Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

On Thu, 4 May 2006, James Miller wrote:

> On Thu, 4 May 2006, sindi keesan wrote:
>
> > How would I make something 10MB in size so I could add programs to it?  Do
> > I make a larger empty image with dd and then copy dos.img to it before
> > using qemu?
>
> I would do it like so:
>
> ----------------------------
> qemu-img create dos.img 10M
> ----------------------------

On someone's advice, I just deleted qemu-img because I was told I could 
use dd instead.

dd if=/dev/zero of=dos.img bs=1024k8 count=10  ??
That is how I make images for loop BL3 or the camera USB linux.

> Then, you can boot the qemu image with your floppy drive specified as
> follows:
>
> ------------------------------------------------
> qemu -hda /path/to/dos.img -fda /dev/fd0 -boot a
> ------------------------------------------------

This boots from a DOS boot disk and then accesses C; as dos.gim?

> qemu will boot from the floppy with your dos.img as the HD (future c:\ ).
> Then run fdisk from the Chinese DOS floppies to create an active DOS
> partition on the qemu disk image and to format it.  After you've done that
> you can sys the new qemu c:\ and copy all files from the floppies to it.
> You can also put your WP floppies into the floppy drive and copy files
> from them over to the new qemu c:\ .  You'll need to virtually remove and
> insert the floppies via qemu monitor (ctrl-alt-2--issue "help" there for a
> list of valid commands, ctrl-alt-1 takes you back to the running qemu
> image).  You should be able to reboot without the -fda switch and go
> straight into the new DOS running from your qemu image.  It will
> undoubtedly take some experimentation to figure out all this.

This is sounding awfully complicated but it sounds like once it is set up 
it should work properly.

> James
>
> PS  You can apparently use dd to create your qemu hard drive images too,
> but since I've not done that I'll let others describe how that would work.
> I prefer to use qemu-img (probably a script that calls dd?).

We got as far as making the dos.img from a 7.1 boot floppy disk
dd if=/dev/fd0 of=dos71.img
go into X (I keep forgetting)
qemu -fda dos71.img

It boots and gives us a prompt.
It runs a little text editor.

WP5.1 for DOS does not load from the CLI, as you said.  We were going to 
try loading it with 4DOS.

Pictview displays the first 199 lines of a 50K image and complains about 
not enough memory.  We did not have himem.sys running.  It also had a thin 
area of vertical stripes at the top.

At 640 res, the rightmost part of the screen does not display.
At 800 res, I could move the qemu window up and left to get it all on the 
screen.  It is more than 80 columns wide - maybe 90?  Less than 600 high, 
about 480 I think.  I have to move it every time I load qemu.

Mode mono is not supported.  I was hoping to use it for Wordperfect.

We did not test USB because the computer stopped mounting the floppy disks 
and then stopped booting again.  We have a 700MHz replacement which I hope 
will actually work but has only one ISA slot and I already used the 
external modem in another computer with too few slots.  I don't really 
need AWE sound in every computer.  Maybe I should learn ALSA for the SB 
Live!   I still can't get Linux to play midis to the piano.  DOS works.

Our DOS CAD program loaded but displayed vertical blue stripes over the 
image.  Drmouse loaded and moves around but as soon as you move it the 
screen goes to solid green with a few dots of color.

I tried to left click to exit and got 'Press Ctrl-Alt to exit grab".  I 
can't use the mouse in the CAD program.

To exit qemu I log out of X - is there a better way?

We don't need to run a CAD program under linux or even use a mouse.  I 
will try (in another computer) to get WP51/DOS to run with some file 
manager, hopefully in the DOS floppy disk image before expanding it to 
hard drive.

Sindi