• Probably OT: WfW 3.11 img files to iso ?

    From scbs29@21:1/5 to All on Sun Nov 24 11:00:34 2024
    Hello all
    for my own amusement I wsh to set WfW 3.11 as a virtual machine in VMWare Workstation Pro.
    I have downloaded the img files for WfW but cannot seem to find any information as to how to convert
    these (all 8) to an iso file to use for seting up the virtual machine.
    Trying to unzip them leads to being told that their format is unrecognised.
    Can anyone please help ?
    TIA

    --
    remove fred before emailing

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  • From MikeS@21:1/5 to All on Sun Nov 24 11:49:09 2024
    On 24/11/2024 11:00, scbs29 wrote:
    Hello all
    for my own amusement I wsh to set WfW 3.11 as a virtual machine in VMWare Workstation Pro.
    I have downloaded the img files for WfW but cannot seem to find any information as to how to convert
    these (all 8) to an iso file to use for seting up the virtual machine.
    Trying to unzip them leads to being told that their format is unrecognised. Can anyone please help ?
    TIA

    Why not download an iso directly?
    https://windowstan.com/win/windows-3-11/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Sun Nov 24 07:39:22 2024
    On Sun, 11/24/2024 6:00 AM, scbs29 wrote:
    Hello all
    for my own amusement I wsh to set WfW 3.11 as a virtual machine in VMWare Workstation Pro.
    I have downloaded the img files for WfW but cannot seem to find any information as to how to convert
    these (all 8) to an iso file to use for seting up the virtual machine.
    Trying to unzip them leads to being told that their format is unrecognised. Can anyone please help ?
    TIA


    $ file "Great Greetings 3.5 Disk 1.IMA"

    Great Greetings 3.5 Disk 1.IMA:
    DOS/MBR boot sector, code offset 0x3c+2,
    OEM-ID "2s>w~IHC" cached by Windows 9M,
    root entries 224, sectors 2880 (volumes <=32 MB),
    sectors/FAT 9, sectors/track 18,
    serial number 0x18050a08, unlabeled,
    FAT (12 bit), followed by FAT

    It's a "dd" transfer of a floppy diskette to an Image file (1440 KB).
    You could actually use dd to put it back.

    dd if=GG3D1.IMG of=/dev/floppy bs=512 count=2880 # Transfer 2880 sectors to the floppy currently in A:
    # Windows dd, could have a different name for the floppy
    # and this is merely an overall illustration of the transfer

    The next one is more of a puzzle. What kind of floppy diskette is this ???

    $ file "Great Greetings 3.5 Disk 2.IMA"

    Great Greetings 3.5 Disk 2.IMA:
    DOS/MBR boot sector, code offset 0x3c+2,
    OEM-ID "MSDMF3.2", sectors/cluster 4,
    root entries 16, sectors 3360 (volumes <=32 MB),
    sectors/FAT 3, sectors/track 21,
    serial number 0x59b9022, label: "GG DISK 2 ",
    FAT (12 bit), followed by FAT

    and so that would not fit on a physical floppy,
    although it might be mountable. I will open with
    7ZIP, the file, after a scan with Windows Defender.

    [Picture]

    https://i.postimg.cc/mkphs1Tr/wfw311.gif

    You can see the files are ready to be extracted, in the 7ZIP dialog on
    the right of the picture. Not that we need to extract them exactly.

    I don't know what the physical equivalent of the 1.6MB floppy
    image is, but if you load that into a virtual floppy in
    the virtualized environment, I don't think the mounter particularly
    cares.

    You can't really copy all the files into one big "blob", because
    while the installer is running, it will say "Insert GG DISK 2"
    and it will be looking for a volume by that name. even though as
    humans, we know that the installer would find all the files it
    needed, if only the detail about the volumes had not been
    included in the installation sequence.

    You can (within reason) include as many virtual things as
    you want. But when an implementation of a virtual thing is
    attempting to be historically accurate

    Primary Master
    Primary Slave
    Secondary Master
    Secondary Slave

    that's a detail of the physical nature of the thing, and
    you can't add more than four IDE storage devices in that example.

    But if you were adding SATA virtual devices, the port count
    can likely go quite high. That's because SATA are all Masters
    and there is nothing about a Port number for SATA that is special
    or of historical significance. You might be able to load the .img
    or .IMA files, onto SATA ports. It would be treated as a "tiny hard
    drive" then. MSDOS might not understand what SATA is though. The
    BIOS would of course use INT0x13 to offer a read service for each
    device, which is how stuff can boot, but is also how DOS accesses
    things later when it is in control.

    I think at the best of times, the floppy controller could
    handle four floppy drives. But this was almost never
    instantiated on PCs, instead you just saw A: and B: capability.

    VMWare is just a pain in the ass to work with, and you have a
    real project ahead of you. Like you, I like the idea of loading
    all medias at once, as if you could have 29 floppies, 17 hard drives,
    and a copy of the Times, but the environment will place limits
    like the one above on what you're doing. And you will have
    the distasteful requirement to "flip floppies" from the Settings
    box, as the install progresses. That takes the fun out of it :-)

    I don't know exactly how to do it, and I don't want to
    spoil your adventure. But the medias, they're just sector by sector
    copies of physical media. That's what .img and .IMA imply, but
    you can always use something like 7-ZIP to look inside and
    see the file system contents in there. If it was corrupted,
    then 7-ZIP will bomb or will show only a fraction of
    the content. Using the 7-ZIP on each item, helps ensure your
    project is worth pursuit. I've pulled stuff from archive.org
    before, that wasn't archived properly, it happens.

    So while transferring to ISO would be super-cool, it's the
    installer logic that will ask for "GG DISK 2" and that's why the
    way they're packaged, will have to be preserved as is, for
    presentation inside VMWare.

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From scbs29@21:1/5 to MikeS on Mon Nov 25 12:00:48 2024
    Thankyou for your reply
    Unfortunately, all I can download from your link is a zip file containing .img files, which I
    already have and cannot as yet find a way to convert these img files to iso.
    I have a vmdk file which is supposed to be for VMWare Workstation but if I try to open it in VMWare I get a message:
    "Windows for Workgroups 3.11.vmdk" cannot be opened directly.
    Open the virtual machine configuration file (.vmx) instead.
    I do not have the vmx file and have not found it yet.


    On Sun, 24 Nov 2024 11:49:09 +0000, MikeS <MikeS@fred.com> wrote:

    On 24/11/2024 11:00, scbs29 wrote:
    Hello all
    for my own amusement I wsh to set WfW 3.11 as a virtual machine in VMWare Workstation Pro.
    I have downloaded the img files for WfW but cannot seem to find any information as to how to convert
    these (all 8) to an iso file to use for seting up the virtual machine.
    Trying to unzip them leads to being told that their format is unrecognised. >> Can anyone please help ?
    TIA

    Why not download an iso directly?
    https://windowstan.com/win/windows-3-11/

    --
    remove fred before emailing

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Carlos E.R.@21:1/5 to Paul on Mon Nov 25 13:40:13 2024
    On 2024-11-24 13:39, Paul wrote:
    On Sun, 11/24/2024 6:00 AM, scbs29 wrote:
    Hello all
    for my own amusement I wsh to set WfW 3.11 as a virtual machine in VMWare Workstation Pro.
    I have downloaded the img files for WfW but cannot seem to find any information as to how to convert
    these (all 8) to an iso file to use for seting up the virtual machine.
    Trying to unzip them leads to being told that their format is unrecognised. >> Can anyone please help ?
    TIA


    $ file "Great Greetings 3.5 Disk 1.IMA"

    Great Greetings 3.5 Disk 1.IMA:
    DOS/MBR boot sector, code offset 0x3c+2,
    OEM-ID "2s>w~IHC" cached by Windows 9M,
    root entries 224, sectors 2880 (volumes <=32 MB),
    sectors/FAT 9, sectors/track 18,
    serial number 0x18050a08, unlabeled,
    FAT (12 bit), followed by FAT

    It's a "dd" transfer of a floppy diskette to an Image file (1440 KB).
    You could actually use dd to put it back.

    dd if=GG3D1.IMG of=/dev/floppy bs=512 count=2880 # Transfer 2880 sectors to the floppy currently in A:
    # Windows dd, could have a different name for the floppy
    # and this is merely an overall illustration of the transfer

    The next one is more of a puzzle. What kind of floppy diskette is this ???

    $ file "Great Greetings 3.5 Disk 2.IMA"

    Great Greetings 3.5 Disk 2.IMA:
    DOS/MBR boot sector, code offset 0x3c+2,
    OEM-ID "MSDMF3.2", sectors/cluster 4,
    root entries 16, sectors 3360 (volumes <=32 MB),
    sectors/FAT 3, sectors/track 21,
    serial number 0x59b9022, label: "GG DISK 2 ",
    FAT (12 bit), followed by FAT

    and so that would not fit on a physical floppy,
    although it might be mountable. I will open with
    7ZIP, the file, after a scan with Windows Defender.

    There were at the time other formats for floppies than the standard one.
    They changed number of sectors (tracks were fixed, it was a step motor),
    and the sizes of gaps and such. They were "bigger" in bytes than normal floppies, if the quality of the media was good. At the end of the floppy
    era quality turned bad.

    I remember a magazine article that described in detail how to create
    such bigger floppies, providing the formatting tools.

    WfW 3.11 is Windows 3.11? Windows for work groups perhaps? I did not
    know they used such floppies.



    --
    Cheers, Carlos.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Mon Nov 25 09:07:27 2024
    On Mon, 11/25/2024 7:00 AM, scbs29 wrote:
    Thankyou for your reply
    Unfortunately, all I can download from your link is a zip file containing .img files, which I
    already have and cannot as yet find a way to convert these img files to iso. I have a vmdk file which is supposed to be for VMWare Workstation but if I try
    to open it in VMWare I get a message:
    "Windows for Workgroups 3.11.vmdk" cannot be opened directly.
    Open the virtual machine configuration file (.vmx) instead.
    I do not have the vmx file and have not found it yet.

    Create a new virtual machine.

    When it asks what container you want to use for a
    hard drive, instead of letting it create a new container,
    give it the .vmdk container. After the setup of the
    new machine is nominally complete, go back and check
    that the hardware items you would predict would work
    in that era, are available to the Guest.

    When you create the machine, you would ideally want to tell it that
    this is WFW 3.11, so that it can install the quirks for that and
    so that it can select hardware devices (IDE ribbon cable) consistent
    with the era.

    So what you're doing, is "starting with an object, and painting
    a picture around it" .

    One way these little exercises screw up, is the driver additions
    package you can install from the menu, if those are a mis-match
    for the current version of hosting software, the OS in the
    container might not boot. When people "package" an OS in this
    way (in a container), it is best to *not* put the additions
    into the container, and let the recipient of the container
    install the modern version of the additions.

    Paul


    On Sun, 24 Nov 2024 11:49:09 +0000, MikeS <MikeS@fred.com> wrote:

    On 24/11/2024 11:00, scbs29 wrote:
    Hello all
    for my own amusement I wsh to set WfW 3.11 as a virtual machine in VMWare Workstation Pro.
    I have downloaded the img files for WfW but cannot seem to find any information as to how to convert
    these (all 8) to an iso file to use for seting up the virtual machine.
    Trying to unzip them leads to being told that their format is unrecognised. >>> Can anyone please help ?
    TIA

    Why not download an iso directly?
    https://windowstan.com/win/windows-3-11/


    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From T@21:1/5 to All on Mon Nov 25 08:35:37 2024
    On 11/24/24 03:00, scbs29 wrote:
    Hello all
    for my own amusement I wsh to set WfW 3.11 as a virtual machine in VMWare Workstation Pro.
    I have downloaded the img files for WfW but cannot seem to find any information as to how to convert
    these (all 8) to an iso file to use for seting up the virtual machine.
    Trying to unzip them leads to being told that their format is unrecognised. Can anyone please help ?
    TIA

    WFW 3.11 was damned sweet! I installed it a lot
    back "in the day".

    Huh? I just change the .img to .iso. M$
    like to call their ISO's .img.

    Also you might have to use something like Rufus
    to make it bootable.

    Does VMWare not allow you to you to mount
    floppies? I remember copying all the
    floppies to the hard drive and installing
    it from there. There was some trick to it,
    but I have forgotten.

    Oh I remembered. I had DOS 6.22 installed.
    Then copied all the floppies to hard drive
    in one big directory from DOS. Then ran
    the installer from the directory.

    There is a DR-DOS 7 free download out there
    somewhere.

    I actually still carry with me a bootable dos
    6.22 flash drive with me. I use or use to use
    it to install BIOS flash updates. Not had
    to use DOS for that in ages.

    This sounds like an awesome fun project.
    Keep us posted!

    -T

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Mon Nov 25 18:16:58 2024
    On Mon, 11/25/2024 11:35 AM, T wrote:
    On 11/24/24 03:00, scbs29 wrote:
    Hello all
    for my own amusement I wsh to set WfW 3.11 as a virtual machine in VMWare Workstation Pro.
    I have downloaded the img files for WfW but cannot seem to find any information as to how to convert
    these (all 8) to an iso file to use for seting up the virtual machine.
    Trying to unzip them leads to being told that their format is unrecognised. >> Can anyone please help ?
    TIA

    WFW 3.11 was damned sweet!  I installed it a lot
    back "in the day".

    Huh?  I just change the .img to .iso.  M$
    like to call their ISO's .img.

    Also you might have to use something like Rufus
    to make it bootable.

    Does VMWare not allow you to you to mount
    floppies?  I remember copying all the
    floppies to the hard drive and installing
    it from there.  There was some trick to it,
    but I have forgotten.

    Oh I remembered.  I had DOS 6.22 installed.
    Then copied all the floppies to hard drive
    in one big directory from DOS.  Then ran
    the installer from the directory.

    There is a DR-DOS 7 free download out there
    somewhere.

    I actually still carry with me a bootable dos
    6.22 flash drive with me.   I use or use to use
    it to install BIOS flash updates.  Not had
    to use DOS for that in ages.

    This sounds like an awesome fun project.
    Keep us posted!

    -T

    I tried the VMWaare Workstation (free thing), and it pares down
    the hardware types (no SATA drives of course) as
    WFW 3.11 would not know what a SATA drive was.

    The problem I ran into, is I inserted a floppy image,
    but the boot process does not seem to see it, and
    I can't find a boot menu. I tried <ESC> and F2 and
    banging on either of those, does not bring up a
    legacy boot menu for steering. If I can't set the
    floppy ahead of the HDD, this experiment will only
    last microseconds before halting.

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Carlos E.R.@21:1/5 to All on Tue Nov 26 02:44:21 2024
    On 2024-11-25 17:35, T wrote:
    On 11/24/24 03:00, scbs29 wrote:
    Hello all
    for my own amusement I wsh to set WfW 3.11 as a virtual machine in
    VMWare Workstation Pro.
    I have downloaded the img files for WfW but cannot seem to find any
    information as to how to convert
    these (all 8) to an iso file to use for seting up the virtual machine.
    Trying to unzip them leads to being told that their format is
    unrecognised.
    Can anyone please help ?
    TIA

    WFW 3.11 was damned sweet!  I installed it a lot
    back "in the day".

    Huh?  I just change the .img to .iso.  M$
    like to call their ISO's .img.

    Because strictly speaking, they are not ISO.

    ...

    --
    Cheers, Carlos.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jack@21:1/5 to All on Tue Nov 26 01:54:22 2024
    On 25/11/2024 12:00, scbs29 wrote:
    find a way to convert these img files to iso.


    Try this:

    <https://www.imgtoiso.com/>

    Worth a try.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From T@21:1/5 to Paul on Mon Nov 25 21:48:54 2024
    On 11/25/24 15:16, Paul wrote:
    as
    WFW 3.11 would not know what a SATA drive was.

    Hmmmmmm. I have IDE as an option in qemu-kvm.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Tue Nov 26 01:59:56 2024
    On Tue, 11/26/2024 12:48 AM, T wrote:
    On 11/25/24 15:16, Paul wrote:
      as
    WFW 3.11 would not know what a SATA drive was.

    Hmmmmmm.   I have IDE as an option in qemu-kvm.

    That's what you would expect to happen, IDE for

    Primary Master, Primary Slave, Secondary Master, Secondary slave

    Maybe VMWare just isn't the place for this, and VirtualBox will work.
    If I can't figure out how to get a BIOS boot order in VMWare,
    I'd have to move to VirtualBox. Or QEMU-KVM as the case may be.
    I don't know how many of those I've done, maybe only two or so.

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From T@21:1/5 to Paul on Mon Nov 25 23:50:53 2024
    On 11/25/24 22:59, Paul wrote:
    On Tue, 11/26/2024 12:48 AM, T wrote:
    On 11/25/24 15:16, Paul wrote:
      as
    WFW 3.11 would not know what a SATA drive was.

    Hmmmmmm.   I have IDE as an option in qemu-kvm.

    That's what you would expect to happen, IDE for

    Primary Master, Primary Slave, Secondary Master, Secondary slave

    Maybe VMWare just isn't the place for this, and VirtualBox will work.
    If I can't figure out how to get a BIOS boot order in VMWare,
    I'd have to move to VirtualBox. Or QEMU-KVM as the case may be.
    I don't know how many of those I've done, maybe only two or so.

    Paul

    Bios boot and boot order are really easy in qemu-kvm.
    Something is amiss. vmware and virtual box can't be
    that far behind.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Tue Nov 26 03:11:51 2024
    On Tue, 11/26/2024 2:50 AM, T wrote:
    On 11/25/24 22:59, Paul wrote:
    On Tue, 11/26/2024 12:48 AM, T wrote:
    On 11/25/24 15:16, Paul wrote:
       as
    WFW 3.11 would not know what a SATA drive was.

    Hmmmmmm.   I have IDE as an option in qemu-kvm.

    That's what you would expect to happen, IDE for

       Primary Master, Primary Slave, Secondary Master, Secondary slave

    Maybe VMWare just isn't the place for this, and VirtualBox will work.
    If I can't figure out how to get a BIOS boot order in VMWare,
    I'd have to move to VirtualBox. Or QEMU-KVM as the case may be.
    I don't know how many of those I've done, maybe only two or so.

          Paul

    Bios boot and boot order are really easy in qemu-kvm.
    Something is amiss.  vmware and virtual box can't be
    that far behind.

    I think I can get to the EFI boot menu, when in EFI mode,
    by using the <ESC> key. I have used that multiple times,
    like to do a Windows clean install, selecting the DVD drive
    using the EFI popup boot equivalent.

    For some reason, there's no BIOS popup boot. It was suggested
    the key for that was F2, maybe it is <ESC> but so far neither of
    them work. I would have expected the boot process to check the
    hard drive and notice the sector 0 has no 0x55AA signature, and
    that would be enough to kick it over to the floppy drive.

    But so far, it says it can't find a boot device, and the boot
    mode is set to "BIOS".

    VirtualBox on the other hand, puts the boot order in the Setup
    window.

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Carlos E.R.@21:1/5 to Paul on Tue Nov 26 13:40:56 2024
    On 2024-11-26 09:11, Paul wrote:
    For some reason, there's no BIOS popup boot. It was suggested
    the key for that was F2, maybe it is <ESC> but so far neither of
    them work.

    Google says it is indeed F2, but only for a second, so you have to be fast.

    --
    Cheers, Carlos.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Mark Lloyd@21:1/5 to All on Tue Nov 26 19:33:05 2024
    [snip]

    There is a DR-DOS 7 free download out there somewhere.

    Does that support FAT32? MS-DOS didn't add that until 7.1

    I actually still carry with me a bootable dos 6.22 flash drive with me.
    I use or use to use it to install BIOS flash updates. Not had to use
    DOS for that in ages.

    With my latest desktop, you just put the BIOS update on a USB drive in a particular port and press a button while booting. According to the manual,
    you don't need a CPU installed.

    This sounds like an awesome fun project.
    Keep us posted!

    -T



    --
    29 days until the winter celebration (Wednesday, December 25, 2024
    12:00:00 AM for 1 day).

    Mark Lloyd
    http://notstupid.us/

    "The Puritan through Life's sweet garden goes To pluck the thorn and
    cast away the rose." [Kenneth Hare]

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Mark Lloyd@21:1/5 to All on Tue Nov 26 19:52:15 2024
    [snip]

    There were at the time other formats for floppies than the standard one.
    They changed number of sectors (tracks were fixed, it was a step motor),
    and the sizes of gaps and such. They were "bigger" in bytes than normal floppies, if the quality of the media was good. At the end of the floppy
    era quality turned bad.

    I used to have a program that could format floppies in a variety of
    different formats.

    I remember a magazine article that described in detail how to create
    such bigger floppies, providing the formatting tools.

    WfW 3.11 is Windows 3.11? Windows for work groups perhaps? I did not
    know they used such floppies.

    I remember some program installers that came on these larger disks. That
    may have included Windows (3.1 was not, but I no longer have WfW or W95 on floppies).

    --
    29 days until the winter celebration (Wednesday, December 25, 2024
    12:00:00 AM for 1 day).

    Mark Lloyd
    http://notstupid.us/

    "The Puritan through Life's sweet garden goes To pluck the thorn and
    cast away the rose." [Kenneth Hare]

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to Carlos E.R. on Tue Nov 26 12:09:17 2024
    On Tue, 11/26/2024 7:40 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
    On 2024-11-26 09:11, Paul wrote:
    For some reason, there's no BIOS popup boot. It was suggested
    the key for that was F2, maybe it is <ESC> but so far neither of
    them work.

    Google says it is indeed F2, but only for a second, so you have to be fast.


    I tried my best pinball ninja technique and still could not get F2 to work.

    My laptop happens to use F2 and the timing window is 1 second wide,
    and I miss that about half the time. The VMWare window must be less
    than 1 second :-)

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Alan K.@21:1/5 to Paul on Tue Nov 26 13:34:35 2024
    On 11/25/24 06:16 PM, Paul wrote:
    On Mon, 11/25/2024 11:35 AM, T wrote:
    On 11/24/24 03:00, scbs29 wrote:
    Hello all
    for my own amusement I wsh to set WfW 3.11 as a virtual machine in VMWare Workstation Pro.
    I have downloaded the img files for WfW but cannot seem to find any information as to how to convert
    these (all 8) to an iso file to use for seting up the virtual machine.
    Trying to unzip them leads to being told that their format is unrecognised. >>> Can anyone please help ?
    TIA

    WFW 3.11 was damned sweet!  I installed it a lot
    back "in the day".

    Huh?  I just change the .img to .iso.  M$
    like to call their ISO's .img.

    Also you might have to use something like Rufus
    to make it bootable.

    Does VMWare not allow you to you to mount
    floppies?  I remember copying all the
    floppies to the hard drive and installing
    it from there.  There was some trick to it,
    but I have forgotten.

    Oh I remembered.  I had DOS 6.22 installed.
    Then copied all the floppies to hard drive
    in one big directory from DOS.  Then ran
    the installer from the directory.

    There is a DR-DOS 7 free download out there
    somewhere.

    I actually still carry with me a bootable dos
    6.22 flash drive with me.   I use or use to use
    it to install BIOS flash updates.  Not had
    to use DOS for that in ages.

    This sounds like an awesome fun project.
    Keep us posted!

    -T

    I tried the VMWaare Workstation (free thing), and it pares down
    the hardware types (no SATA drives of course) as
    WFW 3.11 would not know what a SATA drive was.

    The problem I ran into, is I inserted a floppy image,
    but the boot process does not seem to see it, and
    I can't find a boot menu. I tried <ESC> and F2 and
    banging on either of those, does not bring up a
    legacy boot menu for steering. If I can't set the
    floppy ahead of the HDD, this experiment will only
    last microseconds before halting.

    Paul
    F12 on my Virtualbox.

    --
    Linux Mint 22, Cinnamon 6.2.9, Kernel 6.8.0-49-generic
    Thunderbird 128.4.4esr, Mozilla Firefox 132.0.1
    Alan K.

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  • From Paul@21:1/5 to Mark Lloyd on Tue Nov 26 22:36:27 2024
    On Tue, 11/26/2024 2:33 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
    [snip]

    There is a DR-DOS 7 free download out there somewhere.

    Does that support FAT32? MS-DOS didn't add that until 7.1

    I actually still carry with me a bootable dos 6.22 flash drive with me.
    I use or use to use it to install BIOS flash updates. Not had to use
    DOS for that in ages.

    With my latest desktop, you just put the BIOS update on a USB drive in a particular port and press a button while booting. According to the manual, you don't need a CPU installed.

    Even though machines come with the "BIOS pushbutton" on the
    back, there are actually two methods involved.

    1) Microcontroller tied to a "marked" USB connector. Pressing
    the button, the microcontroller reads the FAT file system on
    the USB stick, honors a certain file name, and flashes up the BIOS.
    Both CPU and DRAM can be removed from motherboard, while doing this.

    2) Cheap way. Needs CPU and DRAM. Pushing the button uses a BIOS
    routine, to cache the BIOS to DRAM (the flashing routine runs from DRAM),
    while the BIOS chip is flashed up. The machine I'm typing on
    uses the cheap way :-/

    The documentation sometimes does not tell you what the hardware
    limitations are. Sometimes the documentation is so poor, they don't
    even tell you what the LED flash patterns mean (could be a red LED
    indicating progress or an error situation). On my current machine,
    i thought it was flashing... when in fact the LED pattern meant "error" :-/
    I eventually had a "Doh!" moment, and considered the possibility
    the flashing LED wasn't actually progress. I changed the file system
    on the USB stick, and that seemed to be enough, but that was based
    on a hunch -- the instructions didn't tell me to do that.

    The Type 1 schemes are a bit more pleasant, as they work with
    a bare motherboard, before you add anything other than the 24 pin
    power connector. Doesn't need keyboard/mouse. Has a red LED for status.
    The red LED can be in an obvious location, or can require a good
    deal of searching to locate it.

    Paul

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  • From Frank Slootweg@21:1/5 to Paul on Wed Nov 27 18:46:38 2024
    Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
    On Tue, 11/26/2024 7:40 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
    On 2024-11-26 09:11, Paul wrote:
    For some reason, there's no BIOS popup boot. It was suggested
    the key for that was F2, maybe it is <ESC> but so far neither of
    them work.

    Google says it is indeed F2, but only for a second, so you have to be fast.

    I tried my best pinball ninja technique and still could not get F2 to work.

    My laptop happens to use F2 and the timing window is 1 second wide,
    and I miss that about half the time. The VMWare window must be less
    than 1 second :-)

    I don't know about the VMWare stuff - or any VM software for that
    matter -, but with regard to getting into the real BIOS: On all of my
    laptops (all HP) - I just press-and-hold the relevant key *before*
    letting it power-up/restart. The BIOS sees the key in the pressed-down
    state, so no need to try to hit a timing window.

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  • From Carlos E.R.@21:1/5 to Frank Slootweg on Wed Nov 27 22:13:14 2024
    On 2024-11-27 19:46, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
    On Tue, 11/26/2024 7:40 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
    On 2024-11-26 09:11, Paul wrote:
    For some reason, there's no BIOS popup boot. It was suggested
    the key for that was F2, maybe it is <ESC> but so far neither of
    them work.

    Google says it is indeed F2, but only for a second, so you have to be fast. >>
    I tried my best pinball ninja technique and still could not get F2 to work. >>
    My laptop happens to use F2 and the timing window is 1 second wide,
    and I miss that about half the time. The VMWare window must be less
    than 1 second :-)

    I don't know about the VMWare stuff - or any VM software for that
    matter -, but with regard to getting into the real BIOS: On all of my
    laptops (all HP) - I just press-and-hold the relevant key *before*
    letting it power-up/restart. The BIOS sees the key in the pressed-down
    state, so no need to try to hit a timing window.

    On some machines is keep pressing repeatedly certain key, fast, after
    the first beep, till you see a response.


    --
    Cheers, Carlos.

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  • From Mark Lloyd@21:1/5 to Paul on Thu Nov 28 20:57:41 2024
    On Tue, 26 Nov 2024 12:09:17 -0500, Paul wrote:

    On Tue, 11/26/2024 7:40 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
    On 2024-11-26 09:11, Paul wrote:
    For some reason, there's no BIOS popup boot. It was suggested the key
    for that was F2, maybe it is <ESC> but so far neither of them work.

    Google says it is indeed F2, but only for a second, so you have to be
    fast.


    I tried my best pinball ninja technique and still could not get F2 to
    work.

    My laptop happens to use F2 and the timing window is 1 second wide,
    and I miss that about half the time. The VMWare window must be less than
    1 second :-)

    Paul

    Its usually 1 of ESC, F1, F2, DEL , If I don't know what a particular
    machine requires, I press all of them (1 at a time, quickly).

    Boot menu is probably F11 or F12.

    BTW, I have one old Dell that doesn't recognize any key here. Accessing
    SETUP requires disconnecting the hard drive. That machine is also so old
    it has a 8.4GB limit and the drive in it is the only one I have that's
    that small.

    --
    27 days until the winter celebration (Wednesday, December 25, 2024
    12:00:00 AM for 1 day).

    Mark Lloyd
    http://notstupid.us/

    "The only terror in death is the apprehension of what lies beyond it,
    and that emotion is impossible to a sincere disbeliever." -- C.W. Foote, Infidel Death Beds

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  • From Brian Gregory@21:1/5 to Carlos E.R. on Thu Nov 28 21:45:38 2024
    On 26/11/2024 01:44, Carlos E.R. wrote:
    On 2024-11-25 17:35, T wrote:
    On 11/24/24 03:00, scbs29 wrote:
    Hello all
    for my own amusement I wsh to set WfW 3.11 as a virtual machine in
    VMWare Workstation Pro.
    I have downloaded the img files for WfW but cannot seem to find any
    information as to how to convert
    these (all 8) to an iso file to use for seting up the virtual machine.
    Trying to unzip them leads to being told that their format is
    unrecognised.
    Can anyone please help ?
    TIA

    WFW 3.11 was damned sweet!  I installed it a lot
    back "in the day".

    Huh?  I just change the .img to .iso.  M$
    like to call their ISO's .img.

    Because strictly speaking, they are not ISO.

    ...


    Indeed.

    ISO files are ready to be written to CDs or DVDs.
    IMG files are ready to be written to Floppy disks.

    However some software that can read ISO files will also be happy to read
    IMG files.

    --
    Brian Gregory (in England).

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  • From scbs29@21:1/5 to scbs29@fred.talktalk.net on Fri Nov 29 09:01:06 2024
    Thankyou for all of the help and advice.
    I have, however, managed to sort out the problem. As I probably said a vmdk cannot be directly
    loaded into VMWare without the corrsponding vmx file.
    I did, however, find a way of doing it by setting up for a new virtuall machine and
    telling the program to use an existing vm file. This way VMWare will load a vmdk file
    Thanks again

    On Sun, 24 Nov 2024 11:00:34 +0000, scbs29 <scbs29@fred.talktalk.net> wrote:

    Hello all
    for my own amusement I wsh to set WfW 3.11 as a virtual machine in VMWare Workstation Pro.
    I have downloaded the img files for WfW but cannot seem to find any information as to how to convert
    these (all 8) to an iso file to use for seting up the virtual machine.
    Trying to unzip them leads to being told that their format is unrecognised. >Can anyone please help ?
    TIA

    --
    remove fred before emailing

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  • From Carlos E.R.@21:1/5 to Brian Gregory on Fri Nov 29 13:40:12 2024
    On 2024-11-28 22:45, Brian Gregory wrote:
    On 26/11/2024 01:44, Carlos E.R. wrote:
    On 2024-11-25 17:35, T wrote:
    On 11/24/24 03:00, scbs29 wrote:
    Hello all
    for my own amusement I wsh to set WfW 3.11 as a virtual machine in
    VMWare Workstation Pro.
    I have downloaded the img files for WfW but cannot seem to find any
    information as to how to convert
    these (all 8) to an iso file to use for seting up the virtual machine. >>>> Trying to unzip them leads to being told that their format is
    unrecognised.
    Can anyone please help ?
    TIA

    WFW 3.11 was damned sweet!  I installed it a lot
    back "in the day".

    Huh?  I just change the .img to .iso.  M$
    like to call their ISO's .img.

    Because strictly speaking, they are not ISO.

    ...


    Indeed.

    ISO files are ready to be written to CDs or DVDs.
    IMG files are ready to be written to Floppy disks.

    Or hard disks, or partitions. Depends.


    However some software that can read ISO files will also be happy to read
    IMG files.



    --
    Cheers, Carlos.

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  • From dillinger@21:1/5 to All on Sun Dec 1 07:46:10 2024
    On 11/29/24 10:01, scbs29 wrote:
    Thankyou for all of the help and advice.
    I have, however, managed to sort out the problem. As I probably said a vmdk cannot be directly
    loaded into VMWare without the corrsponding vmx file.
    I did, however, find a way of doing it by setting up for a new virtuall machine and
    telling the program to use an existing vm file. This way VMWare will load a vmdk file
    Thanks again

    On Sun, 24 Nov 2024 11:00:34 +0000, scbs29 <scbs29@fred.talktalk.net> wrote:

    Hello all
    for my own amusement I wsh to set WfW 3.11 as a virtual machine in VMWare Workstation Pro.
    I have downloaded the img files for WfW but cannot seem to find any information as to how to convert
    these (all 8) to an iso file to use for seting up the virtual machine.
    Trying to unzip them leads to being told that their format is unrecognised. >> Can anyone please help ?
    TIA

    A little late to the party, but you can try the iso's from archive.org: https://archive.org/details/windows-3.11_Dos_6.22_ISO

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