Mouting Windows 95 VHD as c:, mounting ISO as e: and booting windows

[morlenxus]

My problem is, that a imgmount iso doesn't appear in Windows, until i load the iso from retroarch menu and rebooted windows
What i did is the following batch file:

REMOUNT C: L:
IMGMOUNT C "Windows 95.vhd" -size 512,63,64,761 -t hdd

// doesn't work, error is "Image file not found":
IMGMOUNT E "CNC1GGDI.iso" -t iso -ide 2m

// works, but cdrom device doesn't appear in windows:
IMGMOUNT E "CNC1GGDI.iso" -t iso

BOOT "Windows 95.vhd"

I read somewhere that the device should be mounted with the ide parameter. But everytime i add that parameter, the file isn't found.
Is there some other way to correctly mount and add the cd device so that windows recognize that?
Thanks!

[alexb3d]

edit:

I'm a bit confused. I assume you're placing the w95 vhd image in the System folder and loading the iso from the Load menu. As the documentation says?

Anyway, use these image formats with caution, they may give errors, DOSBox is not strictly speaking a virtual machine and it supports many tricks.

[morlenxus]

The point is, i would like to have an autostart entry in Retroarch. When i point to the vhd Image, Windows starts but the game ISO isn't mounted. When mounting the ISO from retroarch menu i need to restart Windows 95 (virtually) to have it detect the cdrom device with the ISO.
In the end i would like to run CnC 95 Gold with a menu entry. :)

[emxd]

Can't you use an .m3u8 file with the .iso entry in there? Then, you can add the .m3u8 into favorites. Of course this way, you wouldn't use the .conf file.

Also I'm not sure if a CD loaded via the legacy .conf file can be seen in the IDE CD-ROM inside Win9x. It used to be that you had to boot through the "graphical" dosbox-pure UI with the CD premounted, *not* through the legacy .conf file. The -ide parameter was in dosbox-x, I don't think it exists in dosbox-pure.

[alexb3d]

i would like to have an autostart entry in Retroarch. When i point to the vhd Image, Windows starts but the game ISO isn't mounted.

I am not understanding or you have not read the documentation?

The windows image in Systems.
The game in .zip.
Load the zip and in the Pure menu and select “Run Installed Operating System”.
Press once on the right to set the auto start option + Enter key.
Done, every time you load the game it will start in Windows.

Does the Windows VHD image work for you? All the ones I've tried fail or don't load.

Can't you use an .m3u8 file with the .iso entry in there? Then, you can add the .m3u8 into favorites. Of course this way, you wouldn't use the .conf file.

FD/CD/DVD disk images are mounted automatically, the config does not affect.

[emxd]

FD/CD/DVD disk images are mounted automatically, the config does not affect.

he's not using .zip files. Just a pure legacy config. I don't think CDs are mounted automatically there (dosbox wouldn't even know what to mount)

[schellingb]

In the end i would like to run CnC 95 Gold with a menu entry. :)

Have you tried to use the core's built-in Operating System features to achieve this? If you have Windows 95 installed and bootable via the start menu, you can then package CnC 95 Gold into a ZIP file, load that ZIP file as content in RetroArch and in the start menu go into [ Run Installed Operating System ], then press RIGHT while selecting your installed operating system to activate [SET AUTO START], then pressing ENTER will boot Windows 95. Next time you load CnC 95 Gold in RetroArch it will remember the AUTO START setting and automatically boot Windows 95.

Edit: Just as a reminder, you can press RIGHT multiple times to set AUTO START with additionally skipping a number of frames. For example if you set it to something like "Skip showing first 500 frames", the entire boot sequence will be skipped and the first image visible after selecting the game in RetroArch will be the finished booted Windows 95 desktop.

[morlenxus]

It is not the boot process, it is that the CD Images isn't automatically loaded (or i don't know how to do that automatically). For me the iso isn't mounted automatically. The game itself is installed into the vhd image, i'm booting the image with following command:
retroarch -L dosbox_pure_libretro.so "Command & Conquer 1 - Tiberian Dawn [Gold]/installation.vhd"
Maybe the command should point to the directory, containing the vhd and the iso files and not the the vhd directly?

Btw. i did find a good way with wine and box86 which works very good. So i don't need a solution for that case, but it might be interesting how that works for a different game.

[emxd]

Maybe the command should point to the directory, containing the vhd and the iso files and not the the vhd directly?

yeah, this also works. I didn't really think of that, because AFAIK you can't select a folder as content in the GUI*, but you can in the CLI :).

*edit: eh, selecting a folder without selecting a file in the folder

also, the OS .vhd doesn't really need to be in the mounted folder, it just needs to be in the system subfolder of Retroarch. So you can just have the .vhd in the system subfolder and a different folder with the .isos. At least on Windows. Haven't tried on Linux.