Settings Virtual Box

[Gunther]

I've installed Oracle's Virtual Box. It's easy to use and free - these are definitive advantages. At the moment, I've 2 images running: DOS 7.1 and FreeDOS. But there's one tricky question: Because for Windows 98 guests (and below) the so called Guest Additions are not supported. So, such clients can't have Shared Folders and USB drives won't work. It is possible to implement data from the Host into the Guest via iso images. But vice versa? Has anyone experiences with such questions?

Gunther

[Antariy]

It is possible to implement data from the Host into the Guest via iso images. But vice versa? Has anyone experiences with such questions?

Gunther, which format have virtual disks (hard) of VB?
For example, WinImage can open virtual disk files of VPC and VMWare, and you can extract files which you wants. But I don't know which is format of VB's disks.



Alex

[FORTRANS]

Hi,

   To get around the shared folders problem, you could
try sharing a network drive or use FTP

Regards,

Steve.

[Gunther]

Thank you FORTRANS,

I'll try that.

Gunther

[Gunther]

Hello FORTRANS,

you could try sharing a network drive or use FTP

Do you remember, which drivers must be installed for DOS network support? Virtual Box installs a PCnet-FAST adaptor with NAT (Network Address Translation), which Win98 will found very quick; but what is with DOS 7.1?

I figured out that WinMount version 3.4 can mount an entire image as virtual drive. That could be an elegant solution. Unfortunately, it's shareware  :(.

Gunther

[japheth]

Hello,

I won't recommend VirtualBox for DOS because

- its "fullscreen mode" for DOS text modes is ludicrous
- its keyboard emulation is "not very good", to say the least. It will drive you mad

What I'm using is Qemu. Not the latest versions, because I made an adjustment to the source ( the Qemu keyboard emulation for DOS is also pretty weak ) and don't want to repeat these actions too often.

The big advantage of Qemu is that you can attach a host's physical drive as a physical drive in the guest. I use a 2 GB USB memory stick, which is drive R: in WinXP and becomes drive D: in FreeDOS/MS-DOS under Qemu.

The "network approach" is possible, but it requires to load the MS network client in DOS, which needs a huge amount of conventional memory. Far worse than the Qemu solution mentioned above.

[Gunther]

The big advantage of Qemu is that you can attach a host's physical drive as a physical drive in the guest.

Sounds interesting.

Not the latest versions

What version would you suggest?

Gunther

[japheth]

What version would you suggest?

I use Qemu v0.10.2 (without 64-bit support) and Qemu v0.9.1 (with 64-bit support). Newer versions most likely also work. However, with v0.10 the focus of Qemu development has shifted to KVM, so it is - or at least was - a bit Linux-oriented and Windows support may have been diminished.

If you just want to edit, assemble/compile and test some software in DOS, Qemu is good and sufficiently fast.

[Gunther]

If you just want to edit, assemble/compile and test some software in DOS, Qemu is good and sufficiently fast.

That's good news. It's exactly my goal. Thank you.

Gunther

[FORTRANS]

Hello FORTRANS,

Do you remember, which drivers must be installed for DOS network support? Virtual Box installs a PCnet-FAST adaptor with NAT (Network Address Translation), which Win98 will found very quick; but what is with DOS 7.1?

Hi Gunther,

   The time I did it, I used the client software from IBM's
Warp Server and the NIC driver.  You can search IBM
and Microsoft's sites for network client software (at least
you used to be able).  I may have tried something from
the following site for TCP/IP as wel l as it was my HP 200LX
that I used on the network.

http://hp200lx.net/super.html

Regards,

Steve N.

[Gunther]

I use Qemu v0.10.2 (without 64-bit support) and Qemu v0.9.1 (with 64-bit support).

I assume your host OS is Windows, isn't it?

Gunther