NULL mag Issue 03 19 Use Virtual Disks, in Virtual Box

eZine lover (@eZine)

Published in 

null magazine

 · 26 Dec 2020

  

  ÜÜÜÜ i installed dos 6.22 in a virtual machine, 
 Þ±ÛÛÛÝwith virtual box. even thoughdosbox is great, 
  ßÛÛÛ²    ÜÜÜ    ÜÜÛÛÛÜÜ in some things its not good or you don't 
    ÞÛÛ²ÝÜÛÛÛÛÛÛ²ÜÞ²ÛßßÛÛÛ²have the 100% of true dos experience. anyway... 
 ܲÛÜÛÛÛ²Þ²Ûß ßÛ۲ݲÛÛÜ ßß the installation was ok, until i had to 
Þ²ÛÛßßÛÛÛ²Þ²ÛÜÛÛÛ² ßßÛÛÛÛÜ transfer files from my system to the dos/vm!!! 
²ÛÛÛÜ ÜÛÛ²Ýß²ÛÛÛßܲÛÜÜÜÛÛ²Ý 
 ²ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ²        ß²ÛÛÛÛÛß virtualbox doesn't have guest additions for 
  ßß²ÛÛßß           ßßßß   dos/vm so its almost impossible to transfer 
files through floppies!!!!!! what? no... no... 
no... i may love the dos era and have good memories, but floppy disks isnot 
in them :) 

another way, is to install freedos, instead of dos, but it wooldn't be 
the same (for me)... i want the best of dos and this is the 6.22 
version... and that's a fact. back to the subject... 

so... instead of using the real floppy drive, why don't we use virtual 
floppy disks, that we can mount on our linux system, write on them the 
files we want and then use those floppy images, from virtualbox... 
simple? maybe... 

first lets create a floppy image that we can mount: 
                    mkfs.msdos -C ./floppy.img 1440 
this command will create a file called floppy.img, which is our virtual 
floppy disk and has the size of a default floppy disk, 1.44MB and can be 
read by dos 6.22, through vbox. 

to mount it and be able to write files in it just type: 
              mount -o loop ./floppy.img /media/user/floppy/ 
make sure that you have all ready created the directory ex. 
/media/user/floppy, otherwise you will get an error. 

now you can write files, with just drag'n'drop from your file explorer 
program. unmount the image and from vbox, mount it to the running dos/vm. 
type a:, dir.... and see the magic... :) 

if you have big files, bigger than 1.44MB, you can use a file splitter, 
to span the file in multiple files/disks. for example i wanted to 
transfer free pascal on this dos/vm but the file was very big. i used a 
program called hjsplit [www.hjsplit.org] which runs in multiple platforms 
to slice the file in many files of 1.44MB size and then used the 
technique above to transfer them... ahhhh... the feeling of swaping disks 
is unforgetable... even if they are virtual floppies in a virtual 
machine... :) 

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