:

The next problem is that when I try to open the DOC files with MS Word, I get the following message:

“You are attempting to open a file that was created in an earlier version of Microsoft Office. This file type is blocked from opening in this version by your registry policy setting” (OK).

For starters, that really doesn't have the slightest thing to do with DOSBox.

And secondly, here.

With Dosbox, do I need to keep the original WPT files in the same folder (directory) as the Brother conversion software, or can I put it in a sub-directory? I did try this at first, but I didn’t have any success until I put them all in the same folder. Am I missing something? (It is no real problem if I cant, I will just cut and paste the converted files to a different location).

Read my last post again. You can put the files in any folder you want, but you have to mount that folder as its own drive letter in DOSBox.

Reply 11 of 12, by Jorpho

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mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

If Microsoft Word freaks out about the format of those documents, try opening them using OpenOffice or something instead.

Kiwi Dazza wrote:

I am able to open the DOC files with Open Office. All the formatting is exactly as it should be so this provides a solution, but it would be nice to be able to open with Word.

--

Kiwi Dazza wrote:

Thanks Jorpho, my apologies for not being quite as clever, thanks anyway.

Typing common error messages into Google really isn't very clever.