>> Multi-booting all those OSes off a single partition is very *VERY* >> much a hard way of doing this.
> Actually, no it's not. It's fairly easy with System Commander. +1 while I didn't use System Commander, *ALL* of us were booting multiple systems from the same disk (and possibly also partition) in 'the good old times (tm)'. it was just a problem to be solved, and all of us solved it one way or the other. no rocket science necessary. VHD's simply weren't an option. VHD's came 15 years later. >> VirtualBox is free. It runs DOS with aplomb. You could run all these >> DOS versions in separate VMs, with no overlap, and custom config >> files. > As are QEMU, BOCHS, PCem, etc. All the VM's have advantages and > disadvantages in various respects. The way I have my system set up > I only need one VHD and it will work with (almost) any VM, including > VirtualBox, and a bunch of different versions of DOS. In terms of > the amount of work it takes to set things up, I think my setup is > less work than creating 20 (or whatever) different VHDs (each for a > different OS). My setup is definitely less work than trying to > track and maintain all the different VHDs to make sure they remain consistent > with each other. +1 >> You could have a separate D: drive on a separate virtual disk, with >> the programs you're testing in it. > That's what I do now (or at least can do if I want). But, I can > also put the test program on the common VHD if I want instead of a > separate VHD (and if it's small enough I usually do that). With > your setup it MUST be on a separate VHD or I would need to copy it > 50 (or whatever) times instead of just once. So, my setup is more flexible > in that sense. >> Or you could use VMWare Server, which is freeware, and in which this >> is a built-in facility. > In addition to the VMs mentioned above, I also have others > including VMWare and DOSBox and do tests with all of them. VMWare > and DOSBox are somewhat unique in that they can mount physical hard > drives instead of just virtual hard drives. That allows you to have > similar setups in both a VM and on the real hardware (if you boot > the real hardware to DOS, which I also sometimes do). > There are lots of different ways to "skin the cat" and there is not > one "correct" way. There are tradeoffs and problems with every > approach. But, for what I'm trying to accomplish, I think my setup > is better (at least easier to track and maintain) than what you're > recommending. +1 Tom _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
