unable to write to USB floppy drive on WinXP Guest (works fine on Host OS)

[Prox]

VB version: 5.2.22 r126460 (Qt5.6.2)
Host OS: Windows 10 Pro v1803
Guest OS: WinXP SP3 version 2002

USB 2.0 is enabled in the settings

because there are sadly no SATA Floppy drives i use a simple USB External floppy drive.

it works normally on Win10, i can read/write and format it.

when i try to "burn" .IMG files onto a floppy via programs like powerISO, winimage, rawwrite, etc it always gives me erros with some misaligned head or similar
so i setup a guest OS where the software is supposed to be supported

now comes the problem, when i tell VB to use the host drive A (my USB floppy drive) WinXP can see and read from the drive but not write to or format it.
it always gives the same Error when i try to write something to it: "the floppy disk controller reported an error that is not recognized by the floppy disk drive"
i tried to uninstall the Floppy drive and disk drivers and reboot, after the reboot the drivers were instantly back without any nodification of installing them. it didn't fix the issue either.
this is also not only with WinXP it seems, when i start PC-DOS (which is on the harddrive) and access the Floppy drive i can see the files on it but i cannot write to it or format it. it just gives "Fail on INT 24" whenever i try.

If i instead connect it as USB device (like in Win10) WinXP recogizes it and can use it normally, i was even able to create a bootable DOS disk on WinXP and then boot from it using the Host Drive A as floppy option (though the booting and overall speed of DOS is very slow for some reason)

so, any idea what might cause this or how it could be fixed?

[mpack]

Int24h is the critical error handler, in DOS it would normally display "Abort, Error, Retry?". It just tells you what you already knew - you can't write to the drive.

You checked that the write protect tab on the floppy media is set correctly, yes?

If so then best guess, the drive is not really a floppy drive, it's just an ordinary USB mass storage device that uses unusual media. I'm not sure why that should make it fail, but apparantly it does.

What is it that you're trying to accomplish? Is there absolutely no way to accomplish it without resorting to floppy drives?

[Prox]

Int24h is the critical error handler, in DOS it would normally display "Abort, Error, Retry?". It just tells you what you already knew - you can't write to the drive.

You checked that the write protect tab on the floppy media is set correctly, yes?

If so then best guess, the drive is not really a floppy drive, it's just an ordinary USB mass storage device that uses unusual media. I'm not sure why that should make it fail, but apparantly it does.

What is it that you're trying to accomplish? Is there absolutely no way to accomplish it without resorting to floppy drives?

I mean the write protect has to be correct since on the host OS i can read/write to it but on the guest i can only read from it.

and what do you mean with "ordinary USB mass storage device that uses unusual media"? it's just a regular USB External floppy drive, windows 10 sees it as the real deal so i don't see why any guest OS shouldn't be able to do the same. and they cleary have to see it as a real drive since i was able to boot to DOS from it (thought it is extremely slow to read and again i cannot write to it)

well i got a very old IBM PC (with the intel 80386) and beside sthe harddrive where i don't even know if it can recognize the drive the Flopyp drive the only way to get data onto it. so i tried to use a VM to test out things to see if i can somehow install anything onto it so i cannot use the .IMG files themself as i know they will work.
same with an old DOS machine, it does have a functional harddrive but i cannot remove it eachtime i want to move some data onto/from it

also even if not really needed avoiding the problem is not solving it.

[socratis]

when i tell VB to use the host drive A (my USB floppy drive) WinXP can see and read from the drive but not write to or format it.

If i instead connect it as USB device (like in Win10) WinXP recogizes it and can use it normally

When you use the USB Floppy as a USB Floppy, it works. What' I'm interested in is the failure, the first quote. How exactly do you tell VirtualBox to use the host drive A?

[mpack]

it's just a regular USB External floppy drive

There is no such thing as "a regular USB External floppy drive". Regular floppy drives were connected to the PC using a floppy disk controller, not a USB controller. Those are two very different methods of connection, requiring totally different host drivers.

You have in effect a floppy drive mounted in a USB drive caddy. I doubt that the USB standard made explicit provision for that, or that the manufacturer supplied custom drivers for such a marginal case. So, I expect it falls into the USB mass storage category, same as regular hard drives, flash drives, SDcard adaptors etc.

Yep, a 386 PC is old, probably late '80s, and therefore too old even for CD drives. Back in the day the way to get a lot of files onto a new PC would be file transfer with serial I/O software. Of course that's after installing DOS and the serial terminal software. Doing it via floppy was a non-starter.

[Prox]

When you use the USB Floppy as a USB Floppy, it works. What' I'm interested in is the failure, the first quote. How exactly do you tell VirtualBox to use the host drive A?

same as you do with the CD drive of the Host OS. the USB Floppy drive is in the Host OS seen as a regular FDD, so i can just choose it to be used in VB as the Host drive A.
I cannot post links so just go to imgur and add this behind the com/ "xMGbLzB.png" without qoutes

There is no such thing as "a regular USB External floppy drive". Regular floppy drives were connected to the PC using a floppy disk controller, not a USB controller. Those are two very different methods of connection, requiring totally different host drivers.

well yea but i cannot use an original drive because it is incompatible with my modern hardware... reason why i use a USB FDD.

You have in effect a floppy drive mounted in a USB drive caddy. I doubt that the USB standard made explicit provision for that, or that the manufacturer supplied custom drivers for such a marginal case. So, I expect it falls into the USB mass storage category, same as regular hard drives, flash drives, SDcard adaptors etc.

well yes and no. when connected to the Host OS it sees it as a Floppy drive. it goes through the USB controller, logically... otherwise i couldn't use it.
but when connected as Host Drive A to the Guest OS it doesn't connect through any USB Controller. i can disable USB altogether and it'll still work because from the perspective of the Guest OS that is a legit FDD. and if i do it like that it can read from disks but not write to them.
but if i instead connect it as a USB device to the Guest OS it will still list it as FDD (though as Drive B because it still has the Drive A: installed even when empty), difference is i can now write to the drive as well. which would be awesome if it wouldn't require a USB controller in the Guest OS. plus VB cannot boot from USB for some reason... which would be neat.

I hope i'm not just causing more confusion

btw about that 386 PC. maybe i'll do Serial, or some hardware project to have some kind of SD to Parallel Adapter so i can store something to install an OS. i like to work with the hardware of older machines.

[socratis]

You didn't answer my question:

When you use the USB Floppy as a USB Floppy, it works. What' I'm interested in is the failure, the first quote. How exactly do you tell VirtualBox to use the host drive A?

As far as the image:

I cannot post links so just go to imgur and add this

The image "http://igmur.com/xMGbLzB.png" cannot be displayed because it contains errors.

You might want to fix that...

[Prox]

yes i wrote "IMGUR" incorrectly. switch the "m" and "g"

[socratis]

I see. Now, I should have mentioned that from the previous post... Please attach the image locally in your response (see the "Upload attachment" tab below the reply form). Not a lot of people will go to 3rd party sites.

[Prox]

I see. Now, I should have mentioned that from the previous post... Please attach the image locally in your response (see the "Upload attachment" tab below the reply form). Not a lot of people will go to 3rd party sites.

sorry imgur is the most well known site for image hosting and very commonly used for that. the porgram i used to take that screenshot is called ShareX and it uploads them by default to Imgur. i'm so used to using that site i didn't thought there'd be anything wrong with it.

what is wrong with the site if i may ask?

Image should be attached

VirtualBox_2018-12-08_14-46-53.png (41.15 KiB) Viewed 3625 times

[socratis]

Thank you Prox for uploading the image here.

what is wrong with the site if i may ask?

Nothing. It's just that it adds one more extra step for the volunteers here and most of them are not going to spend the extra time to go hunting on another site. Whereas if it's here, locally and inline, they're going to have to see the image, no way around it...

Now I see better what you mean by "i tell VB to use the host drive A". Crystal clear to be exact. I happen to have a USB Floppy device, but my host is OSX so, I can't really try/test this feature with a drive letter. My other Win host is currently "dead" and I need to get it fixed at some point, maybe I could try it then...

[mpack]

I have a USB floppy drive too, but it's at work while I'm having a four day weekend. I'll try to remember to give it a try on Tuesday. But seriously, keeping a 386 PC going is a low priority. I appreciate that such a thing can be a fun project, but I have my own projects!