try it ?

You'd have to boot into msdos though to load drivespace.

How do I boot into msdos in DOSBox?

imgmount/boot commands

There are 3 files on the drive that I can run. IBMBIO.COM and IBMDOS.COM seems to stall when I launch them. COMMAND.COM reports "Incorrect DOS version" then returns me to the prompt. On the Tandy I'd get the same message but then Windows 3.1 loads. A DIR command shows the files I already had. Attempting to change to another drive letter reminds me that I didn't mount any.

I saved the drive as an iso image for IMGMOUNT. No change.

For BOOT I'll need some sort of IMG or JRC file. The drive held 100MB which is too large for a floppy image. I don't know how to make the drive into the correct file to boot.

For BOOT I'll need some sort of IMG or JRC file. The drive held 100MB which is too large for a floppy image. I don't know how to make the drive into the correct file to boot.

Check the readme for examples. imgmount the .IMG file (obviously) and
boot the drive afterwards.

wd wrote:

Check the readme for examples.

I did that. Read my post again. I don't have an IMG file to mount. So far I've only encountered that extension when imaging floppy disks. How do I go about making this drive into an IMG file?

I don't have an IMG file to mount.

bochs tools can create it. Along with a bootable floppy image you can usually
create a nice almost-empty bootable .img, but that's not related to dosbox.

That won't help as the image would have to be created from an existing drive. You'll probably need some sort of networking to get the image file over.

Hm maybe he just copied the files from the disk?

They are the minimum files required to load DOS (or is one of them 100MB in size?). The compressed stuff is probably hidden.

Even if these files were enough he'd still need the boot sector.

Yes, i thought by "copied the drive" he meant actual image creation.

wd wrote:

Hm maybe he just copied the files from the disk?

This.

wd wrote:

i thought by "copied the drive" he meant actual image creation.

In that case I would have said I imaged the drive.

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

Even if these files were enough he'd still need the boot sector.

Since DOS is usually a move it around to where you like and it still works sort of thing I didn't think that would matter.

The original drive doesn't work well with others and has no jumper markings. I was able to copy it with a system that uses SATA drives so that it was alone on the ribbon cable. Looks like I'll have to copy the partition to some unallocated space then onto a drive that'll be more cooperative. With luck that will be enough to boot up and copy the files internally. If not I'll have to become acquainted with bochs tools to try wd's earlier suggestion.

All said still applies, if you want to mount a drivespace'd drive (one huge file)
you'll need any dos on a disk image and a drivespace version that works with
the drivespace'd drive. drivespace will NOT work without a real dos.

For the record: all of those transparent filesystem tools for DOS sucked bigtime and should be avoided like the plague.

Why don't you just boot the drive with a "real" PC emulator like VMWare, BOCHS or Qemu and copy the files then? This will probably be much more effective than the fiddling you're doing now.

DOSBox can mount two harddisk images.

ADDiCT wrote:

Why don't you just boot the drive with a "real" PC emulator like VMWare, BOCHS or Qemu and copy the files then?

1) I'm just not familiar with using those programs.
2) I don't know if those programs require a specific file type to load or how I would convert the drive into that.

Well, you'll never get familiar with the programs if you don't use them. Your choice.

My idea has nothing to do with "converting" the drive (or rather, the data that's on it). All of these emulators should be able to boot directly from the drive in question. This means you don't have to hunt for the software with which the drive has been compressed. Of course, this will only work if the drive is bootable. If you're sucessfull in booting the drive, just mount a second directory or a empty hd image (depends on the emulator) and copy all data. You'll end up with a image in a standard format which can be read with standard software (WinImage, for example).

VMware.com lists 3 things that have buy now under them. I'm not looking to spend money on this.

Looking through BOCHS I don't see a way to mount a hard drive or directory. Documents say "path to the image". Then something about a "raw device as a BOCHS hard disk... In Windows. there is no easy way." Also I know nothing about the disk's geometry which is apparently needed to make it work.

I can't figure out how to run QEMU. I downloaded quemu-0.9.1-windows and none of the executables do anything when I double-click on them. The 2 batch files both end in a "eth0: unknown interface: No such device" message.

The readme says
1. Install
Please extract ziped file. When extracted, you are ready.
Then it talks about loading Linux and creating a hard disk image. Neither sound relevant to what I want to do.

Maybe I need more specific information about these programs. I just haven't found anything that looks like it would be helpful to my little project here.