Category: Geeks r Us
I've been talking alot about my dream computer and what I want to do as far as programming, how I want to try out various screenreaders and newer versions of DOS etc. But I don't have the machine yet and am getting really frustrated. Among my computers, however, is a desktop with serial and parallel ports, a 3.5 inch floppy drive and a cd rom, or dvd or whatever it is. But it's running at 2,399mhz (so about 2.39gb), has 512mb of ram and a huge hard drive (maybe 60gb, give or take some) and it has XP on it. I'm thinking of making a virtual machine but I don't know the first thing about doing this other than that I can make it see 64mb ram and a 5gb hard disk as I want it to do. But I don't know if the installation of DOS and of the screen reader will be accessible or if I'll need sighted assistance. Most importantly, will it be able to see my serial port? If not, then I can't do this, since I need that port for my synth. What about my floppy drive? I've got alot of programs that I want to try, including DOS itself, though I might get away with installing it from another part of the hard disk. Finally, which is the best program to use for virtual machines?
Vmware wins hands-down. It cost a bit of money, like $189, but they have an academic disk count that you can get it knocked off for a certain percentage I believe, and it has a virtual floppy disk.
Everything's free if you know where to find it. Now how does this floppy work and what about ports?
Maybe I can answer a few of these, since I've created Dos virtual machines to play with, and even got them networked.
The floppy drive can read either real floppies, or floppy images. There's a useful program called WinImage that will let you create and modify these images. vmWare will let you use your serial port, and it'll show up under dos. Whichever dos you want to install, you'll want to modify its boot process to load a screen reader. I recommend ASAP, because it's small and doesn't need extra files, so it should fit on your boot disk.
If you want to try a bunch of stuff, you should be able to create a second hard disk and format it. Mount that to your host, copy a bunch of stuff to it, and boot your vm. It beats trying to get a large installer onto multiple floppies.
Ah ha! So I can put a reader on the same disk as the boot disk and make it automatic. How is this done? In any case, the problem is if I just use the boot disk, it's not really installing the full system right? I want to install all the enhancements to DR-DOS, including the multitasker etc. These are the things that I really need to test. I'm excited about ASAP, since I've heard alot about it. I want to see if it's as versatile an automatic as they say. *smile* I'm really glad that it'll see my ports and floppy drive. That makes things alot easier.
Are you thinking of splitting the drive? You can use one partician for dos and the rest for whatever else. Be aware, however, that dos takes up the least amount of space so install that first.
I don't want to install Windows again, since the machine is working nicely. I'd just like to create a virtual machine to run ontop of XP so that I can have at least something to work with until my actual machine comes in or is found.
ah I see. You could always use an emulator.
I thought that those aren't accessible and are only available in premade packages, i.e. MS-DOS 6.22 emulator etc. You can't build your own or use some kind of general thing that would allow you to install your os of choice right? Like I said, I know very little about these, since I've always heard they don't work with screen readers so avoided them.