On 17 Aug 2024 at 9:36, Eric Auer via Freedos-user wrote: > > Hi Frank, > > > I kind of second that :-) > > > > DOSEMU has traditionally been "special". > > Different from e.g. QEMU in that DOSEMU was a relatively thin > > emulation layer. Not emulating what needed not be emulated. > > Note that current versions do emulate everything, even > including the CPU, given how hardware has become less > suitable for DOS over time. > Hello Eric :-)
thanks for your informed and deep addendum. I don't get to learn this stuff so neatly packed from just the docs. > I would NOT give either a raw actual block device. Sure, > you could technically say the device can be used instead > of a disk image, but you would have to tell Linux about > the risk of competing access, which is a problem avoided > by using dedicated disk IMAGES. The feature of letting a > directory appear as a drive is very convenient in that > sense, because competing access is no problem, plus you > immediately see changes from Linux in DOS and vice versa. > Absolutely, I agree with all your points. Note that "what's useful" depends on your particular task/assignment. Ages ago, I had a use case of some sort, where I needed the disk (block device) to be physically removable, and to have the DOS FDISK.EXE to be able to partition the drive etc. I don't recall all the details anymore... I know that it was useful to have a CF card in a USB reader (rather than straight on an IDE channel), visible to some low-level HDD tools running in DOSEMU, to do their thing = produce a CF card able to boot DOS on bare metal, under a picky old BIOS that used to make a fuss about CHS vs. LBA etc. geometry. I couldn't seem to persuade Linux native tools to do what I needed back then. Using Linux and DOSemu meant that I didn't have to reboot the machine doing the "CompactFlash preloads" inbetween swapping the cards in the reader, and I didn't have to rely on the CF cards having the same geometry (which at the time was a stumbling block). I don't recall what the actual application scenario was... must've been like 2 decades ago. This conversation thread has just tickled my old memories of antics (unfug) like these being possible and marginally useful back then :-) Frank _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
