MS-Dos VMs

Hello all

I’m trying to get an MS-DOS VM built under Parallels on my Macbook Pro, but there doesn't seem to be a way to get a brand new VM to boot up from my floppy disk copies of DOS. Could someone enlighten me on how to build such a VM or point me at some pre-built ones (preferably with Extended an expanded memory, and a CD drive).

I've tried to transport my VPC 7 disk images, but paralells claims not to be able to find an operating system on the VHD after the transport operation completes.

Regards, Andy

 

MS-DOS guest OS is not supported by Transporter.

Have you boot order ’Floppy, HDD, CD-ROM' in virtual machine settings? If yes, what have you see during boot stage?

 

I am trying to install DOS 6.22 also. Does anyone know just how to do this?
I have a Mac Book Pro, I have the orginal dos floppies 1 thru 3, I have a USB
floppy disk drive, but it will not use the USB drive to install from. It keeps telling
me no bootable disk drive. The USB drive shows up in the settings.
Any help would be appriciated. DOS disk images?
Thanks!

 

I just install a brand new VM with MSDOS 6.22. Here is what I did:

1. Download MSDOS 6.22 installer, as an ISO file, from here: http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/iso.html
This is the trick, because trying to use floppy images was a nigthmare.
2. Create a new VM and configure it for MSDOS. In my case, I created a new VHD with 250 Mb and assigned 4 MB of RAM.
3. Configure the boot sequence to: CD, HD, Floppy
4. Connect the CD to the MSDOS 6.22 ISO image
5. Startup the VM. If Parallels ask you to connect an image file to the CD, do it again in that dialog
6. After the VM starts, you will end with an A: drive, wich is actually the CD with the MSDOS 6.22 ISO image
7. Execute FDISK and create a primary DOS partition with all the size of the disk, or do whatever partition scheme you want.
8. Restart the VM. At A: prompt execute FORMAT C: /S
9. Stop VM and change boot order to HD - CD - Floopy
10. Restart VM
11. Execute all these commands:
C:
MD MSDOS
COPY A:\*.* .\MSDOS /v
COPY A:\CONFIG.SYS
COPY A:\AUTOEXEC.BAT
COPY A:\HIMEM.SYS
COPY A:\CD1.SYS
12. Restart your VM and you are ready to go!!

 

Thanks, vespina, for those detailed tips - very helpful. I was successful in installing DOS 6.22 by following your process but had to make a couple of changes.

First, I had problems with the VM not getting keyboard input passed through to it. I found I had to click on a non-Parallels window and then click back again on the VM window to get any keyboard input to MSDOS. Also, after changing the boot order to HD-CD-Floppy (your step #9) and rebooting, the system would no longer see the CD as drive A: I had to leave the boot order as CD-HD-Floppy and execute your commands (Step #11) from that boot - which worked fine.

Note that after the process is completed, the MSDOS system sees the CD drive as Drive R: (strange choice).

Having booted MSDOS successfully, I'm now having problems installing the DOS app and guess that there are issues with the CONFIG.SYS and/or AUTOEXEC.BAT files since any attempt to load the app creates a "Program is too big to fit in memory" reply.

Also, I'm having problems editing the CONFIG.SYS file since in Edit mode, MSDOS is not getting any keyboard input again - frustrating...

 

Thanks for poiting to that error. You are completely right. The problem with the keyboard input is standard behavior in Parallels VM. Keyboard and mouse events are only sended to the VM after you make a click inside the VM's window. Then, to "release" mouse and keyboard you have to press a key combination. Now, you can avoid this by installing parallels tools. I did that once, but can't remember how. As soon as I find the way to install parallels tools in a DOS VM, I will post it here.

 

All the documentation for Tools says it doesn't work in DOS. I tried to load them into DOS and was not successful. If you've found a way to do this, I look forward to doing what you do when you can remember!

Until then, I was able to load my app by copying it (offline) from a floppy to a CD and loading it from there. I also figured out a way to use the keyboard in the Edit program as follows:

c:\>edit autoexec.bat (or whatever file you want to edit)

This brings up the Edit window and the cursor will be sitting under the first character of the file content. You can make changes to the text as required, but in order to save them you have to do a couple of non-DOS things. Until you do this, you cannot use the command bar on top of the Edit window (File:Edit:Search:View:Options:Help).

First, click inside the Edit window and the arrow cursor disappears. Next do a Ctrl+Alt and the command bar lights up (F:E:S:V:O:H) and the arrow cursor returns. However, you can't move the highlight across the command bar until you click again (losing the arrow cursor again!). After doing this, you can navigate across the command bar with left/right arrow keys and activate the drop-downs with the up/down arrows.

Very clumsy, but it works. This way you can save changes to the file.

I'm still hoping you can help us get Tools loaded into MS-DOS VM so we can avoid this kludge.

 

That is normal behavior. DOS does not know how to handle mouse events by default. You must install and load a mouse driver in order to be able to use a mouse inside the DOS environment. Try to find a file called MOUSE.SYS; it is a generic mouse driver that may do the trick.

 

MS-DOS 6.22 with text display errors in graphics mode

I have managed to create a good MS DOS 6.22 install and is working fine. Have tested several programs and most work flawlessly. However, older games which activate graphics mode (e.g., CGA or some EGA based games, such as Sierra King Quest series, etc.), display weird characters instead of the correct text. I have tried tampering with the country, display and mode / cpi settings but without success... Does anyone have a similar problem and most importantly, a solution for this?

 

DosBox

I use a program called DosBox.

It's a little fun to work out at first, but will go to full screen mode, and will run all MS-DOS based games etc flawlessly.

 

Agreed. DOSBox works better when used with a front end program - like Dapplegrey.

 

CORRECTIONS TO MS-DOS 6.22 VM SETUP (or other MS-DOS version)

Actually if you got this to work, congrats; but, in most cases you will find that step 11 and 12 will fail. The reason why is that changing the boot order to HD, CD, Floppy forces the VM to startup only with COMMAND.COM loaded on the C:\ drive. Since the A:\ drive (technically the MS-DOS ISO image) is not booted / loaded, all of the copies involved in step 11 will fail ... It cannot see anything on drive A..

Here is the correct sequence of operations in it's entirety:

1. Download MSDOS 6.22 installer, as an ISO file, from here: http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/iso.html

This is the trick, because trying to use floppy images was a nightmare.​

2. Create a new VM and configure it for MSDOS.

In my case, I created a new VHD with 250 Mb and assigned 4 MB of RAM. -- Note: if you set at 4MB, you will get a warning dialog.​

3. Configure the boot sequence to: CD, HD, Floppy

4. Connect the CD to the MSDOS 6.22 ISO image

5. Startup the VM. If Parallels ask you to connect an image file to the CD, do it again in that dialog.

6. After the VM starts, you will end with an A: drive, which is actually the CD with the MSDOS 6.22 ISO image.

7. Execute FDISK and create a primary DOS partition with all the size of the disk, or do whatever partition scheme you want.

8. Restart the VM. At A: prompt execute FORMAT C: /S

9. Stop VM

10. Restart VM

11. Execute all these commands:

cd C:
MD MSDOS
COPY A:\*.* .\MSDOS /v
COPY A:\CONFIG.SYS
COPY A:\AUTOEXEC.BAT
COPY A:\HIMEM.SYS
COPY A:\CD1.SYS​

12. Stop the MS-DOS VM

13. Change the Boot Order from CD, HD, Floppy to HD, CD, Floppy

14. Restart the MS-DOS VM

You should now see the boot-up to the familiar C:\ prompt. I know, some of us dinosaurs are still alive and kicking ;-) ​

 

This might just be a new question regarding FreeDOS and I hope someone can help. I am trying to setup a VM running FreeDOS in Parallels Desktop 12. I already have a WindowsXP VM running and it's working fine.
I downloaded the FreeDOS image file (fd11src.iso file - 40.8 Mb) and have it in my downloads folder.
In Parallels I select NEW and it brings me to the New Virtual Machine window. Since FreeDOS is not listed in the "Free Systems" section, I selected "Install Windows ro another OS from a DVD or image file". Doing that brings me to the next screen where it asks for the Installation Image. When I locate manually my FreeDOS file (fd11scr.iso) the Parallels Wizard returns the message "Unable to detect operating system". So what am I doing wrong? I have downloaded the ".iso" file twice and both do the same thing. The FreeDOS site shows the file to be 40 Mb so I think I have a good file. Any ideas would be helpful. Thanks.

 

Hello WaltR, you didn't anything wrong here. The reason is that there is no wizard for DOS VMs.
You should setup vm manually. After you got a message "Unable to detect operating system", you should press "Continue" button and select appropriate guest OS from the list. For FreeDOS I see two items: Other->MS-DOS 6.22 and Other->Other DOS. Then VM will be created. And as I see in another thread you have passed this stage.

 

Hi mmika,
Thanks for your reply. I opened another thread on this topic and I've gotten to the FreeDOS install menu and selected "Install to hard disk". It then says SETUP wasn't able to locate any disks to install FreeDOS 1.1 from and has me run FDISK. From FDISK I have chosen "Create DOS partition or Logical DOS drive". That leads me to "Create Primary DOS Partition" where I am shown one partition (C) marked as "Status A Type: PRI DOS Mbytes 2048 Usage 100%" and the message "No space to create a DOS partition". Don't know where to go from here.

 

I was very pleased to find this thread - even if it is a bit old now - because it helped me set up an MSDOS VM again. The one thing I can't get it do at the moment is read floppy drive A:. I have a USB floppy disk drive plugged into the iMac and theoretically mapped to the VM but it won't "see" it. Is the "dinosaur" still around and perhaps could point me in the right direction?

 

I've loaded a FreeDOS VM -- and now need to import a file. I tried copying my spinrite.exe to spinrite.fdd and that doesn't work -- erroring out "Unable to Connect Floppy 1". I'm on Parallels v15 in Catalina., sure could use some help. I'm repairing a failing HDD on an iMac which is booted in target mode. I can see the sick target drive fine in Catalina but I'll need that to enumerate in FreeDOS too. Any expert suggestions?

 

You asked two questions.
The first one is " I tried copying my spinrite.exe to spinrite.fdd" and got "Unable to Connect Floppy 1"
It's pretty correct message, since you are trying to connect EXE file as floppy drive image. At least the size of this image doesn't look like floppy drive's one.
You ought to mount floppy image in OS X via 'mount' command, then copy spinrite.exe to mounted directory, unmount floppy image, then connect floppy image to VM.
I didn't understand the second part at all. Did you try to connect Mac in target disk mode to MSDOS VM?

 

Hello mmika ... Thanks for this I'll try the OSX mount command sequence you've mentioned.
Sorry for any confusion on the second question -- what I'm asking is "How can I map a FreeDOS drive letter to the OSX target mode drive?"

 

There is no official way to map FreeDOS drive letter to the OSX drive.