Howto Auto mount a drive in DOSBOX

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DOSBox emulates an Intel x86 PC, complete with sound, graphics, mouse, modem, etc., necessary for running many old DOS games that simply cannot be run on modern PCs and operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Linux and FreeBSD. However, it is not restricted to running only games. In theory, any DOS application should run in DOSBox, but the emphasis has been on getting DOS games to run smoothly, which means that communication, networking and printer support are still in early developement.

Install dosbox in ubuntu

Open terminal window and type the following command

sudo apt-get install dosbox

Howto Automount drive

Open a terminal session, and it should take you to your home directory. If not, type cd /home/yourname/

Create a directory to store your DOS programs in. I called mine dosprog, so I typed mkdir dosprog The full pathname to this file is home/yourname/dosprog

Open dosbox by typing dosbox

You are now in the dosbox shell. Neat, huh? Note that it automatically puts you at the Z:\ drive We want to change that. Try typing in the dos command C: Note that it says the drive doesn't exist. We could mount the C drive everytime we open dosbox by typing mount c /home/yourname/dosprog everytime, but why do that whendosbox can create a configuration file to take care of that for you! But first we need to create the file.

At the dosbox Z:\ prompt, type in config -writeconf /home/yourname/dosbox.conf You now have the configuration file.

Type exit. This puts you back in your terminal session

Type sudo gedit dosbox.conf This will open the dosbox configuration file.

Scroll down the dosbox.conf file to this section

[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.Type the following in on a new line:

mount c /home/yourname/dosprog

This will automatically mount the C: drive to your dosprog directory.

If you want dosbox to automatically start on the C: drive, enter C: on a new line after your mount line.

Save and quit gedit.

Now at the terminal prompt, type in dosbox It should auto mount the C: drive, (and if you followed step 8a, it will also start you on the C: drive)

Manually Mounting a CD-ROM

Place a CD in your CD-ROM. Ubuntu will happily auto-mount the CD for you to /media/cdrom0 assuming that you placed teh CD in that drive. If you have more than one CD-ROM drive Ubuntu may will have mounted it to /media/cdromx where x is a number. Now that we're done with that OS stuff back to DosBox.

Type mount d /media/cdrom0 -t cdrom

Now your CD is mounted in DosBox to the D: drive. Again if you'd like to test this type, D: and press enter. Now type dir and press enter. You should again get a listing of all items on the CD.

Mounting a directory to a drive in DosBox

Open triminal windows and type the following command

dosbox

This launches DosBox in a new window, and starts you with a Z:\ prompt

So now on to really mounting a drive. I suggest you mount a directory that you have permission to write to (as a user, not a superuser). Your home directory (/home/username) works nicely.

Type mount c /home/username

This mounts your home directory to the C:\ drive in DosBox. If you'd like to test this, type C: and press enter.
Now type dir and press enter. Just as in DOS, you will get a listing of all items in your directory.

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