Hi guys.

 

I need to run a DOS app from 1994.  I've downloaded the FreeDOS ISO.  I created a VM with one CPU, 128M RAM, and a 250M disk.  When I boot initially, it goes into the FreeDOS setup routine.  I exit to DOS, run fdisk, create and set active a FAT16 partition, and reboot.

 

At that point I get the "partition signature != 55AA" error -- MBR is toast.  Haven't had a chance to format the disk.  Anyway, it never again boots into the FreeDOS iso/setup routine, it just hangs there.

 

Has anyone installed a FreeDOS (or any DOS) VM?  Any advice?  

 

Thanks.

 

ETA turns out I need Windows 3.1, 3.11, or, presumably, 95.

Edited May 18, 20188 yr by tucansam

Haven't watched the video, but maybe you could glean some xml configuration tips? The general setup isn't going to be nearly the same though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhaLtyUfO-s

 

I setup MSDOS6.22 and WFW3.11 in a VM and just executed it as you can see from the attached graphic.  I also included my settings beside it.  As you may suspect I setup the VM on VMWare Workstation than transferred the HDD image file over to unRAID (VMDK for the HDD is the clue).  Maybe that will work for you.

Edited May 19, 20188 yr by BobPhoenix

On 5/18/2018 at 9:31 AM, tucansam said:

Hi guys.

 

I need to run a DOS app from 1994.  I've downloaded the FreeDOS ISO.  I created a VM with one CPU, 128M RAM, and a 250M disk.  When I boot initially, it goes into the FreeDOS setup routine.  I exit to DOS, run fdisk, create and set active a FAT16 partition, and reboot.

 

At that point I get the "partition signature != 55AA" error -- MBR is toast.  Haven't had a chance to format the disk.  Anyway, it never again boots into the FreeDOS iso/setup routine, it just hangs there.

 

Has anyone installed a FreeDOS (or any DOS) VM?  Any advice?  

 

Thanks.

 

ETA turns out I need Windows 3.1, 3.11, or, presumably, 95.

Did you ever get it working?

No.  Gave up, for now.  Probably going to order a 386, 486, Pentium Pro, and Pentium III from ebay at some point and run what I need on actual hardware.

On 5/18/2018 at 6:01 PM, BobPhoenix said:

I setup MSDOS6.22 and WFW3.11 in a VM and just executed it as you can see from the attached graphic.  I also included my settings beside it.  As you may suspect I setup the VM on VMWare Workstation than transferred the HDD image file over to unRAID (VMDK for the HDD is the clue).  Maybe that will work for you.

 

Would you be willing the share your XML? I am trying to put together a 3.1+ windows VM library.

I have floppy images for windows 3.11 WFW and dos 6.22 I also have drivers for TCP-IP and the RTL8139 network interface card for WFW 3.11  I have an operational VM that was native to VMM (KVM/QEMU) and would likely just need some unRAID specific tweaks (like changing out spice for VNC and changing the emulator from kvm-spice to qemu-system-x86_64) let me know if that would be something you would like @sasdakota

 

Have you been able to get unraid VMs to load a floppy image? I don't know the proper syntax to get one to load under UNRAID. Also struggling to get a proper BIOS type of machine emulator setup. Keep getting stuck with no boot drive because the system doesn't know how to manage drives, floppy or harddisk.

Here is my config that got MS-DOS running on UNRAID. I used Virtual box 6.1.40 to install MD-DOS 6.22 Plus Enhanced to a .VDI machine. Converted the VDI to qcow2 file and wrote it in to the XML.

MS-DOS 6.22 Plus Enhanced.xml

here is my WFW 3.11 XML rough ported to unraid from VMM, may still need to clean up the vm console as noVNC didn't like this quite yet.

 

I attached floppies through GUI in VMM but you could likely do it through virsh editing while the VM is live, I can do some troubleshooting on that later if you would like but I have to go to work soon.  At me specifically if I can help further as I sometimes don't get notifications from this thread.

WFW 3.11 tcp-ip.xml

So I have the virsh commands for changing the Floppies/CD-Roms in a running VM here it is with breakdown:

change-media [domain name] [vm-device-tag] [fully qualified path to disk to attach] --live

should look like this (at least for me it did):

 

            change-media "Windows 3.11 For Workgroups" fda "/mnt/user/isos/Microsoft MS-DOS 6.22 Plus Enhanced Tools (3.5)/Disk1.img" --live

 

this command should return a reply of:

 

           "successfully updated media"

 

if it was successful

 

XML for a floppy drive should look something like this:

<disk type="file" device="floppy">
  <driver name="qemu" type="raw"/>
  <target dev="fda" bus="fdc"/>
  <readonly/>
  <boot order="1"/>
  <address type="drive" controller="0" bus="0" target="0" unit="0"/>
</disk>

 

There are other flags like --update and --eject that may be useful for higher level OSs that track drive states, MS-Dos does not seem to do so.

 

hope these help.

Thank you for updating with that info.

Performing the install via virtualbox and moving the image and config seems to work well enough for my use. I wish UNRAID supported mounting/unmounting and changing floppies through GUI.

 

So far I have MS-DOS 6.22, WinFW3.11, NT 3.1 work/server installs completed. I am working my way up to the whole library of Win/NT systems then hoping to go back and get networking setup to have mock domains.

Edited December 31, 20223 yr by sasdakota
typo