Vfd Virtual Floppy Drive Windows 10

Reading Floppy Disk images in Windows 10 (and running the software within!)

Introduction

Just recently I upgraded one of my computers from Windows 7 to Windows 10. The upgrade went smoothly except for 1 problem. I often need to run and or/check sometime MS-DOS software in floppy disk images. In Windows 7 I would use Virtual PC 2007 to do this. Trouble was, Windows x doesn't back up Virtual PC 2007. I tried various workarounds like this one, but they didn't piece of work for me.

I went searching for alternatives. There are certainly virtualisation alternatives around, but many seemed too industrial from my kind of use (e.thousand. VMWare Workstation, which was but available for 64-fleck environments), and/or they didn't support floppy disk images. Finally I found i that did...

Oracle VM VirtualBox

This seems to deliver the goods. It'southward simple to use, intuitive and has floppy disk prototype back up that handles *.vfd and *.ima formats, both of which I create and utilise with Winimage.

Figure 1. Choosing a disk image in an MS-DOS auto in VM VirtualBox

MS-DOS seems to be the simplest Os that VM VirtualBox supports and there are no "Invitee additions" or extension packs for it...but at to the lowest degree it provides three.5 inch floppy disk support which is what I was looking for. Huzzah!

In fact, since I first published this, I've managed to get all these Bone packages running in my VirtualBox:

MS-Dos 6.22
Windows 3.11
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows NT SP6
Windows 2000
Windows XP SP3
Windows 7 SP1

A Windows surround for every occasion!

What if I want to just write files to and from a floppy disk image?

There are a few solutions for this. One is Winimage. If y'all want to have a floppy drive prototype fastened to your mod OS though and have software interact with it, ImDisk is a good choice. Information technology creates a virtual bulldoze and assigns a letter to information technology. Not but can it read "PC-type" floppy images but also CD-ROMS and hard drives.

Figure 2. Attaching a disk epitome in ImDisk

Concluding word

So, if running intel-based software from floppy deejay images in a 32-bit Windows ten environment is a problem for you, Oracle VM VirtualBox (at least at the fourth dimension of writing) seems to solve it. If you just want to move files, try Winimage. If you lot desire the OS and programs to interact with your disk paradigm then ImDisk will practise the job.

Tez

30th March, 2018
Revised, 27th April, 2018
2d Revision, 4th December, 2018 (mentioned ImDisk).