this is not a solution for me as I need to use images.

Bad luck then, that's not how it's supposed to be used.

Hmm ok. I understand that one of the dev's had to actually write the code for tha FAT filesystem in DOSBox yeah? So i guess the reason is because it's just not optimized or whatever.

So short answer - deal with it? 😀

...would loading SMARTDRV.EXE make any difference? Or, actually booting FreeDOS? Eh that was a rhetorical question i'll just try them anyway and fiddle around a bit, i'll be sure to post back if I get any interesting results. Cheers.

EDIT: Come to think of it, considering DOSBox emulates a ~486 computer, the loading times for Doom Legacy (it's the most fancy DOS sourceport of Doom FYI) seem pretty realistic. I don't have a real 486 to test, but from memory it seems about right...

First thing would be to write WHY you can't use local drives.

About the rest you're correct, nobody cares about the speed of the mounted
fat drive in a non-booted environment, it's used to transfer files nothing more.
Once you boot into msdos/freedos/whatever it's as fast as the respective dos
version is.

wd wrote:

Once you boot into msdos/freedos/whatever it's as fast as the respective dos version is.

Fair enough - that's something I can live with.

wd wrote:

First thing would be to write WHY you can't use local drives.

I have started working on the PSP port of DOSBox by CrazyC, and the PSP's filesystem driver has a hardlimit of 8 or so simultaneous open handles to files on the MSDuo - it's the main thing holding back the game compatibility (crashes with missing file error, sometimes an overflow in the PSP kernel - early versions even corrupted the MemoryStick filesystem). Also, any game that needs DPMI swapping just dies - Doom Legacy being one of them - as soon as the app requesting protected mode is entered it just spits out memory addressing errors.

Anywho, my point is I have found that having a hardfile mounted does indeed allow me to run Doom Legacy on the PSP, among other numerous games which have a lot of filesystem I/O, whereas having only a folder mounted results in one of these said crashes.

The speed is something i'll just have to deal with - nothing is perfect and I ain't complaining. In the possible future I may take a crack at the IMGMOUNT code though, if I could be bothered. 😜

Thanks for your responses wd. I'll leave this thread open in case I come across anything worthy of note in regards to harddisk image speed (mainly for others' references).

iirc crazyc is still using (rather) old sources for his port (0.71?) so be sure
you update to the current cvs sources if that's possible/feasible as some
bugs have been fixed regarding fat drive handling.

wd wrote:

iirc crazyc is still using (rather) old sources for his port (0.71?) so be sure
you update to the current cvs sources if that's possible/feasible as some
bugs have been fixed regarding fat drive handling.

Hey thanks for that tip - it is indeed based on 0.71 so I will definately get on that! I'm using the 0.72 release on Win32 for my testing, but I'll probably spend a few hours checking out all the changes between then and the current CVS.

CrazyC is clever enough to provide it as a simple patch so I shouldn't have too much trouble - except that I always developed under Windows, never gotten that deep in Linux and Cygwin is having major errors compiling the PSP-patched DOSBox, so i'm just using his pre-built binary for now (until I can figure it out). I noticed that even the official DOSBox Wiki doesn't mention Cygwin for Windows, it references MinGW instead, but the PSP toolchain probably is best supported on Linux anyway.

Anyway that's off topic, but great to know all that - thanks again wd 😀

It won't be as easy as applying the patch, as a lot has changed in-between.
Please be sure to tell crazyc that you will/might be working on upgrading
the sources to the cvs. If you need help just ask.

Will do. You can lock this thread now, i've updated the title and there's no real reason to keep this open (unless you can think of a reason). I mean... my question was if I did something wrong or if it's expected, and yes it's expected. Resolved 😜

I'll can always start a new, more specific thread if I have more questions. Thanks again =)

If you know and use Cygwin, then MinGW is very similar.

Oh OK. Yeah will Cygwin is just a Linux emulator (sort of) isn't it? And so is MinGW? Maybe i'll take a look. Thanks!