Shared folder discussion

[Caldor]

There was some mention of ZIP file problems? I just noticed that zip files in the shared folder seems to become unreadable? Cannot open them, copy them, anything. So I guess that must be related to the ZIP file problems there is with the shared folder?

Another strange thing I have noticed, is that when I copy files from the misterfs drive, using Norton Commander, it cannot copy a folder with all the subfolders and files. It copies the first folder, then takes the first folder in that one and the first file in that folder... and then stops.

If its a folder with only files, it will take the first file. I suspect it might work with a file manager that is not Norton Commander, but still a bit strange.

But sure is very nice to be able to just copy new files I want to use on the MiSTer to this folder over FTP and then use them, or maybe copy them from this folder to a VHD and use them from there. Saves a lot of time when its just small files anyway.

[Cebion]

I had the same problem with Norton commander. Xcopy works great use xcopy source destination /s /e

[rhester72]

I have issues coping zip files from my MisterFS. Also files with longer filenames are not visible. Some kind of filename truncation would be nice. I've looked at the source code for MisterFS, but it has alot of assembly. I don't think my skills are good enough to fix this.

There was an update to fix ZIP files. No fix possible for LFN due to the way reverse mapping is done.

[rhester72]

I'm making some progress.
I deleted the "shared" folder in the a0486 folder and ran misterfs.exe D in DOS 6.22. Now it seems to be working. The odd thing is it hangs with some of my other DOS VHD images. I'm not sure what is making it hang.
Is anyone else experiencing this?

I tried deleting my shared folder, and this worked for me. I guess the folder needs some special settings, for MiSTerFS has to be able to create the folder first time its run? Either way, its working. I have ensured all files I have added to it are having compliant names. Seems its not possible for AO486 to write to it, but that still makes it great for storing stuff like CD images and installation files.

Writing from DOS definitely works.

[rhester72]

i've pushed the fix for zip files in shared folder.

Sorry for being blind - where can we find it?

[Caldor]

i've pushed the fix for zip files in shared folder.

Sorry for being blind - where can we find it?

Yeah, I figured Sorg meant it was part of the AO486 core update yesterday. There is also a new exe file in the drivers folder. Not sure what its for. But guess it was not part of the core update.

But how are you using MiSTerFS to get that to work? DOS 6.22 or can you also do it with DOS 7.1? I just seem to see more than one in this thread having trouble running programs from the shared folder, so I am thinking its probably not a great idea to try to write to it even if it does work. But so far, mine wont do it at all. Maybe its because I have put more than 10 gb in the shared folder.

[rhester72]

I'm on completely stock 6.22 as described in my other thread. Haven't tried ZIP files, but I've run game installers directly from the shared folder and they work, I've run binaries like UMBINFO from shared and it works, and I've copied things like CONFIG.SYS to shared so I can get at them locally and it works.

[Caldor]

I'm on completely stock 6.22 as described in my other thread. Haven't tried ZIP files, but I've run game installers directly from the shared folder and they work, I've run binaries like UMBINFO from shared and it works, and I've copied things like CONFIG.SYS to shared so I can get at them locally and it works.

I will try to see how it works with DOS 6.22 for me. I can run binaries as well, just not full games. I figured that is because games often try to write to the disk. Being able to copy small files like the sys files would be nice. And BAT files and such. But unless games can run from the shared folder, it does not seem like much of a solution to use DOS 6.22 with the lack of FAT32 suppport. Its just such a high amount of VHD swapping and rebooting with such small disks.

[rhester72]

I really just used the shared folder to ship installers over without having to deal with floppy or VHD images - it's kinda fire-and-forget in that regard. I imagine running full installs from shared could be problematic.

[Caldor]

I really just used the shared folder to ship installers over without having to deal with floppy or VHD images - it's kinda fire-and-forget in that regard. I imagine running full installs from shared could be problematic.

Yeah, that is what I am using it for as well. Its very useful that is for sure, it would just be nice if it was a bit more stable. But the shared folder can even be used with Windows as it is now, so... that is pretty great I think. I do suspect that the problems I am having might be possible to fix with a better setup. Maybe using QEMM or maybe using an updated EMM386, or tweaking the settings just right. Because right now its close to being just the way I hoped it to be, which is something I can use to mount ISOs, and install games from. But MiSTer FS on top of doing CD drive emulation seems to be pushing the AO486 a bit too much. Which is why I am now making 8gb VHDs, since that seems to be the limit of what AO486 will accept. Or... somewhere between 8000 and 8192MB it seems, 8192 being a full 8gb VHD, but that is just a bit too much for AO486.

[Goingdown]

Where do you guys get misterfs.exe with fixed zip file handling? I downloaded one from https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_M ... leases/drv and ZIP files still cannot be accessed.

I can copy zip file to shared folder, but I cannot read it from there anymore.

[kathleen]

@Goingdown,

Misterfs.exe (which is in the .ZIP) needs to be placed in your VHD (your MS-DOS partition) and not in the share folder.
If I'm not wrong, I beleive that someone has created a disk image containing it to do so.
If not you have to do it by your own with winimage/winiso for instance.
Once you've done it, transfer the disk to your SD card as you usually do to feed AO486 with application or game disks and load it into disk drive A(Win+F12 etc..)
Then, if you DIR you A: you'll see the misterfs.exe that you've to copy at your best location and add in autoexec.bat by using the right syntax (go to the wiki for this) in order to run misterfs and activate the share folder once you boot into DOS.

Hope that I did not confused you because I'm not a good teacher and it is not easy for me to write what I've in mind I think too fast and write to slow in other words

[Caldor]

I got MiSTerFS fully working with FreeDOS. It seems to be able to run games from the shared folder, copy files to and rom it and everything.

So I made a new boot disk image with this configuration. I managed to fit everything on a floppy, so you can use the mounted VHDs just for games and such, instead of having one of them to be a system disk.
http://dionysus.dk/software/DOS/AO486_floppy.7z

I also made a video showing what is on the boot disk and how to use its utilities and the memory configuration that got it working for me.
https://youtu.be/BrB4eukTqIQ

[rsn8887]

Is there a recommended set of arguments for emm386 that works best with games and misterfs.exe?

Is the shared folder subject to the same max 8 Gb (or 2 Gb) total size restriction as regular vhd partitions?

If the shared folder works reliably and can be larger than 8Gb, that would be awesome

[Caldor]

I found a way to make MiSTerFS work with Windows 95. Windows 95 does not use a memory manager, so it does not have the same problems with EMM386. Someone put a video on Youtube earlier today (or I guess yesterday now) showing how to get it to work. Booting in DOS mode, running MiSTerFS and then booting into Windows with the win command.

I figured, it seems to work quite well, so maybe I could just add it to the boot files? Sure enough, that works
Here is the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G5Z0tieRRk

So what I did was add misterfs F to my autoexec.bat. I use F because I like to keep E free for virtual CD drives.

Code: Select all

misterfs F
C:\WINDOWS\net start
mode con codepage prepare=((850) C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\ega.cpi)
mode con codepage select=850
keyb uk,,C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\keyboard.sys

My Windows autoexec.bat.

It wont work if you have a Daemon tools virtual CD drive active though. I have Daemon Tools installed, and as soon as I gave it one active drive, not even any images mounted... it would cause my drive F to seem empty. No files at all. So now I am trying to see if Virtual CD might work better. Another thing to note, is that it cannot use Windows to launch files from the drive. Trying to open exe will fail... unless its a DOS exe file that might work. I think maybe some registry magic might solve this issue, but not sure. You can open text files on the drive though and copy files from it. You can also open a DOS prompt and everything will work.

Is there a recommended set of arguments for emm386 that works best with games and misterfs.exe?

Is the shared folder subject to the same max 8 Gb (or 2 Gb) total size restriction as regular vhd partitions?

If the shared folder works reliably and can be larger than 8Gb, that would be awesome

Yes, it should work with this:

Code: Select all

DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE AUTO RAM FRAME=e000 d=256 x=c000-c7ff i=d000-efff

If you want to change parameters, just make sure you always keep x=c000-c7ff i=d000-efff, they should be the most important ones.

Btw. Sorg said it would be enough to use ce00-c7ff, and I think I see the problem with this. Its a from two range and hex numbers go from 0 to F. f000 is higher than 7000 and f000 is higher than 000f. So the range ce00-c7ff is invalid as ce00 is higher than c7ff.

So... to be on the safe side, I think we can use x=c700-ceff. c7ff might be correct, but if it is not the drive will probably have problems. The larger the excluded area, the safer it will be I am guessing. So c000-cfff would be safer I am thinking and then even safer is a000-cfff. But... I think I will try with c700-c7ee and see if I will get fill functionality from the shared folder, being able to read from it and write to it without problems.

[rhester72]

There might be some confusion - the MiSTerFS exclude range is CE00-CFFF. It's working for you only because your explicit include range doesn't start until D000, so it won't touch anything below that whether you exclude it or not.

[chanunnaki]

Not working properly for me in Windows 95.

I can see the files Windows I created on my Mac but I can't read or write to the shared drive.

[Caldor]

Not working properly for me in Windows 95.

I can see the files Windows I created on my Mac but I can't read or write to the shared drive.

With Windows 95 you have to run MiSTerFS before you start Windows 95. Did you do that? That is, adding it to a boot file. I think for Windows 95 the boot files or otherwise empty. Worked for me to do this. But you should probably avoid writing to it, whether its Windows 95 or DOS. Its best to just read from it, as it can cause problems writing to it.

[chanunnaki]

Not working properly for me in Windows 95.

I can see the files Windows I created on my Mac but I can't read or write to the shared drive.

With Windows 95 you have to run MiSTerFS before you start Windows 95. Did you do that? That is, adding it to a boot file. I think for Windows 95 the boot files or otherwise empty. Worked for me to do this. But you should probably avoid writing to it, whether its Windows 95 or DOS. Its best to just read from it, as it can cause problems writing to it.

Yeah, I ran it in dos before booting into windows. I could see the share, and see the files, but could not read from properly.

[thoseposers]

Perhaps this is related to the post above, but I'm trying to set up the cd rom drive with oakcdrom.sys and am running into an issue copying it over from the shared folder to my c:\ drive. I try to run the command:

Code: Select all

copy E:\OAKCDROM.SYS C:\DRIVERS

but it always returns "invalid parameter combination". I'm able to cd into both folders to confirm they exist and a dir shows the sys file in the shared folder. If anyone has any tips with this I'd really appreciate it.

Edit: After trying to copy the file over in my computer in windows 95 I get a "Drive E cannot be accessed" error

Edit: In case anyone else comes across this, I was able to solve it by using this:

Code: Select all

xcopy E:\OAKCDROM.SYS C:\DRIVERS

[Nikoh]

guys i have same problem it still hang when dir... some help?