Little question on Bochs (I hope it's a little question for you guys)

I want to make say a disk image of ~200MB and put some files on it.
Then I want to make a boot floppy image with say DOS on it. Now when it's booted up, I get a command prompt with "A:\"

When I tick in "C:" it doesn't change to "C:\" because it says "C:" doesn't exist, while I have this line in my "bochsrc.txt":

ata0-master: type=disk, path="test.img", mode=flat, cylinders=406, heads=16, spt=63

So, any suggestions?

If you just created a blank image, then you should fdisk and format it before use. fdisk and format should be on any DOS or windows rescue floppy.

That's a plug-out-of-the-socket level answer. if the problem is not about that, please be more specific.

I've formatted it with Windows (first mounted it with WinImage), should be enough, no?

Basicly my question is: How can I startup Bochs with DOS and have a virtual harddrive with an image to use that disk with Bochs in DOS as C: or such.

Probably not. Winimage may not create a partition table, it just formats the image.

Basically: use bximage to create the image, put the windows 9x or similar boot floppy in place of a.img, use fdisk, use format C:

I've created the image with 'bximage' tool from Bochs.

But what do you exactly mean by put the boot floppy in place of the .img? I can't boot with Bochs from the image or could I? Cuz I've tried putting in a bootsector from Win98 CD onto it and tried booting up, but it failed.

Ok. Let's go heavy-time.
Can you post your whole .bochsrc (bxrc) from the first-post test?
Which version of Bochs do you use?
What sort of expirience you had with DOS before?

a.img is the boot floppy. As i understood, you loaded from the floppy (since there was A:\)?

The boot device is defined by the "boot: disk" line in the bxrc. It's "disk", "floppy" or "cdrom" for newer versions and "a","c" or "d" for older versions.

"tried putting in a bootsector from Win98 CD onto it" means first sectors of CDROM image or boot sector loaded for floppy emulation?
Because boot sectors are significantly diffirent between floppys, hard drives and cdroms. Putting floppy boot sector on hard drive can work only by a miracle.

"But what do you exactly mean by put the boot floppy in place of the .img" Make an image of the boot floppy with winimage, save it as a.ima, put the line "floppya: 1_44="a.ima", status=inserted
" in the bxrc, select boot from floppy.

I'm an advanced PC user mate Worked with DOS alot, but just not with Bochs you know

I'm using Bochs-2.2.6 and I used DOSBox before.

Heres my 'bochsrc.txt'


My test.img is a created image with 'bximage.exe' and I've mounted it as T: in WINDOWS (not Bochs) then I formatted it using Windows, and I was able to put files on it with Windows and then unmounted the drive, WinImage saw the files on the image so I assume that part went okay.

My boot sector as one of my own country language, it's one from Windows 98 SE CD in NL language, I've called it 'msdos.img'.

Well that's about it, I hope you can help me out mate, would be great, anyways I appreciate all the help till now too of course

bxrc is correct. Ive tested it with the working HD image, and C: is readable.
That means that the problem is in the disk image.
And i suspect it's in the absence of MBR&partition table.
So, best solution is to repartition the image from bochs using disk tools, that should be on the msdos.img.

"My boot sector as one of my own country language, it's one from Windows 98 SE CD in NL language, I've called it 'msdos.img'" sounds like terminology incompatibility from my side. Got it now.

"I've mounted it as T: in WINDOWS (not Bochs)" That's a bit confusing. Youve used some DAEMON Tools-like program? It's likely, that the program creates virtual partition, not disk, and windows format wasn't able to make the MBR record.

When you loaded the image with winimage, was there a "Select the partition to connect to" dialog?

Check the contents of the HD image. In the beginning there should be some code followed by "Invalid partition table Error loading operating system Missing operating system"-like strings, then some empty space, followed by the similar structure, but with diffirent strings. (MBR then first partition boot sector).

btw, check if the image is not in NTFS.

"sounds like terminology incompatibility from my side. Got it now."
Works perfectly here (in non-virtual PC)

"That's a bit confusing. Youve used some DAEMON Tools-like program? It's likely, that the program creates virtual partition, not disk, and windows format wasn't able to make the MBR record."
I've used WinImage to mount it.

"When you loaded the image with winimage, was there a "Select the partition to connect to" dialog?"
Nope didn't see any of that dialog.

"btw, check if the image is not in NTFS."
Windows formatted it as FAT32, so it's not NTFS hehe.

Now I think you're right on the MBR stuff, I need to partition the image, but can you recommend me any tools? WinImage won't see the drive which I mounted, and my XP install doesn't have 'fdisk' but Win98 should right? (Edit: checked the Win98 image and extracted 'fdisk' tool )

Oh wait now I get it, the harddrive image was loaded anyway in Bochs, even if it didn't contain any information yet!

So what I did is, boot up from floppy, and partitioned the image, just like in a real PC, thanks mate !

One last question: how can I make Bochs run in fullscreen? I've checked the sample bochsrc.txt but these solutions didn't work for me.

hi TDCNL,
i used boch before, but now using vmware, would suggest you to take a look on vmware player (it is free) and is able to run in fullscreen.

http://www.vmware.com
some of its features:
- network (NAT, bridge), cdrom, floppy (floppy drive/image), usb, audio, scsi/ide disk are supported.
- run fullscreen, create multiple snapshots
- and more.

sounds good, going to try VMware Player, but can't Bochs run in fullscreen?

VMWare Player can't create virtual machines -- you're pretty much stuck to use what others have done. You need VMWare Workstation or others for that, and they have some $$$ cost

I suggest you try out Qemu (i'm not sure where you can find it, do a search, sorry). It's faster than Bochs and works ok for me.

check this site:
http://petruska.stardock.net/software/VMware/

it got utilities that would makes the vmware player functions like vmware workstation and of course, without a penny.

fyi, vmware offers vmware workstation for trial 30 days, you could try it too if you don't like the trouble vmware player gives.

TDCNL: No problems.

Bochs cannot run in fullscreen with win32 gui, and afaik, any other win32-compatible gui.

Qemu can. And qemu is a bit faster than bochs.

Vmware is both, but with strange speed-variations.

What do you expect from virtual machines?

OS debugging is best done in bochs.
DOS programs and games is best in dosbox.
General OS what-it-looks-like is better done in vmware.
Virus tests is better be done in any.
Qemu is good when you are not on ia-32.

Vmware player is free. But there is a big loophole in the licensing - noone prohibits you from editing the VM config files manually, and it's a simple text file. Just download the trial, make a bunch of virtual machines, and run them in the player when trial is over.

lots of virtual machines here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_virtual_machines

Thx for help Artlav, but "Qemu is good when you are not on ia-32." why is that? Doesn't it work on good performance otherwise?

"Qemu is good when you are not on ia-32." means if you want to run x86 linux applications on your pda, or trying to run windows on mac, or dos games on sparc server qemu is one of the best solutions.
Ofcourse, it works fast on x86 too.

Oh of course, lol hey now I think this turns a little bit to a Qemu question not Bochs but.... when I start Qemu it doesn't display anything, and a simple command line with a disk image file doesn't run anything either, I've checked docs but can't really figure out how to run Qemu.

Qemu is configured from command line.
For your above example qemu equivalent will be:

qemu -fda msdos.img -hda test.img -boot a -m 32

Full list of commands can be found at http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu