VIRTUALBOX + floppy

Anybody know how to do this:

I have Windows XP PRO (legal) running successfully in an Oracle virtual machine (VirtualBox 7.0.8) under Manjaro. I would like for it (Windows) to be able to read/write to a floppy disk. My reason is that I want to install, under Windows XP, Microsoft QuickBasic 4.5 (don’t laugh too hard - I have some old QB45 programs, which I originally wrote, that I want to run and maybe edit. The rub: my original (also legal) QuickBasic 4.5 compiler came on two 3.5" floppies. The installation program, as I recall, asks first for ‘disk-1’ and then ‘disk-2’.

My Linux PC is an old Intel-based X86_64 unit which still has a ‘real’ (not USB) built-in 3.5" floppy drive. Manjaro sees it, and can mount, read, & write to it as /dev/fd0. But no matter what I’ve tried, I can’t get the Windows VM to even recognize that a floppy drive is present, much less read the disks.

Any suggestions on how I might do this would be appreciated!

-Richard

simply copy the files to the xp system and place the files in two folders disk1 and disk2.

Launch the setup program from disk 1 - and when queried for the second disk - point to the folder disk2

If you have a usb floppy drive - simply attach the physical drive to the vm.

EDIT:

I have copies of QB4.5 - my first programming language

Understand, but only USB Devices can be passed though in VirtualBox. Virtualbox has no option to add a virtual floppy device. So in fact that will not work.

I saw in virt-manager that there is an option to add a virtual floppy disk. You would need to clone the floppy disk to an image file with dd and then you can select the image file at the configuration options of the virtual floppy disk.

Sorry, the images are in German, but hope you get the idea.

OP here…

Success! linux-aarhus, you put me on the right track!

Like you said, I copied the both of the QB install disks to a folder (with great imagination I called it ‘disk’) on the XP C: drive.

Then (in XP) used the CLI command ‘SUBST A: C:\disk’ … for you non-windows people, this is a DOS/Windows command to make acesses to A:(non-existant floppy) go to the C: path instead.

…Ran the SETUP program, and the installation went smoothly. I now have QB45 running on my Manjaro PC!

So thanks!

-Richard

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