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First post, by bassman

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I successfully installed WordPerfect in Dosbox on a Chromebook. It works great and I created a file and saved it to a directory in the "C:\" drive. But I cannot figure out how to retrieve it and move it to a physical drive or to the files folders in Chrome OS. So the file is there, but not very helpful.

It is possible to save a file to a place where is can be retrieved? Does anyone know how to get to a file on a Chromebook that does not appear in the files folder in Chrome OS.

And is it possible to open a file from the Chromebook into WordPerfect in the DosBox?

Thanks.

Reply 1 of 15, by Jorpho

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Presumably if you are running DOSBox, then you mounted some folder as drive C. Your saved file will appear in that folder if you save a file to C:\ while running DOSBox. If your saved file does not appear, then DOSBox may not have write privileges for the directory in question.

Reply 2 of 15, by bassman

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Thanks for the reply. Maybe I wasn't clear.

The saved file is in a directory I created in the C:\ drive. But I do not know how to access it to move it somewhere else, like onto a usb drive or other space, to use it, other than viewing it on my Chromebook (I did read that you can set it up to print, but that is not helpful for me; I would like to be able to work on a file and then copy or transfer it to another computer).

In Chrome you access files on the computer in a directory that appears in a browser as Files. I can also "see" and move files on and off a USB drive or Google Drive. But the files I save in the DosBox seem to be buried somewhere that I cannot "see".

So I guess my question is where are they and/or can they be moved or copied out of the WordPerfect Program.

WP 5.1 has a file manager. But in the DosBox its world begins and ends in the C:\ drive. If I plug in a USB drive it does not appear. The highest I can go in the directory structure is C:\

Any thoughts?

Maybe it just is not possible.'

But the app is very cool and it is amazing that it runs WordPerfect as if it were 1993.

Thanks again.

Reply 3 of 15, by Jorpho

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bassman wrote:

The saved file is in a directory I created in the C:\ drive.

Yes, and how did you create this directory?

Did you set up this DOSBox installation? Do you know where your DOSBox.conf is?

If this is not an official version of DOSBox, maybe you should ask the people you got it from.

Reply 4 of 15, by bassman

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I installed the DosBox Chrome app from the Google Chrome Web Store. The installation set up the C: drive and I used the DosBox prompts to install WordPerfect from a USB drive. The is no C: drive on a Chromebook that I know of. Everything I have been taking about appears only in the DosBox environment.

Reply 6 of 15, by bassman

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Thanks to all. I am thinking this is more of a Chromebook/Chrome OS issue than with the DosBox. I came to this forum because I thought that I would reach someone who put together the DosBox app in the Chrome Web Store who could help me resolve the problem.

Thanks again.

Reply 7 of 15, by IIGS_User

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Depends on who is the creator of that DOSBox port.

Klimawandel.

Reply 8 of 15, by bassman

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I came to another solution, but I have a question. I saw that you can export the C:\ drive and I did that and the file I created, of course, came with it and onto a USB drive. So there is a way to offload a file on a Chromebook, at least to an external drive.

I then created a directory called Work (c:\work) in the DosBox and copied my created file into it, and it exported too. But I do not see a way to just export the Work file. I had to export the entire program. If I could just export the directory it would be great.

Is there a way to export just a directory and not the entire C:\ drive?

Thanks again.

Reply 9 of 15, by Jorpho

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As you say, this seems to be much more of a Chromebook/Chrome OS issue than with DOSBox; I think you might be the first person to ever post here about running DOSBox on a Chromebook. If you were to run DOSBox under Windows or Linux you would see these questions have no meaning.

Can you even open a command prompt on a Chromebook? From there, it should be relatively easy to determine what path corresponds to your USB drive and furthermore to launch DOSBox with the proper argument to make that path available to DOSBox.

Reply 10 of 15, by bassman

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No, you cannot open a command prompt. It is a very closed system.

But do you know of a way within DosBox to export a file or a directory/folder from dosbox without exporting the entire c:\drive? Rhat would be great. In the Chromebook version clicking on the "?" brings up a window for file management, which has a section for file management with 3 choices: import folder to c:\drive; export c:\drive; clear c:\drive. Then there is an editable box labeled command line arguments, with the default being "dosbox /data/c_drive"; and then an editable box marked configuration file:
# DOSBox configuration file
[sdl]
output=opengl

Is there anyway to use any of that to limit what is exported?

Thanks.

Reply 11 of 15, by DosFreak

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It does sound like the apps are sandboxed and the DosBox app has the ability to export the data.

You'd have to ask the developer of the app if they could allow the ability to export specific files.

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Reply 12 of 15, by Dominus

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The files might be in /data/c_drive on your chromebook. Otherwise, yes, ask the one who put it on the chrome app store

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 13 of 15, by bassman

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So here is the answer:

I wrote to the developer of the Chromebook DosBox app and he was nice enough to reply . He said that he was planning to add a feature to be able to export an individual file or directory, so that capability does not exist at present. He also said that mounting a drive into DosBox on a Chromebook is likely not possible because the system is sandboxed.

Thanks to all who replied.

Reply 14 of 15, by Dominus

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Nethertheless the files should be there and accessible somehow. Even on ios devices you can access the files without jailbreak through a connected pc

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 15 of 15, by petekl

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It is a bit of a hack, but there may be a workaround to this problem. In the "DOSBox for Google Chrome" app, the "C:" drive is currently hard coded to a normally inaccessible folder on a Chromebook (/data/c_drive). You can't get at this folder using the local file manager, but "DOSBox for Google Chrome" does provide a pair of import/export commands for transferring files between the hidden DOSBox folder and a local folder that Chrome OS's file manager can access (either the local Downloads folder or Google Drive).

It is not currently possible to direct the C: drive to a different folder and still retain the ability to import and export files, but it is possible to create a separate D: drive and map it to the Chromebook folder /data. This is a bit backwards from what is normally done, but what you can do is install WordPerfect on the D: drive and put all your data on the C: drive. You won't be able to import or export anything directly from the D: drive, but once WordPerfect is installed you probably wouldn't want to anyway. If necessary you could always copy these files back to the C: drive and export them from there.

It's not a perfect solution, but it is at least somewhat workable. Here are the settings to add to the "DOSBox configuration file" on the "DOSBox for Google Chrome" setup page to make this work (note, the mount command paths are case sensitive).

[autoexec]
mount c "/data/c_drive"
mount d "/data"
d:

The only thing I don't know is exactly how you installed WordPerfect and whether it is possible to install it directly to the D: drive. You may have to first install it to the C: drive and then copy it over to the D: drive. But i suspect you can probably figure that part out.