virtualbox.org

If you have any setup which can read the floppies then I suggest that you make images of all the floppies, and mount only images inside the VM - do not attempt to use the physical drive. Using floppy images rules out problems such as fights for ownership of the physical drive and/or physical read errors.

@mpack
I don't know if you caught my post above about trying to image floppies using "Floppy Image" software, but it didn't even see the floppy in the drive. Do you have any software that you recommend that I try?

Thanks,

Techboy-

No, I have no recommendations - I had no difficulty finding several when I needed them, but I haven't needed them recently. None were terribly smart or friendly, but they all kinda worked for the most common 3.5" floppy format (i.e. 1.44MB). None of them liked the older floppy formats (e.g. 720KB single sided).

If you can't access a floppy in a host drive with a non-VBox tool then that makes it a non-VBox problem, either hardware or "pilot error". Before we can go any further you need to establish that you have a working floppy drive and that you know how to use it. And bear in mind that the images can be created on any PC with a floppy drive, it doesn't have to be on the host PC - images would then be copied to the host using USB drive or CD or whatever.

techboy2020 wrote:any software that you recommend that I try?

-edit- link removed

@fixedwheel
Are you sure about this download? I just scanned the file before running the installation, just to be sure in my cautious nature, and Emsisoft Anti-Malware detects the program as a Trojan Virus. I would hate to have my system needlessly infected.

@mpack
Yes, the floppy drive works. . .and I know how to stick a diskette into it. . .further, I used it for the installation of of the same program that I'm trying to install on VmBox WIN98 for my XP machine. This is what has left me confused.

techboy2020 wrote:@fixedwheel
Are you sure about this download? I just scanned the file before running the installation, just to be sure in my cautious nature, and Emsisoft Anti-Malware detects the program as a Trojan Virus. I would hate to have my system needlessly infected.

sorry no i'm not... @work just checked with Norton "Trojan.Gen" found, maybe the author uses some obscure programming style thats indicated as trojan. Anyway, removed the link

@fixedwheel
Thanks for the attempt, I appreciate it. I'll browse around and try to find one that doesn't behave like a Trojan!

techboy2020 wrote:Yes, the floppy drive works. . .and I know how to stick a diskette into it. . .further, I used it for the installation of of the same program that I'm trying to install on VmBox WIN98 for my XP machine. This is what has left me confused.

The drive works? That isn't what you said a couple of messages back when you said that "Floppy Image" refused to work. The ability to connect the housing to a PC, and to stick a floppy in the slot, is not evidence that the floppy drive and floppy are good and working. The fact that it worked in the past is not evidence that it works now. It seems to me that if the drive really works then you should have no problem making images, so what are we still talking about?

@mpack
Yes, a few messages back I stated that the image creating software that I attempted to use couldn't read the floppy disk that I had inserted. However, the drive itself does work. I used it three minutes ago to create an image of a floppy using 'Magic ISO'. There is nothing wrong with the floppy drive. I've managed to get the installation off of the ground in the virtual 98 setup using these ISO's, however, now I'm faced with internal errors relating to it's installation in the virtual 98. I keep running into these hurdles. *sigh* Perhaps, I'll try a virtual 95 installation to see if the installation goes easier on it. Thanks for all your help..

Techboy2020

Perhaps, I'll try a virtual 95 installation to see if the installation goes easier on it

Well that's about like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Win 98 is barely supported and not officially, Win 95 is totally not supported. Actually if you can't get 98 to work I don't see how you can get 95 to work. The real trick to getting 98 to install is to prepare the HDD so that you can install from the CD. The install floppy just has the DOS files that are needed to partition the drive and format it, plus the cdrom drivers so you can access it to do the actual install. There are hundreds of examples on how to do this here and on the Internet.

@Perryg
Ah, I did install Win98 from a CD-ROM. I've just deleted the original virtual 98 I created and reinstalled, hoping that perhaps I had mis-configured something along the way. Now that I'm a little more familiar with the VmBox software, installation has gone smoother then I previously recall. I'll let you know if it makes a difference. Thanks,

Techboy-

techboy2020 wrote:I've managed to get the installation off of the ground in the virtual 98 setup using these ISO's

I hate to start nitpicking about terminology, but you actually had me confused by this statement - though I quickly realized that when you said "ISO" you were really talking about a floppy image. However the last thing we need here is more confusion... FYI, an ISO is an image of a CD or DVD, so called because the CD/DVD is assumed to have been formatted using the ISO-9660 or a derivative filesystem. Your floppy OTOH was formatted with the FAT filesystem so an image of it is not an ISO. If you really used MagicISO to make an ISO from the contents of a floppy (which is possible) then the result would not be usable as a floppy in VBox or any other virtual floppy software - it would however be ready to burn onto a CD or used as a virtual CD.

@mpack
Hmmmmm, I see, thank you for that clarification. I'll have to hunt down another program.

techboy2020 wrote:Hmmmmm, I see, thank you for that clarification. I'll have to hunt down another program.

There may be no need. While it is possible to create a CD-ready image (i.e. an ISO) from any group of files, there is no guarantee that that is what MagicISO actually did. That's why I wanted you to be accurate about terminology - I don't use MagicISO, and I wasn't there to look over your shoulder, so I need you to tell me what kind of file it really created. Btw, a quick web search implies that despite the name, MagicISO does support floppy images in addition to ISOs, eg. as described here. It should be said however that the example shown is creating a floppy image from a group of files - it is not simply imaging the floppy drive.