Mounting multiple floppies to same drive (CTRL+F4 Switch)

[rcblanke]

Attaching a small patch for some general cleanup, small performance benefit maybe. Reading and seeking is tested somewhat, though writing requires more testing still.

[kolano]

Yea, ykhwong included this in his recent build. Now off to try installing the multi-floppy games that had been giving me trouble.

[rcblanke]

Please report back any problem-cases you find.

[robertmo]

if you mount the same amount of cds and floppies not all combinations of them are possible

[robertmo]

It is possible to load .cue as a floppy

[hydr0x]

Had stopped using DOSBox for a while but have recently begun using it again. Needless to say, I ran right into this problem again and I vaguely remembered opening a topic about it. Imagine how happy I was when I found it and saw that this has actually been patched in

So, a big thank you to rcblanke, this is a major usability improvement for everyone using images of their actual disks!

[hydr0x]

There might be a bug with this patch or an existing bug unearthed by it. I have come across a .bat installer like the one below. Now, no matter what cpu or cycles etc I use, switching floppies at the pauses does not properly work. When it says "Please insert the Star Trek 5 Disk #2" and then pauses, I carefully press CTRL+F4 to switch the floppy, which works (I can see that in the console). It's STILL paused after that, so the .bat did not accidentally register it as a button press to end the pause. Now, if hit a button to end the pause though, it now not only runs past this pause, but also past the one for Disk 3. Basically, it seems to register one keystroke as two after using the CTRL+F4 switch. The only way to fix the behavior is to add another pause for each Disk. It still does 2 at a time, but this gives me the chance to actually switch disks in time.

This might be a general problem with CTRL+ commands though, I can hardly imagine anyone used them during batches before as none of them are useful while running batches.

Oh, I'm running a vanilla DOSBox SVN build by EmuCR from June 27th on 64-bit Win 7 Home Premium.

Code: Select all

:Disk2
cls
echo Please insert the Star Trek 5 Disk #2.
echo 
pause
cd\
copy %1\TREK5\KFIGHT\*.*    %2\TREK5\KFIGHT
copy %1\TREK5\KFIGHT\VGAGIF\*.* %2\TREK5\KFIGHT\VGAGIF
copy %1\TREK5\KFIGHT\EGAGIF\*.* %2\TREK5\KFIGHT\EGAGIF
copy %1\TREK5\KFIGHT\*.*    %2\TREK5\KFIGHT


:Disk3
cls
echo Please insert the Star Trek 5 Disk #3.
echo 
pause
cd\
copy %1\TREK5\BOPWIRE\*.*    %2\TREK5\BOPWIRE
copy %1\TREK5\BOPWIRE\EGAGIF    %2\TREK5\BOPWIRE\EGAGIF
copy %1\TREK5\BOPWIRE\VGAGIF    %2\TREK5\BOPWIRE\VGAGIF
cd %2\TREK5
cls
echo Please insert the Star Trek 5 Disk #1.
pause

[hydr0x]

The bug I described above proves to be really annoying. Basically, any batch that uses pause does not work. A button press always skips the pause AND the next pause. It makes using batch scripts as provided by the original developers impossible in a lot of cases. It's not (as I previously thought) related to the CTRL+F4 command. Even if I don't use that command at all, it always skips two pauses with one button press.

[Qbix]

I can NOT confirm this with a clean SVN build

Code: Select all

pause
echo hi
pause
echo bye


works as expected.

[ripsaw8080]

Here's a small patch for a possible cause of "one key counting as two".

Code: Select all

 void DOS_Shell::CMD_PAUSE(char * args){
     HELP("PAUSE");
     WriteOut(MSG_Get("SHELL_CMD_PAUSE"));
     Bit8u c;Bit16u n=1;
     DOS_ReadFile (STDIN,&c,&n);
+    if (c==0) DOS_ReadFile(STDIN,&c,&n); // read extended key
 }

[Qbix]

maybe even a while on c==0 ?

[ripsaw8080]

Reading console device converts 0xE0 prefix code to zero, so shouldn't be a way to have sequential zeroes.

[Qbix]

I was thinking of complex keys like ctrl+alt+break, but the bios/keyb keyboard handler should filter those out.
The patch should fix the reported issue. Extended keys does explain, why I couldn't reproduce it

[hydr0x]

I somehow didn't get a reply notification so I didn't see your replies until now. Thanks a lot for the fix, I'll give a recent SVN (hah, fix only made it in this month anyways!) a whirl then and see if it helps

Edit: I can confirm the bug is gone Thanks so much, this really helps with a lot of installers!

[retro1975bc]

Solved....!!!

No need for external app to do this !!!!!
Here is a Dosbox-r3961 SVN Build i've found a round the net capable of mounting multiple floppy images,
so you can install any OS, Game, App on a already mounted Hard Disk image.
I've included a ready example so you can start with!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Link 1 : Attachment with Dosbox-r3961 SVN Build (No HDD included!)

Link 2 : (https://firedrop.com/....... - Removed, Sorry!) http://www.mediafire.com/file/eg91eg7ws ... -r3961.zip
(With 500mb-Formatted HDD image Included)

Link 3 : https://archive.org/download/DosboxR396 ... NO_HDD.zip

Link 4 : https://archive.org/download/DosboxR396 ... 61_HDD.zip
(With 500mb-Formatted HDD image Included)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is a small tutorial to enable Multi-Floppy setup with dosbox :

1. Prepare your floppies and try to rename all of it to standard 8.3 dos extention (1.img, msdos622.img...).

2. Create a pre-formatted HDD image or use the one provided and put it all with the floppies together inside
a folder (e.g. _HDD) and put (_HDD) folder inside dosbox folder (e.g. C:\Dosbox-r3961\_HDD).

3. Edit (dosbox.conf), goto to section [autoexec] then Mount and Imgmount the directory with the HDD image
and the Floppies like this :

IMGMOUNT A d:\1.img; d:\2.img; d:\3.img; d:\4.img; d:\5.img; d:\6.img; -t floppy
IMGMOUNT C d:\HardDisk.hdd -t hdd -fs fat -size 512,63,16,1015
BOOT d:\1.img; d:\2.img; d:\3.img; d:\4.img; d:\5.img; d:\6.img;

4. Create Batch File (e.g. harddisk_setup.bat) and put these commands :

@Echo off
mount D "_HDD"
D:
harddisk_setup.bat

That will mount drive D to the local directory inside dosbox (C:\Dosbox-r3961\_HDD) like "_HDD" then
goto (D:) drive and execute (harddisk_setup.bat) that contains Imgmount and Boot commands above.

5. Run dosbox then inside the screen will boot first floppy, and when it ask for the second floppy hit
Ctrl+F4 together to switch between floppies you've already mounted.

I hope i've explained almost everything and for more commands refer to the official Dosbox.com site for
detailed documentation. Thanx to All!!!

[Dominus]

What exactly did you include there? The mediafire zip is 80MB big and the firedrop one is password protected. I advise everyone not to download anything that someone found "round the net"

[lostnorm]

I just make ISOs out of my floppy images and imgmount as ISO.

imgmount a c:\floppy\disk1.iso c:\floppy\disk2.iso -t iso

This seems to work well for all that I tried so far.