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Legacy floppy support?

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First post, by audiodane

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Hello again. I've tried to do some searching, but can't seem to find detailed answers to my questions easily. Pardon me if they're trivial and I'm just stupid. 😒

I've got a few old floppies that I'd love to archive and play on my USB stick instead of an old 5.25" drive. For one reason, it's kinda hard to hook up a 5.25" to a modern laptop (at least I haven't found a way yet). There are things like KyroFlux and Catweasel and DiskFerret to name three, but to my knowledge those cannot be used for real-time game play.

So, here's my two (maybe three?) big questions:

1) would it be possible for dosbox to support an emulated floppy disk controller? this would be a lower-level emulation that would redirect read/write routines to a file format like IPF that supposedly properly archives even various copy protections.

2) Does DOSBox actually 'execute' instructions at the rate of, say, a 4.77MHz processor so that even for(x;x<y;x++) timing loops run at the correct "speed", or is its slow-PC emulation done differently?

3) Or, is all of this largely a waste of time and I should just throw out the old games that require a physical floppy and find a cracked version online that doesn't require a floppy? I dunno, this solution just feels like I'm "giving up" or "giving in" or something..

thanks,
..dane

Reply 1 of 5, by Jorpho

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DOSBox can use standard .img disk images via the IMGMOUNT command. You can also use the BOOT command with bootable images to get features like int13h support that are not available via IMGMOUNT. See Teledisk Image (.td0) support in DosBox like in MESS? for more information regarding this and other floppy formats.

As for your second question, if I am not mistaken, timing accuracy is definitely not one of the goals of DOSBox.

Why don't you just say what you're trying to run and what you've tried already?

Reply 2 of 5, by audiodane

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Jorpho wrote:

Why don't you just say what you're trying to run and what you've tried already?

Simply put, I was going through a few months ago trying to make image files of some of my old game disks. Most had specific "errors" in the image creation but would otherwise work properly with the original disk, which makes me think most of these "errors" are copy protection schemes.

So I'm left trying to decide what to do- if it's worth the effort to try and image all these old disks in my closet, or if it's a big waste of time because ultimately the images themselves won't be any good because nothing can use them (because the "errors" are not properly preserved in the resulting image file format).

..dane

Reply 3 of 5, by DosFreak

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If you can't image them properly yourself then don't throw them away. Either find someone who can image them correctly or send them to someone like Jason Scott @ archive.org who have the capability or the connections to do so.

DOSBox doesn't support images with copy protection currently. Only way to play those kinds of games is to crack the game.

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Reply 4 of 5, by rcblanke

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.. or maybe try with PCE.

Reply 5 of 5, by audiodane

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rcblanke wrote:

.. or maybe try with PCE.

I am interested in checking out PCE. Does it support audio as well as DOSBox does? I wonder if the disk support in PCE could be ported into the DOSBox environment?

Unless I'm missing the obvious, the PCE website is extremely sparse. I have downloaded it but can't find very much documentation. is there a wiki or something available?

thanks,

..dane

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