Virtual Box?

[lsemmens]

Anyone here using Virtual Box that can provide a little direction?

I've loaded VB and managed to get DOS6.22 working using a virtual floppy image. Question is, is there some way to convince VB to look at one of my fixed drives instead of virtual ones? Since most of what I want to run will be DOS based I need some method of getting stuff in there without creating millions of virtual images. (OK, I exagerate, not quite a million)

[lsemmens]

OOPS! I forgot that my drives are all NTFS, so I guess I'm going to have to find a way for Windoze 7 to talk to the VB, can it? Or am I back to virtual images again?

[mickstv]

I wouldn't have a clue about dos 6.22 under VB, but go into the devices tab (top of VB screen) and select shared folders settings then add a new Machine folder then restart the vb.


If the programs are dos based have you tried dosbox ?

[Uncle Fester]

I tested Jwoergerbauer's DOS 7.1 from this thread


and it runs fine on VBox.
It should read shared folders like mick said from FAT32 formatted drives unlike DOS 6.22.

NTFS no chance, I tried and got this:

Failed to save the settings of the virtual machine dos71 to /home/computer/VirtualBox VMs/dos71/dos71.vbox.

The machine is not mutable (state is Saved).

Result Code: VBOX_E_INVALID_VM_STATE (0x80BB0002)
Component: SessionMachine
Interface: IMachine {480cf695-2d8d-4256-9c7c-cce4184fa048}

Yes it is running on Linux but I am pointing to a folder on a NTFS partition.

[Uncle Fester]

I think the reason is that the shared folder option only works when the guest additions are installed and they can only be installed under Windows.
You can try to install Win98 or Win95se and switch to DOS mode although I am not sure if guest additions are supporting WIN9x.

Dosbox works sometimes but it is annoying to mount and there can be serious timing issues especially with games.

[mickstv]

Just tried what I put the bad news is Guest Additions are unavailable for DOS.

So don't bother trying my previous post.

[Uncle Fester]

I am trying to install the freedos iso on Vbox which has USB support and FAT 32 although I have created a FAT16 vm.
You could copy 2000 DOS files @1MB each (nobody would ever need more than 1MB ) on an old 2GB stick which it should still read.

I will let you know sometime (maybe next week) as this is taking ages to install.

[Uncle Fester]

Anyone here using Virtual Box that can provide a little direction?

I've loaded VB and managed to get DOS6.22 working using a virtual floppy image. Question is, is there some way to convince VB to look at one of my fixed drives instead of virtual ones? Since most of what I want to run will be DOS based I need some method of getting stuff in there without creating millions of virtual images. (OK, I exagerate, not quite a million)

Actually I don't understand why you need more than one image.

The correct procedure is to collect all your DOS files and create one image with image burn or something, then mount the image as a virtual CD in Vbox under CD/DVD Devices while DOS is running and DOS will load the CD so you can find your files under the according drive letter (usually D).
To add more files just unmount it and add them to the existing image or "re-burn" it and load it again.

Or just use a physical RW CD if you want to use it on different machines, that's how I do it.

Sending files from DOS to your host system is a bit more challenging and I would suggest using DOS with USB support.

Freedos didn't have USB support installed by default. The USB support files are under \DOS\BIN but I couldn't get it to work with my plain simple logic so I lost quickly interest as my lifetime is limited.

WIN98SE works under Virtual box just barely (4 bit graphic, very slow) but enough to transfer USB files from a stick (HDD is questionable) and then permanently boot into DOS until you use exit.
You would need this to read the stick:

[lsemmens]

I was exaggerating a little, nomeat, yes, one image file of all the DOS stuff will work, but, for some stupid reason, although the DOSBOX recognises the ISO and, supposedly loads it. VirtualBox will no assign a drive letter, so I cannot access it. All I want to do is run dBase III + and all I can do is identify a dBase.iso.

[Uncle Fester]

All I can say that I have no problems mounting an iso file as a CD device under DOS7.1 and reading it with the drive letter D.
I am using Vbox version 4.3.6 under a Linux host but I don't see why that would make a difference.


Might be a problem with your CD device driver for DOS 6.22, Vbox doesn't accept it or it is not setup correctly in config.sys/Autoexec.bat.


I would really try DOS7.1 from here:


Just takes a few moments to create another Vm.

[lsemmens]

Thanks noMeat, I've gone another route. (Bootable USB stick with DOS and appropriate programs on it) Got dBase working and found that there was so much that I'd forgotten that my time would be better spent either staying with M$Access (which I am competent in) or learning MySQL (Which would be my preferred option). I just don't have the time to muck around with MySQL at the moment, and dBase would have been blindingly fast on modern equipment 'cept I'd need to learn much of the syntax all over again. As it was, I was thinking of creating a better alternative to a set of spreadsheets that I am running and realised that Excel is performing the task far better than I could hope for in Access. Just means writing miles of VBA code for Excel instead of Access. Have yet to find a suitable front end for MySQL, so have little chance to compare that, yet.