26 Feb
2023
26 Feb
'23
9:44 p.m.
Your troubles with USB floppy drives reinforces my own experiences. They seem to work okay
in windows using a Microsoft written utility but not too well in dos or user written
programs. It’s hit or miss as to if the program will see the usb floppy. However, using a
builtin floppy always seems to work.
Sent from my iPhone
On Feb 26, 2023, at 12:17, Chris Zach via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Hi Henry!
You wanted a SETUP disk for a Deskpro/XE
system, right? Like SP1363
as listed here https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=76542
<https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=76542> ? I was able to do
this in Dosbox-X no problem: mount the local directory with
sp1363.exe as C: or whatever, attach a disk image to A:, and then
let sp1363.exe create the disk image on A: . You can then write the
raw disk image to a 1.44" floppy.
Interesting. I was using DOSBOX, not DOSBOX-X. I tried downloading it, set the A: drive
to be the USB a: drive, and it doesn't work. This time it bombs out with QRST transfer
incomplete.
So I restarted, copied one of the diagnostic floppy images I did have to a filename of
xe.img, mounted it in dosbox-x with the imgmount a (filename) command, then ran QRST and
it seems to have worked.
So if you try to use a USB floppy it can't see it, but if you use an image file it
can. I wonder if Dosbox sees the external floppy as a SCSI device, but when you do an
imgmount it knows to use the real, crappy DMA based routines to access the image file.
Off to copy the image file to the pi, then to the USB floppy, then maybe to get the XE
running. Fascinating, and thank yoU!
CZ