CD/DVDs images, i.e., ISO 9660. .img files are for floppy disk images,
and can be either compressed or not.
If I could mount floppies, that would be fantastic too. But
I just tried to mount a raw floppy, and it said that my
image was corrupt. What format does Windows support?
I have this available:
Supported formats: blkdebug blklogwrites blkreplay blkverify bochs cloop copy-on-read dmg file ftp ftps host_device http https luks nbd null-aio null-co parallels qcow qcow2 qed quorum raw replication sheepdog throttle vdi vhdx vmdk vpc vvfat
Or does Windows 10 provide a way to create a floppy?
Windows usually supported ISO 9660 extensions like Rock Ridge, Joliet,
and El Torito.
It appears I have no interest in CDs because there is no BIOS
call to access them. Or maybe there is, in which case maybe
I'll add support for them.
If the other format Joe mentioned works for you, that's great, but it
probably won't work on older OSes, including older versions of Windows.
At that level I don't need it to work on older versions of
Windows. I support older versions of Windows at the
PDPCLIB-based application level, not this level. I provide
a route for people to upgrade from unsupported Win95
to supported PDOS/386.
In particular, if Win95 users are nervous about that, my
desire is to boot from USB stick, leaving the Win95
(or whatever) installation undisturbed.
I'm particularly interested in computers that have had
a hard disk crash and it costs too much to replace, but
booting from USB is an option.
BTW, the VHD format can still be burned using Win32
Disk Imager to USB stick and booted on real hardware.
That was tested last night.
That means that the only software that needs to be
installed on a Windows 10 PC is Win32 Disk Imager.
Plus maybe Bochs if you have a crappy BIOS. And
someone needs to create a proper hard disk image
using Freedos, but I have already done that and put
it on my website. Everything else you need (ie a C
compiler mainly) can be downloaded from my website.
"zip" would be good too, and is now in focus.
Does Windows not have something to replace Win32
Disk Imager? I wonder how difficult it is to write a
a command line program to do what it does. Copy a
file, basically. How difficult has that been made?
Oh, you also need Bochs to access the internet
while waiting for Jens to carpet-bomb Taiwan.
Probably a Freedos image would be good for the
time being though. It will still be a while before a
32-bit public domain version of fdisk using ANSI
escape sequences is available. And even longer
before Open Watcom is available.
But everything above has source code, although it
won't work with gccwin, or at least the windows.h
that comes with PDOS. But recent experience with
micro-emacs suggests that maybe that is not too
difficult to add, if you still continue to use
Microsoft's kernel32.dll and msvcrt.dll.
Oh, and Open Watcom needs to be installed too,
eventually, probably running under Freedos, to
build IO.SYS.
The vague goal appears to be to wean the development
environment off Windows and onto Freedos, which could
then be booted stand-alone from USB stick.
Freedos+HX+doslfn+PDPCLIB-msvcrt.dll has everything
that is required if you have a working serial port and
modem. Oh, you also need a computer with two or
preferably 3 USB sticks that turn into hard disks. The
computer that I am experimenting on doesn't seem to
be able to cope with the 3rd USB stick. On top of
returning a value of 1 for BosFixedDiskStatus(), which
I have learnt to ignore. Also it seems the second hard
USB stick needs more than 5 retries with BosDiskReset()
being done, some of the time. 500 retries stops the
intermittent failure, but causes bootup to take several
minutes when the 3rd USB stick, 4th drive, given that
the real hard disk is included, is accessed and either
unavailable or available but unsupported.
I really wasn't expecting even 1 retry to be necessary
for a USB stick emulating a hard disk. Nor a parameter
error for doing a status. The hard disk doesn't get that
error. I think that because most OSes (but MSDOS does)
don't use the BIOS, no-one has spent effort creating a
robust BIOS. But I would like effort spent making great
BIOSes/UEFI. Or for the functionality to be flashable.
Flash part of Linux onto an SD card inside the computer.
Let the computer manufacturers take the risk of using
virus-licensed copyrighted software.
BFN. Paul.