PocketDOS only recognizes HDD and DSK as far as I tested. I also tried installing FreeDOS on VirtualBox into an HDD using LiveCD instead of Floppy Edition, then sending the HDD to my device. That didn't work either.
As another attempt I created a blank HDD with PocketDOS, copied this HDD to my laptop and tried to create a virtual machine with VirtualBox using that blank HDD. VirtualBox showed the following error message: Failed to open the disk image file "...\FD14.HDD". Could not get the storage format of the medium '...\FD14.HDD' > (VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED). On Sat, Jul 5, 2025 at 12:12 PM Jerome Shidel via Freedos-user < freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > > > On Jul 4, 2025, at 9:45 PM, Lutalli via Freedos-user < > freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > > Update: I tried again and now it shows "Non-system disk or disk error". > > On Sat, Jul 5, 2025, 03:28 Lutalli <lutall...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> I'm happy to hear that I don't have to worry about VASK being used by the >> OS post install! That was a big concern for me. >> >> Alright this is what I have done so far: On VirtualBox, I created a >> virtual DOS machine, set the hard disk to HDD (I chose this because all the >> tutorials about PockDOS I've read used HDD as the format of virtual disk >> images), then installed FreeDOS 1.4 using the floppy edition successfully. >> >> (Even though it was on my laptop, it took a small while. And indeed >> decompression is CPU intensive - The installation even made my laptop's >> fans spin a lot. I can image if I actually did it on my Jornada 720, it >> would take a LONG time.) >> >> Now I have an HDD file, roughly 20MB, that supposedly has FreeDOS 1.4 >> installed. I copied the HDD file to my mobile device. Then I made a virtual >> disk redirected to that HDD on PocketDOS, and let it boot from that disk. >> However it shows "No Operating System Present"... At the moment I have no >> idea why. On VirtualBox, I can still run FreeDOS without any problem. >> > > Do not know what setting you are using for "HDD format”. VirtualBox > provides 3 format types. > > 1) VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image) - Default. > 2) VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) > 3) VMDK (Virtual Machine Disk) > > Those can be Dynamically allocated (Default) or Fixed Size. > > With the addition of being split into files less 2GB each. > > Again, I have never used PocketDOS and have know Idea what formats it > supports. > > But generally for maximum compatibility, I usually use "VMDK, Fixed Size, > No Splitting”. > > Those settings will output 2 files for the hard disk. One is called > SOMETHING.vmdk. It should be under 1Kb and contains information about the > virtual machine disk image. The other will be called SOMETHING-flat.vmdk > with is the actual disk image. That “flat” image is just an ‘IMG’ file with > a different extension. > > That “flat" can be mounted easily on macOS by simply changing its > extension to “IMG” and double clicking. No special software required. They > can also be mounted on Linux and Unix machines by using a loopback device. > They can also be used with other virtual machines like QEMU and VMware with > almost no difficulty. > > It can It can be even written directly to USB media or a hard disk using > tools like “dd” on macOS, Linux or Unix. The simply boot the USB or hard > disk. > > On a side note… A VMDK image is provided as the FreeDOS USB installer > image(s). QEMU is used to create that “flat” image. However, the associated > VMDK description file is generated programmatically by the RBE. (The RBE > stands for ”Release Build Environment.” It is the thing that creates the > various FreeDOS install media for a release.) > > Once you have a compatible disk image format, installed FreeDOS and have > transferred the files to your other machine running PocketDOS, it should > boot. > > As a suggestion, maybe you should create a blank machine in PocketDOS. > Then, compress it using zip. Since it is empty, it will every small. Copy > that zip over to to your machine running VirtualBox and extract it. Now, > possibly just use it directly in VirtualBox. Or, create a new VirtualBox > machine using the existing Virtual Disk Image created by PocketDOS. > > Once FreeDOS is installed, copy the drive back and it really really should > work. > > :-) > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user >
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