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[djc6535]

I've been using dosbox for a while, but I've usually run it with full archives for games. Now I've found a game where all I have is a zip file for each floppy disc that the original game came with. I can get Dosbox to run the Install.exe from floppy1, but once it gets to the point where I need to change floppies, I have no idea how to do it. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

[The Fifth Horseman]

It was a feature somewhere around version 0.63 or 0.65 of DOSBox, but was removed since (apparently it had issues with some games). You'd have to run the game using whichever old version was the newest to still support it, or use a modified binary which either re-implements it or has its own means of changing images on the fly (I'm told the yhkwong builds have that).

If you use an old version of DOSBox, you mount the images at the same time using IMGMOUNT - instead of specifying a single floppy image, you specify all of them in sequence and then use CTRL+F4 to cycle between them when you need to.

[Japo]

Sometimes it will work if you just extract the content of all the floppies into one folder, and mount that as one floppy.

Odd, the manual says explicitly that you can't mount several floppies with imgmount, but also that you can swap them with Ctrl+F4 if you have them mounted, and that you can mount them with the boot command.

QBix has said in the (far) past that nobody has simply taken the time to implement it:

http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=21213

[Smiling Spectre]

Japo, this command now strictly reserved for CDs only.

djc6535, extracting everything in one dir and mount it as floppy usually works. With one exclusion - if game recognize disks by special label in file (like label.dsk or something), and this labels have exactly the same name on every disk but different content, it usually works if you replace exactly this file outside DOSBox during asking of "right" floppy.

[RRS]

...or if the floppies have a split archive with same filename (I think I've seen such thing).

This is one of my major gripes with dosbox (the other is that copying/unpacking files changes their timestamps. Bad with certain patches which check them. Again, fixed only in certain dosbox builds/mods).

[zirkoni]

I use Virtual Floppy Drive to mount the images in Windows and change the disk when needed.
And in DOSBox I mount the virtual floppy drive:
mount a a:\ -t floppy

Originally Posted by zirkoni

I use Virtual Floppy Drive to mount the images in Windows and change the disk when needed.
And in DOSBox I mount the virtual floppy drive:
mount a a:\ -t floppy

In linux you will accomplish the same thing, using the command
mount -o loop 1.ima ./mnt

Extract your image files for each disk into separate directories inside the dosbox folder. We'll call them \disk1 and \disk2 for this example. Create a third dummy directory to use as the virtual floppy drive, which we'll call \drive. Keep dosbox windowed (not maximized), and open another window where you can see your dosbox folder on your actual c: drive (or wherever you're keeping the actual directories). Mount \drive in dosbox as your floppy drive ("mount a drive -t floppy"). In the other window, copy the files from \disk1 to \drive. Now go back to the dosbox window and \drive will function as "disk 1". When it comes time to swap disks, just go back the other window and delete or copy over everything in \drive with the files from \disk2; \drive then becomes "disk 2".