First post, by mike_canada
I want to eventually create a setup where users can create a special configuration in windows and then it gets embedded onto an image then when dosbox loads, the image is loaded with the custom configuration. I want to use dosbox as my test bed then I want to move to other emulators to make my idea compatible with all emulators.
Here's how I plan my idea.
1. Have a base image already prepared.
2. Run a custom windows program that takes the image and appends custom configuration data to it.
3. Launch a dos emulator that treats the image as a bootable hard drive
4. When virtual hard drive boots, it reads certain sectors where the configuration lies.
Here's what I tried:
IBM/MS Interrupt 13 extensions (details of that int at http://www.ctyme.com/intr/rb-0706.htm)
I created a program that runs the extensions. The installation check passed, but getting extended disk info and trying to read data are both problemmatic. In fact, the disk info returned all zeros for cylinders, heads, and sectors which is wrong. For drive parameter it wanted anything from 80h to FFh. I tried 80h and 81h and I got no luck.
Are Interrupt 13 disk extensions supported by DOSBOX?
or what interrupts should I use that DOSBOX and many other DOS emulators will support to try to perform a direct disk data read?
And if you're thinking I should use file open functions, that won't work because then at the image creation end, I'll have to figure out how to inject the file into the image itself without causing filesystem corruption which I think would be a more difficult task.