using floppy without floppydrive

[Philippjosefrichard]

Hallo
I need to input data via floppy in an old aplication on Windows, but my floppy doese not work any more.
Is ist possible to make a floppy-image with the date to start virtualBox with this Floppy-image?

How can I crate a floppy image with my data-file to bring into the virtual Windows-Computer (VirtualBox)?

Thanks for Help
Philipp

[Philippjosefrichard]

jepeee I have found the solution! very simple, great fun!
http://untitledfinale.wordpress.com/200 ... der-linux/

Create the virtual floppy:
dd bs=512 count=2880 if=/dev/zero of=imagefile.img
mkfs.msdos imagefile.img

Mount the virtual Floppy:
sudo mkdir /media/floppy1/
sudo mount -o loop imagefile.img /media/floppy1/


Coppy some Files to the Floppy
sudo mcopy Datei.doc /media/floppy1/

Check the content of the virtual Floppy:
ls -l /media/floppy1
insgesamt 1
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 307 17. Dez 20:25 Datei.doc

sudo umount /media/floppy1

And here is the Image-File of the virtual floppy, which we should be able to use as Floppy in VirtualBox:
s -lh imagefile.img
-rw-rw-r-- 1 erwin erwin 1,5M 17. Dez 20:23 imagefile.img

[di64]

If you're on Windows consider http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html. This program lets you make a virtual floppy drive on your host computer, and lets you save the contents of the disk to a .img file that you can then mount in VirtualBox.

basic steps to use it are:
- install the program
- open vfdwin.exe as administrator if in Vista, or just double-click if in XP
- click Install
- click Start
- click the 'Drive 0' tab
- click change letter, change from (NONE) to B:
- use the thing to make a new floppy file
- choose option FILE, not RAM (otherwise you must save manually)
- click Open/Create... and make a new floppy .img file
- click Format to format the floppy disk.

then use your B: drive as normal.

[mpack]

I need to input data via floppy in an old aplication on Windows, but my floppy doese not work any more.
Is ist possible to make a floppy-image with the date to start virtualBox with this Floppy-image?

How can I crate a floppy image with my data-file to bring into the virtual Windows-Computer (VirtualBox)?

To create a floppy image you of course need a working floppy drive. That means asking a favour from a friend who has a working floppy drive, or you can buy a USB floppy drive quite cheaply. You will also need an application which can copy a floppy image to a PC file - there are several such freeware tools available (google for it). I suggest that that you not go for the overcomplicated host virtual drive solution suggested by someone else. The floppy image needs to be a plain copy of the disk, not compressed. For convenience you should give the image a .IMG extension.

Once you have the floppy image it is childs play to mount it in a VirtualBox guest. Files from the floppy can be used inside the guest and/or copied to a shared folder where the host can get at them.