I gave up with trying to use HDD images in DOSBox (to boot real DOS and such), because you lose access to pre-existing mounts and the DOSBox mount command (meaning that you cannot mount CD images or host folders or anything useful like that).

What are you trying to achieve by booting real DOS in DOSBox?

HunterZ wrote:

What are you trying to achieve by booting real DOS in DOSBox?

32 bit disk acces under Windows 3.X. There are a bunch of games that use it.

What geometry parameters are you using (the -size parameters)?

The example you mentioned is for an ~500MB image; for 100MB it would be more like "-size 512,63,4,812".

Theortical alternatives to DiskExplorer include vmware-mount, filedisk (see also http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/26216-for-vmware-users/ ), Winimage, and OSFMount.

However, if the geometry is borked somehow, they probably won't be more effective.

ripsaw8080 wrote:

What geometry parameters are you using (the -size parameters)?

The example you mentioned is for an ~500MB image; for 100MB it would be more like "-size 512,63,4,812".

True, I've corrected it in the AUTOEXEC section of DOSBox.conf. However, this couldn't possibly cause the problem with Disk Explorer, could it?

Jorpho wrote:

Theortical alternatives to DiskExplorer include vmware-mount, filedisk (see also http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/26216-for-vmware-users/ ), Winimage, and OSFMount.

However, if the geometry is borked somehow, they probably won't be more effective.

Thank you. WinImage worked at the first try. Now I've been able to set up the SB16 drivers and install Windows 3.11. I'll still need generic CD-ROM drivers for DOS, but I think I have ones that will do the trick.

True, I've corrected it in the AUTOEXEC section of DOSBox.conf. However, this couldn't possibly cause the problem with Disk Explorer, could it?

No, but if you mount the image with correct parameters you can use DOSBox to copy files to/from it as in the guide you referenced.

Official DOSBox does not support cdrom drives after booting, but you can use an ISO written to the HD image with SHSUCDHD to create a virtual cdrom. Ykhwong's build has IDE emulation, so you can try to use a cdrom driver (such as Oak cdrom driver) and MSCDEX there, but dunno how that will turn out.

So I can't, say, imgmount a ISO+BIN as D:, then boot DOS and expect it to be accessible inside DOSBox, even with the proper DOS drivers installed? That's a bummer.

I planned to boot the hard drive image, start Windows, and then follow the install program from the CD-ROM drive.

Not in official DOSBox, but you can try with the IDE emulation in Ykhwong's build.

The SHSUCDHD virtual cdrom can be a viable option, but the limitations are that your HD image must be large enough to contain the cdrom image; and only plain ISOs are supported, so no audio tracks.

It's been a few days, so I guess it's time I explain how did it went.

So yes, in the end I had to use Yhkwong's port of DOSBox, because I needed DOSBox to have access to both my 100 Mb. harddisk image with DOS and Windows 3.X and a CD-ROM image.

It all went pretty much like when I installed DOS and Windows on a clean drive back in the days. This included doing some manual editing of both AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS, because not all drivers you think will work do work.

Specifically, I couldn't get CTMOUSE (a mouse driver derived from the FreeDOS project, I think) to work, and I ended up using another DOS driver (Microsoft's v8.00, I think) which didn't have any documentation.

Also, the mounting instructions, for somebody used to frontends, are a bit of a pain in the ass. I ended up creating a BAT file for every game, which pretty much was like this:

imgmount d e:\<CD Image> -t iso
imgmount c e:\<Harddrive Image> -t hdd -fs fat -size 512,63,4,812
boot e:\<Harddrive Image> -l c

And then mounted the folder with all those files (CD image, Harddrive image and BAT file) as E: in the frontend.

And well, do the games that need either SHARE.EXE and / or 32-bit disk access work using disk images? Yes, they do, although not always. My biggest success so far has been with "Lunicus", a port of a Macintosh game:

Other games, such as "Critical Path" and "Ice & Fire" still show issues, from minor error messages regarding sound output to refusing to recognise the CD-ROM as a proper copy.

But that's another story...

Neville wrote:

Specifically, I couldn't get CTMOUSE (a mouse driver derived from the FreeDOS project, I think)

It might be included in FreeDOS, but it's not really part of the FreeDOS project, per se. Anyway, older versions do not support the PS/2 mouse emulated by DOSBox; the latest version at http://cutemouse.sourceforge.net/ is the way to go. According to DOSBox-X branch , you also might get away with using "serial1=serialmouse" in the DOSBox.conf.

DOSBox-X branch also suggests that IDE emulation has to be explicitly enabled in the DOSBox.conf, though I haven't messed with it myself.

Thanks for the tip, I already solved the problem by using a different driver, but it may be useful for future reference.

Oh, and I forgot to mention another "issue": there's no way to tell DOSBox to finish after the program exits, you have to close it manually. Of course, there's no "switch off" command under MS-DOS 6.22, that would be too much to ask.