OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical > Virtualization
How to create Virtual Box floppy disk images without any cruft!
Dave Yeo:
--- Quote from: Steven Levine on August 24, 2024, 09:37:56 pm ---
The 2.88MB diskettes should be XDF format. To read these, you need the XDF filter driver installed. See:
https://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php?topic=1902.0
I don't recall if the filter supported write operations.
--- End quote ---
XDF format was 1.8 or 1.9 MB crammed into a 1.44MB disk, used by the OS/2 floppy install. I can't remember if they were writeable or if loaddskf/savedskf supported them.
Steven Levine:
You are correct for standard media. Not entirely unexpectedly, Michal has written a bit about this topic
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-xdf-diskette-format/
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/floppy-capacity-math/
Jean-Yves:
I've hit another problem.
I downloaded the images from archive.org, renamed them all to .img so that Vbox would understand them, and then run the installer. However, because my virtual hard drive is 4GB, the installer program free-space checking routine has an overflow error and reports -1295516K available (note the minus sign).
Is there a way around this, short of creating a second VM, installing on a smaller hard disk and then copying the installed files and config.sys entries over? Does anyone know whether any other config files are amended/created?
The installer is a .exe so not modifiable rexx.
What's the max HDD size that OS/2 circa 1993 knew about, does anyone know? Should I play safe and give it just 500MB? I've a feeling that ArcaOS wants more though?
RTAN:
Hi Jean-Yves,
You could try creating an *additional* virtual hard drive of a smaller size, say 1GB, and attach that as a Drive-D to your existing VM. Then try installing on Drive-D (instead of Drive-C).
Alternatively you could temporarily shrink the partition of your Drive-C to get past the installer check, then grow it again. Unfortunately whilst I know that older versions of Partition Magic can resize HPFS partitions (e.g. Partition Magic 4) I'm not aware if there are any that can resize the ArcaOS partition type.
Best,
Richard.
Dave Yeo:
Hi Jean-Yves, if you add a drive, 2GB is likely the limit you want to stay below as usually these installers use 32 bit signed variables, any number over about 2GB shows as a negative number.
You can try installing https://ecsoft2.org/vcompat and see if that helps
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