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Differences between physical and mounted drives

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First post, by SKARDAVNELNATE

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I want to understand what differences there may be between physical and mounted drives concerning two games that will not read the 3.5" disks when mounted in DOSBox. I have means of playing the games so I'm not asking about them specifically, just using them as examples.

The first one is HyperSpeed. I was able to install the game from WinXP CMD prompt with the physical disk in drive A. However with floppy images the install program requests the disk be inserted. In DOSBox it won't even get that far. With a folder mounted as C the installer fails to detect any storage space and attempts to install back onto the floppy drive. This shows problems with both imaging these disks and detecting the mounting in DOSBox.

The other game is Lemmings. I think this disk was included with a Sound Blaster. When starting the game it looks for the disk. In DOSBox with drive A mounted and the physical disk in it the game exits.

Are these programs looking for something that DOSBox doesn't show it?

Was there something about the disks such that imaging or mounting doesn't work?

Reply 1 of 3, by wd

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Are these programs looking for something that DOSBox doesn't show it?

direct access (sector reading/writing)

Was there something about the disks such that imaging or mounting doesn't work?

Dunno what you mean, assuming you're familiar with mounting disk images
in dosbox where direct access is possible. Then the only games that won't
work are the ones that use more sophisticated copy protection measures
like bad sectors/non-standard sectors and whatnot.

Reply 2 of 3, by SKARDAVNELNATE

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wd wrote:

like bad sectors/non-standard sectors and whatnot.

If that's what I'm dealing with here is there a way to identify what it is and make an accurate backup so that it works?

Reply 3 of 3, by wd

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and make an accurate backup so that it works?

I don't know if there's any app that can generate images (this will surely
be a special format then that's not supported in dosbox), though there are
said to be some apps that can copy protected floppies (not writing the
bad sectors, using special floppy access routines) which i've not dealt with.

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