First post, by Zup
- Rank
- Oldbie
I've been installing some old games in Dosbox, and I've found that "mount" is a miracle tool that easily does better job than 0cd and fakecd. But sadly, "mount" needs absolute paths and Dosbox shell can not use environment variables.
Let's talk about Fast Attack (Sierra). To make it work, I've installed the game (it makes a directory C:\FAST with a few .bat files and savegames). On that directory, I made another one (CDROM) with some files from the CDROM. To make it work, I must mount both directories so the proper commands would be:
mount c: d:\games\dosbox
mount d: d:\games\dosbox\fast\cdrom -t cdrom -label FAST_ATTACK
(note that -label prevents me from using "subst", that can use relative paths)
I do the first mount in the [autoexec] section of Dosbox config file, but I like to do the second one on a .bat that launches the game. So my FAST.BAT file contains:
@ECHO OFF
mount d: d:\games\dosbox\fast\cdrom -t cdrom -label FAST_ATTACK
D:\ROOT\FAST.EXE %1 %2 %3 %4
That doesn't seem very portable (i.e.: I can not copy FAST folder to another Dosbox and make it work without changing the file). It's funny that Dosbox provides an environment variable (%dosboxdir%) that shows the "real" (outside Dosbox) path mounted on C:, but it can't be used.
Some alternatives I'd like to use would be:
mount d: cdrom -t cdrom -label FAST_ATTACK
mount d: .\cdrom -t cdrom -label FAST_ATTACK
mount d: %dosboxdir%\fast\cdrom -t cdrom -label FAST_ATTACK
Note that the last alternative can be used via 4DOS (but you need to have it installed), if you defined such an environment variable.
So I was thinking about making my own version of "mount" (rmount?), that mount relative paths. That tool would
- Convert that relative paths into real paths.
- Expand environment variables (checking if that variable refers to a virtual or real path).
- Execute "mount" with the path obtained and other parameters on command line.
I have two questions about this:
- Is there any plan to allow "relative" paths into Dosxbox (=making this tool obsolete)?
- How can I get real paths for mounted drives?
I have traveled across the universe and through the years to find Her.
Sometimes going all the way is just a start...