MEPIS Community Forum

I've now successfully (I hope) got Virtualbox installed, but it appears not to want to read from a floppy-disc source - on either my WinXP machine or on my Mepis machine. I wish to install an ancient OS, Win 3.11, which comes on two floppies.

One idea I had is to transfer the contents of the two floppies to a cdrom, but if I do this then how do I combine the two discs to one cd?

I don't have a floppy drive in my current machines, but I use an external USB floppy. I have no trouble reading and writing floppies with this in Mepis and in my VBox WinXP install. In VBox I had to enable the appropriate USB filter.

Note that it's USB-powered and the device doesn't switch on and show up until a floppy is inserted, and ejecting the floppy removes the device. I don't lnow if this would be a problem with a 2-disk install.

I haven't tried an OS install from the external floppy, but program installs in Virtual XP are no problem.

Phil

Are you first enabling the drive under the Device menu?

read the vbox wiki for USB related stuff

Jerry - I'm not sure what you mean by the Device menu. In Mepis, there's no problem - once a floppy is inserted, the drive switches on and appears unmounted in Dolphin. It auto mounts fine. In VBox, the first time I used it I needed to add the USB filter, and subsequently it appears in Win Explorer when a floppy is inserted.

Plugging in the drive without a floppy inserted has no effect in Mepis, Virtual XP or a full WinXP installation. That's because it's not powered - the power on is by a physical switch in the drive when a floppy is inserted. This is why I wondered if the 'switch off - switch on' might affect an old 2-disc installation routine - the install program might be offended by the disappearance of the device, which can't be avoided.

The OP said that VB wouldn't read from a floppy. I'm suggesting a USB floppy drive as an alternative - I know this works.

Phil

Here are instructions for doing this: http://www.bootdisk.com/nero.htm

At the bottom center of a running VM a pop-up bar shows when the cursor is moved there, one of whose entries is Device. Its sub-menu allows the device of interest to be enabled--here, one would select Floppy Devices and identify it for mounting.

There may be a better method that joany or somebody else knows about, but this is how I do it--for a handheld, for instance.

OK, Jerry, I see what you're saying. With the USB floppy drive, I've not found it necessary to use this to mount it in a VM. Once the USB filter for the drive is enabled, it's mounted. This may not be true for a linux guest - I haven't tried that - but it's certainly true for Windows guests and for a new machine before an OS is installed.

Phil

I've never tried it with a floppy, just with devices such as data collectors where the form software is only available in Windows (I use W2K).

The dumb question first. Have you set the boot order in Vbox to floppy?