Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Tue, 2 May 2006, sindi keesan wrote:

> I typed
> qemu freedos.img

The FreeDOS image file I downloaded unpacked to freedos.dsk .  I issued 
qemu /path/to/freedos.dsk and it booted and ran fine (apart from the weird 
azerty keyboard layout).  There were definitely files and folders on c:\ 
so you're doing something not quite right--just not sure what.

> How do I access files on the hard drive or floppy drive from qemu?
> C: appears to be empty.  A: is not accessible (or the floppy disk may
> have been defective, I suppose).

You can make a virtual a:\drive available by booting with -fda 
/path/to/floppy.img where floppy.img is a bootfloppy image you've created. 
You can mount that image and copy things into it, then unmount it and 
virtually insert the floppy by pressing ctrl-alt-2 and issuing the right 
command (Steven gave some directions about this).  If you could set up 
networking for FreeDOS, it would be much simpler yet to access the host's 
filesystem (if you, e.g., run an ftp server on your host's filesystem). 
I know nothing at all about setting up networking under DOS though, so 
you're on your own there.  But, maybe simplest of all . . .

> James said he tested Wordperfect for DOS in Freedos under qemu.  How?
> Sindi

I mounted the FreeDOS image as a looped file, then copied WP files to it, 
then unmounted and booted from it.  I gave some directions about how to 
mount a qemu image (needs a special bootsector parameter--check the 
archive for the last week or so to find that parameter).  I had some 
trouble getting WP to run: I kept getting a "packed file is corrupt" error 
message when I would try to start it from the c:\ prompt.  I then copied 
DC to FreeDOS (DOS commander file mgr) and, for some reason, was able to 
run the executable from it.

James