[pc86][qemu vs dosbox] produced img file format seems to only work in qemu while dosbox crashes once the image is mounted

[Fabrizio-Caruso]

This is not a bug report because the img file format produced by pc86 may well be good but I don't know if it can be mounted in dosbox .
If I try to mount it with imgtool, then dosbox crashes with no error message. How are we supposed to mount them under doxbox?

On the other hand, the img files seem to work fine with qemu.

I wonder whether ack is producing images in a qemu-only format or if dosbox is broken.

[tkchia]

Hello @Fabrizio-Caruso ,

A pc86 disk image does not contain MS-DOS files or any mountable filesystem, so you cannot really "mount" such an image.

However, you might be able to "boot" the disk image to run its program -- by using DOSBox's boot command. (I have not tried this.) From the DOSBox documentation:

BOOT
  Boot will start floppy images or hard disk images independent of
  the operating system emulation offered by DOSBox. This will allow you to
  play booter floppies or boot other operating systems inside DOSBox.
  If the target emulated system is PCjr (machine=pcjr) the boot command
  can be used to load PCjr cartridges (.jrc). 

  BOOT [diskimg1.img diskimg2.img .. diskimgN.img] [-l driveletter]
  BOOT [cart.jrc]  (PCjr only)

...

Thank you!

[davidgiven]

Sorry, could have sworn I replied to this. Thanks @tkchia, you're dead right. Also I didn't know about the boot command; that'll be useful for testing.