HOW TO: Build a compatible VHD in Windows 10 for AO486

[flynnsbit]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geivQc1 ... e=youtu.be

In this video I go over the creation of a brand new VHD using Windows 10, copy that to the MiSTer, and configure it to boot, format, and copy DOS 7.1 to it. The DOS images used in this video are archived over on Archive.org: https://archive.org/search.php?query=ao486

Intro
Windows 10 VHD Creation: 00:32
MiSTer AO486 Setup: 03:16
MiSTer Boot Floppy: 04:48
AO486 FDISK the VHD: 05:49
AO486 FORMAT C: 06:30
AO486 XCOPY from existing DOS7 VHD: 07:26
AO486 Booting the VHD for the first time: 09:10
Config.sys: 09:36
Autoexec.bat: 09:50
Adding Secondary for Games: 10:45
Pump Fighters: 11:15

[howami]

For the VHD: How big can they be? The VHD is Fat32. So the biggest VHD should be 4 GB. But there are VHD with 8 GB. How do you do that and what is the real limit? Thx

[Txamin]

4gb is the limit for a file in fat32, not the partition itself

[flynnsbit]

Running full 128GB VHDs now that are completely full in DOS 7.1 with zero problems. The key is to only use those as your secondary and keep the primary as just the OS files and keep that one small.

[howami]

Well I can't format it with Fat. Only NTFS and exFat if it is a 32GB VHD. And Exfat is not recogniced

[flynnsbit]

The best way (not the greatest steps)
1. Create VHD in Windows to the size you want. Initialize it but don't format it.
2. Copy it to your mister on the sd or ssd.
3. mount a dos 6.22 / 7.1 /Win 98 as primary and the new vhd as secondary
3. boot, run fdisk- set the new disk, fdisk it to the max size, reboot
4. format the new disk, it will say it is 64 gig because of a format bug, ignore it, it will format the whole thing.
5. now you can copy/bring it back to your windows machine, mount it, and fill it up with whatever you want. Then back to the mister again...

[Caldor]

There was a thread about sharing premade VHDs. We found that you can actually make an empty VHD, partition it and format it and then the interesting thing is it can be compressed twice. First time it becomes a few mbyte, but the second time its reduced to a few kbyte.

I made one just below 8gb, because that used to be the limit.