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Dosbox and USB connected floppies under Win7?

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First post, by lasitter

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I have these old Dos .EXE files that generate disc images onto an attached FDD, but I'm having conflicting problems making this work.

Win7 sees the FDD and will format it normally. It will not run the old .EXE files because they expect to run under either DOS or OS/2 ...

After mounting A:\, Dosbox will attempt to run the old .EXE file as long as you don't actually write the output to the FDD. If you do that, when it gets to the point of actually writing the disk, (as I sort of expected) it reports Drive A: not ready/unknown media.

I've failed to get the Virtual XP Machine working but the install fails, so to date I can't get route working.

I'm hoping that there's some setting in the .conf file that will help me get to where I want to be, so if you have a suggestions, I'm all ears!

I'm also willing to entertain the notion of installing additional software just to make the floppy more functional. I've also considered something like VMWare player, but don't want to go that way until other options are exhausted.

Many thanks in advance.

Reply 1 of 10, by Jorpho

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Try using imgmount in DOSBox to mount a blank floppy image (or just a copy of some other disk image). After you run your program, you can then use a Windows program to write the image to a floppy.

If necessary, you can try booting an OS in DOSBox first, but if it comes to that, PCem would probably be a better idea.

Reply 2 of 10, by lasitter

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Thanks. How do you mount a blank floppy image in DOSBox? Then I run my .EXE to write to the blank image, and then some windows to copy the image to the physical floppy disc in Win7? What Win7 program would you suggest?

Reply 5 of 10, by Dominus

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it's part of Dosbox -> a command in dosbox

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper

Reply 8 of 10, by Dominus

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You should keep Z in your path settings, all internal programs are there.

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper

Reply 9 of 10, by lasitter

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So I've been able to issue these commands successfully within DOSBox:

imgmount b: f:\imgmount\fd_1440.img -t floppy -fs fat
imgmake f:\imgmount\fd_1440.img -t fd_1440 -bat

From within DOSBox, I can view the directory contents of the b:\ drive, or run a DOS editor to edit a file (TEMP.TXT) on that disk. But when I run a particular DOS program that wants to generate a disk image on that disk image on that b:\, it gives me the message: "Diskette error - try another"

I get the same message with the USB attached A:\ FDD. And the system cannot see the virtual B:\ floppy. Probably something to do with the absence of the FILEDISK driver that was dropped from earlier versions of windows.

I licensed WinImage, and it does some nice things, and I'm investigating whether IMDISK by Olof Lagerkvist might help.

If you've any other ideas I'd appreciate hearing them!

Reply 10 of 10, by Jorpho

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lasitter wrote on 2020-03-13, 19:48:

From within DOSBox, I can view the directory contents of the b:\ drive, or run a DOS editor to edit a file (TEMP.TXT) on that disk. But when I run a particular DOS program that wants to generate a disk image on that disk image on that b:\, it gives me the message: "Diskette error - try another"

Why would you do that? Once you make changes to the disk, you can then use an external Windows program (like WinImage or the freeware rawritewin) to write fd_1440.img to a real floppy drive.

If you really something that requires low-level floppy drive access, you might want to consider PCem instead, or maybe even Bochs.

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