Installing multiple floppies with DOSBox.
 

First I would like to thank everyone that has written DOSBox tutorials here because I have learnt what little I know from them as a newb to DOSBox, I would also like to add something that other DOSBox newbs may find useful.

Learning the things that DOSBox can do is fine but something that may be confusing to newbs as it was for me is when to actually use some of these commands and why, a problem that many people will come across is installing games with DOSBox that originally required multiple floppy discs to be used for the game installation, this might sound like a simple case of just putting the game folder with all the files into your DOSBox game file “C:\DOS\CDRIVE\game file name here” this is where they would go if like me you have installed DOSBox using the guide lines in the Abandonia tutorial but, when you try to install the game in DOSBox the game asks you to choose A:\ or B:\ drive and insert the floppies one after the other but what do you do if like me you don't have a floppy drive how are you supposed to do this?

At first I didn't understand how to use DOSBox to get around this problem and I used a USB memory stick with the drive letter changed to B:\ and put the game files on that, I then mounted this as a floppy drive in DOSBox using "C:\ MOUNT B B:\ -t floppy" the USB stick was then treated as a floppy drive and could be selected as B:\ drive when installing the game and also because all the installation files are on the memory stick it didn't keep asking for the next floppy disc, success, it worked but it's not a very elegant solution and it's also totally unnecessary!

Experienced DOSBox users can stop laughing now :hysterical: and might be able to see where that experiment was leading me and how I had my "Eureka" moment when I realised that instead of mounting a memory stick as a floppy drive DOSBox can mount a folder as a floppy drive, so what, I had read this but I didn't realise how useful this could be or how or when you could use it but here was the perfect time to use it.

Using the command “C:\MOUNT A C:\DOS\CDRIVE\game file name here” DOSBox now treats this folder as a floppy drive with the drive name A:\ so now when you install the game with DOSBox and the game asks you to choose a floppy drive use A:\ and the game will install and without asking for more discs as all the installation files are in the game folder not spread over multiple floppy discs.

NOTE: You don't install the game from the "install or setup" file on drive A:\ you still install the game from it's directory file in C:\ in DOSBox.

It took me a while to get there but I feel I have learnt a very useful part of DOSBox and glimpsed a small part of just what DOSBox is capable of, hope this will be useful to fellow DOSBox newbs.

.........
:omg:


With your creative mount tactics you gonna have a nice @#@#@#@ time when the game installer needs multiple specific labeled floppy mounts......

This might not work for some games, not just because of the label issue but because I remember some games having identically named data files (that differed by content) on several floppy disks.

There is one sure-fire way to install floppy games in DOSBox without using an actual floppy drive in the process: to use IMG files containing copies of the floppy contents with IMGMOUNT command.
IMGMOUNT A image_1 image_2 image_3 -t floppy

You can then cycle the images using CTRL+F4.
It also works for ISOs.

Hi, Thanks for that it's something I've read but not yet tried, I can see how to use it if you can make image files from the floppies or if someone has copied the files to individual folders Disc 1, Disc 2 etc but the game I was experimenting with (Subwar 2050) has all the files in one folder and as you said some have the same name and I have no way of knowing which files came from which disc, I think I might have been a bit lucky getting the game to install and work but I like to have a good go at getting games to work before I ask for help, I still get a buzz out of bringing an old game back to life even if my methods are...Umm, different. (Ignorance is bliss):clap:

You can use a program called WinImage to store contents of floppy disks into IMG files. Just FYI. :)

:(

o.O
In 0.70 it worked just fine for IMG format floppies...

Some CVS releases still support multiple floppy image mounting.

It was in the 0.73 betas, but has been retracted from the RC and final releases because of some troubles. (I'm -partially- to blame for that, sorry folks).

Are you sure it was retracted? I used multiple img file mounts to play the 84 edition of Seven Cities of Gold in DOSbox 7.3. I don't think I have the beta version.

EDIT: Guess it was the previous release. Why did they take it out? It worked fine for me.

It doesn't work for all games, and that's the problem.
Some dos game installers use non-standard functions.
Weird stuff sometimes.

As 'why' they took it out, I don't know, personally I would have left it in, even if it didn't worked for some games.
But I'm not a dosbox dev, they must have their reasons, I guess that in time things will -(hopefully)- be sorted out.
It's a good feature, as modern PCs don't have 'real' floppy drives anymore, only USB flopdrives, and no 5.25's.