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VirtualXT

A lightweight Turbo PC/XT emulator. · By Andreas Jonsson

Disk Image Questions

A topic by Karl_G created May 05, 2023 Views: 274 Replies: 1
Viewing posts 1 to 2

This app seems to be perfect for my needs, so thank you for creating it! I'm having some issues figuring out the best way to load more software, however. It seems like I can either boot with the default FreeDOS-based image, or specify my own floppy or HD image, but not both at the same time. I would like to be able to mount a second hard drive or at least a floppy image to be able to copy more software onto the VM. I tried creating my own HD image with dosbox-x, but I can't use it with VirtualXT since it tries to boot off of it, and I don't know how I can make it bootable from dosbox.

I finally ended up downloading the FreeDOS image from your git repo, and modifying that in dosbox to add software. Since it was already at capacity, I had to delete some other stuff to make room for it.

Anyway, I just wanted to know if there was a better way to transfer files that I don't know about? Thanks!

Hi!

Glad you like it. :)

There is a GitHub issue open for improving the image mounting experience.

But assuming you are using the SDL desktop version, you should be able to use 1 floppy and 1 harddrive mounted at the same time plus the RIFS file share at Z:
You (re)mount new floppy images by draging image files on to the emulator window.

The RFSI system is/might be a bit buggy atm. but it usually works well enough for some basic file copying between the host and guest system. It does require the VXTDRV driver so make sure it is included if you make your own boot image. RFSI mounts current workdir by default but can be controlled with the '--rfsi' argument. You can start the emulator with '-a' and/or '-c' to mount a image in the corresponding drive. Floppy always have boot priority. This can be overridden with the '--hdboot' argument. 

If you mount a none bootable HD with the '-c' option you can use the included 'freedos.img' boot floppy with '-a' to boot from floppy but have access to your HD.

If you are using the libretro core or web frontend your options are more limited. The libretro frontend can load ZIP archives directly but is limited in its capability of mounting disks at runtime.