[gif32]

I have a particular piece of DOS software that needs to directly access a floppy disk. If I buy Virtual PC 7 and a USB floppy drive for my PowerBook, will DOS from within Virtual PC be able to access it? This particular program will only run in native DOS by the way - a Windows DOS box is no good.


Thanks for your advice!

[Person Man]

Originally posted by gif32:
I have a particular piece of DOS software that needs to directly access a floppy disk. If I buy Virtual PC 7 and a USB floppy drive for my PowerBook, will DOS from within Virtual PC be able to access it? This particular program will only run in native DOS by the way - a Windows DOS box is no good.


Thanks for your advice!

No. You probably won't be able to find any USB drivers for DOS, which is what you would need for DOS to be able to see the drive. Virtual PC used to be able to use floppy disk images as though they were actual floppies in a drive. This worked at least through version 6, and it should work in 7 (unless I'm mistaken). You could use the USB floppy drive to make the disk image and then mount said image in VPC under DOS.

The only way that a USB floppy drive would work would be under Windows.

[Unseelie]

Originally posted by gif32:
I have a particular piece of DOS software that needs to directly access a floppy disk. If I buy Virtual PC 7 and a USB floppy drive for my PowerBook, will DOS from within Virtual PC be able to access it? This particular program will only run in native DOS by the way - a Windows DOS box is no good.


Thanks for your advice!

It will work. Floppy drives just show up as an a: drive in Virtual PC. The only gotcha is that if you then enable it as a USB device in the VM settings, it will disappear from the Mac and be unusuable (no DOS USB support).