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tlrgsxr
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How do I create a DOS 6.22 virtual machine?

I bought Fusion and I have MS DOS 6.22 on three floppy disks and and supplimental disk. How do I create a virtual machine?

It doesn't work from the floppy. It doesn't see it.

I tried making images with Disk Utility. It doesn't work from a dmg or cdr image file, or a dmg image file re-named to either flp or iso. In all cases, boot record not found.

Thanks, Chris

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rcardona2k
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I looked in the thread and I didn't see where you added a floppy device to the VM (just making sure), that's what shows in the Virtual Machine menu? The extension should be .flp. In the floppy menu the 1.44mb image should be chosen and the floppy should be "connected". When you want to change floppies, disconnect the image, change images and re-connect.

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Yaztromo
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Create your diskette images using the built-in dd command from the Terminal. The basic syntax for this is:

dd if=/dev/floppy of=outfile.img bs=512

That's it. You may want to check and see what device name your floppy drive gets -- you can do this by connecting your USB floppy, opening Disk Utility, control-clicking on the floppy icon, selecting "Information", and looking for the "Disk Identifier" field. You'll still need to put "/dev/" in front of whatever it tells you here (I unfortunately don't have a USB floppy drive, so I can't test it myself to see what it's called).

Note that DD is also the tool you'd use to create an empty floppy for use with VMware:

dd if=/dev/zero of=outfile.img bs=512 count=2880

HTH!

Yaz.

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tlrgsxr
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Thanks for the reply. To clarify my first post, I made a mistake... when I re-named the dmg's to flp, Fusion wouldn't even recognize them as images. In the other three cases, it was boot record not found.

Anyway, I tried your suggestion and entered the following in terminal...

dd if=/dev/disk1 of=dos1.img bs=512

As per Disk Utility, the disk identifier is "disk1".

And got the following error...

dd: /dev/disk1: Resource busy

Any other ideas?

Thank you, Chris

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Yaztromo
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On my way home tonight, I decided to borrow a USB floppy drive from the lab I work at, so I could verify the directions for you, and ran into the same problem.

Fortunately, the solution is simple -- from within the Disk Utility, simply select the floppy and press the "unmount" button (don't hit eject!). Now you should be able to create your diskette image without any hassle.

HTH!

Yaz.

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tlrgsxr
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I did as posted and I was able to make the disk images with terminal. Thanks. They ended in .img and I tried to create the virtual machine with them, but got the same error as before (see attached).

More info - The disks I'm using are labeled...

Microsoft MS-DOS 6.22 Plus Enhanced Tools

Operating System

So, they're not upgrades or anything, they're the complete OS.

The manual instructions are as follows...

1. Insert Setup Disk 1 in drive A (your startup drive).

2. Start (or restart) your computer.

3. Follow the instructions on your screen.

Any ideas? Thanks again, Chris

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rcardona2k
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I looked in the thread and I didn't see where you added a floppy device to the VM (just making sure), that's what shows in the Virtual Machine menu? The extension should be .flp. In the floppy menu the 1.44mb image should be chosen and the floppy should be "connected". When you want to change floppies, disconnect the image, change images and re-connect.

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tlrgsxr
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Thank you both! I got it working using your instructions!

Thanks again, Chris

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lkilbourn
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I have read your posts about installing Dos 6.22 on a Mac VM Fussion, I have the same problem, except I do not have a usb floppy drive to install disks from,

At my job, we use dos for accounting and I would really like to be able to take work home to finish. I don't really want another computer so putting Fussion on makes great sense.

I have tried download several image disk but nothing seems to work.

Is there any way to get the dos off the disk onto a usb drive or CD to install on my mac using fussion?

thanks!

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WoodyZ
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IIRC You need to install from the floppies however that includes an Image of the Floppy or the Floppy itself. If you do not have a USB Floppy Drive the you will need to get access to a system that has a Floppy Drive on it and create Uncompressed Images of those floppies. How you get the Images from that system you create them on to your system is a different subject and you will have to utilize whatever that system has to offer to transfer those images, like a USB Thumb-drive, CD-ROM, email them to yourself etc.

BTW I just can't believe that in the 21st Century anyone is doing Corporate Accounting in DOS. Seems a little absurd to me. Smiley Happy

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Yaztromo
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There are a lot of diskette imaging tools available out there for every OS imaginable, so all you really need to do is to find a system with a floppy drive, make diskette images on it, and then either copy them to a USB drive or transfer them to your Mac over a network (using FTP or e-mail or whatever works best for you).

If you don't have access to a suitable diskette imaging tool, you can always go and download Damn Small Linux, burn it to a CD-ROM, and then boot a PCwith a floppy drive from it, and use the dd command as described earlier in this thread to make a set of diskette images. Copy them to a USB drive, and then copy them to your Mac and go from there.

Or, you could do significantly less work, press the "Download" button in VMware Fusions Library window, and search for DOS. There are pre-built FreeDOS images available for download that will require virtually no effort on your part to get up and running.

HTH!

Yaz.

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victory
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I've used two different methods for creating floppy disk image files for use w/ VPC (and now Fusion)

A. Imaging a diskette on a Mac with an external USB floppy drive:

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BTW, 'thank you' to the Fusion devs for including the 'read only' option when using floppy disk images. ('Floppy Settings…' panel). Under VPC I used to have 'write-protect' a floppy image file via chmod or locking it with the Finder. Both methods seemed really klugey.

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rcardona2k
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I echo the recommendations above. When you make images of your floppies they should ultimately have an extension of .img or .flp. An .flp extension is recognizable by all VMware products. An .img extension has the benefit that is mountable in the Finder by double-clicking the icon.

To summarize, on a Mac or a PC with a floppy drive (even if you have to buy a $10 usb drive at Fry's, etc), you need to make "disk images" which capture the contents of an entire floppy into a file that can be copied to a usb drive, burned on to a cd/dvd, emailed or otherwise transferred to your Mac with Fusion.

In a MacOS 9 machine (most of these have floppies), you would use Disk Copy 4.2 or 6.3 to make a .image file (rename to .img)

in OS X with a usb floppy drive, using Disk Utility you would use New Image... from the floppy device (e.g. /dev/disk1 on my mini), to make a .dmg file (rename to .img)

In Windows XP, you use can one of my favorite utilities WinImage, here would you would use Read Disk, then Save as an .img. or in WinHex the option is Disk Tools > Clone Disk and save as a .img. Email or copy this to a usb drive or burn to cd/dvd.

In Linux (any downloadable LiveCD), open a Console shell, and type dd if=/dev/fd0 of=~/floppy.img bs=512, then you email to yourself, or copy the floppy.img file from your home directory to usb drive or burn to cd/dvd.

In Fusion, importantly you would make sure your VIrtual Machine has a floppy drive by checking in Virtual Machine > Settings and if not using the "+" symbol to add one. Then select Add Floppy... (A default new MS-DOS virtual machine does NOT have a floppy). Make sure the new floppy is "connected" and select use floppy image... and reference he first bootable image you made from above. To "switch floppies" during the installation process, you would choose Virtual Machine > Floppy > Disconnect Floppy, and Choose your next floppy image... and pick Connect Floppy. DOS may not need the disconnect/connect but other OS's do, so that's a best practice.

Good luck!

Edit: Added WinImage as alternative for Windows XP

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jcreuzig
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Hello,

I'm also trying to install DOS 6.22. So, I'm trying to follow along here and most of the explanations are clear -- I obtained a copy of rawread.exe and created images (*.img) files of my original DOS 6.22 diskettes.

When I try to create a virtual machine and designate that it install the operating system, I receive the error pictured above.

When I try to create a virtual machine without designating that it should install the OS, it boots to DOS from the .img file, but then I get the following:

Starting MS-DOS...

Program too big to fit in memory

A:\>

When I try to run setup I get the same error message.

What to try?

Thanks,

John

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arachnoman
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THIS works perfectly, I followed the instructions and it worked great. Image your floppies, follow the instructions to use the floppy images (I created them in Linux using dd of my DOS diskettes). I tried this making the images using the Disk Utility .app and dd images in Linux, just use .img extensions. I emailed myself the images and put them on the Mac hard drive. I can't believe how easy it was once I followed these instructions. Works great!!!!

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I've used two different methods for creating floppy disk image files for use w/ VPC (and now Fusion)

A. Imaging a diskette on a Mac with an external USB floppy drive:

Plug in the USB drive and insert diskette. Wait for diskette to mount.

Open the Disk Utility.app

Select the USB floppy drive device from list on the left

From the File menu : New Disk Image… -> Disk Image from your OS calls the floppy drive. (e.g. /dev/fd0, /dev/floppy, etc)

B2. If running DOS/Windows

Google for 'rawread.exe' or other similar utilities.

NOTES: There are numerous DOS-based utilities for reading/writing disk floppy disk images. (They're usually included on installation CDs for various OS distros as a way to create bootable installation diskettes if the system can't boot from CD-ROM). Whatever utility you choose, just remember to name the resulting image file with an .img extension so Fusion can see it. While I'm not entirely sure what other floppy image formats Fusion reads (DMF? IMZ?), it's best to stick with an app that just creates a raw, sector-by-sector dump of the diskette.

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lkilbourn
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arachnoman,

thanks for the help, but I still can't get it to work. What am I doing

wrong still? Some setting?

I also have a MBP running 10.5.1. I downloaded the VM update 1.1

I plugged in the USB Floppy

I inserted my Official MS-Dos 6.22 disk 1

it mounted

I opened Disk Utilities and selected the Floppy device,(I also tried a

2nd time selecting the floppy disk itself.)

I selected New Disk Image..Disk image from...

I saved as dos1 for 1st disk, dos2 for 2nd & dos3 for 3rd.

I saved as Image Format DVD/CD with Encryption none.

3 files were made, I renamed the extension of each from .cdr to .img.

I opened Fussion and selected New, clicked on continue,

Operating System, other, version MS-DOS, then continue,

saved MS-DOS where Virtual Machines, then continue

disk size 1 GB, continue (tried 2 GB also)

the check box is on start virtual machine

I clicked on "use operating system installing disk image file and

selected dos1.img, finished.

It opens up the VM Dos window, a little spinner spins on the bottom line

then it tells me no bootable disk.

Am I missing something here? Some setting in Fussion that isn't

reading the files has bootable disks?

Are all 3 disks suspose to be combined into one? Will it ask for me to

select my dos2.img, then dos3.img?

Thanks so much!

Lee

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admin
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I clicked on "use operating system installing disk image file and

selected dos1.img, finished.

This is probably the problem - this option refers to a CD image, but you have a floppy image. You need to add a Floppy device (under Virtual Machine > Settings) when the VM is off, and point that at your img files.

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arachnoman
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lets take it up a notch...anyone got WIN311 images? i torrented a few diff ones and some images are bad. thanks

arachnoman

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admin
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Unless I missed an announcement, Microsoft still holds the rights to Windows 3.11 and it's not in the public domain, so this is not an appropriate topic of discussion.

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