OK, been working on the thing all evening long.... now soon 22h30, I am super tired and will go to bed as soon as I am done typing the present message....
So what I did :
Seeing as I was going nowhere trying to install VMware on Linux, I gave up.
Instead I tried to install it inside my WinXp VM... yes, a VM inside a VM... because when you are completely desperate, you are willing to try ANYTHING !!!
![Laughing :-DD](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiley_laughing.gif)
That didn't work because I could not find an old version of VMware that would run on WinXP. Every time Google pretended it found one and I followed the links it gave me.... I always ended up being served, in reality, the very latest VMware release, somehow.
So I went back to basics... seeing all the time I wasted trying to get VMware to work so I can use PA0PBZ's FLP floppy images.... I thought hell it's only fair that I spend at least as much time trying to make images on Linux using the command line. The tutorial I found earlier seemed super complicated and convoluted and complex, a bit scary, and I couldn't even understand if it would actually do what I wanted to do.... but well, I decided to give it at least a try. Glad I did because it worked just fine, I can now make my floppy images, from random files stored on my hard drive, just with basic command line tools that are already installed by default in any Linux setup one might have.
So here is what you do : you create a virtual floppy disk image, then you format it for MS-DOS, then create a virtual floppy drive, then you stick your virtual floppy in your virtual drive then.... you can use that virtual floppy like a real one. I could just copy, to start with, the contents of the ORCAD Install disk, onto the virtual floppy.
In case anyone is curious, here are the details :
Create the virtual floppy disk :
$ dd bs=512 count=2880 if=/dev/zero of=imagefile.img
Format it for MSDOS files:
$ mkfs.msdos imagefile.img
Create the virtual floppy drive to go with it (mount point)
$ sudo mkdir /media/floppy1/
Insert / mount the disk into the drive :
$ sudo mount -o loop floppy.img /media/floppy1/
Then I could just copy the ORCAD files from the first / Install disk, onto the virtual floppy :
$cp /orcad/install/disk/*.* /media/floppy1
Then I eject the floppy :
$ sudo umount /media/floppy1/
That's it, the image is ready... then rinse and repeat 24 times to do create all the ORCAD disk images (if you want to install every module / component)... which will take some time.... so definitely not now ! I am going to BED !!!
So I tried that first hand crafted, cherished floppy image inside my VirtualBox VM and.... it failed miserably, in exactly the same way that the FLP image did before : you can read the contents of the disk just fine, but as soon as you load the ORCAD install program, screen goes black and VM becomes unresponsive. So I guess that means there is nothing wrong with the FLP image, or my own.... and it's just somehow VirtualBox that doesn't like the ORCAD install executable....
So, as a quick sanity check, I loaded my image inside my Windows XP Virtualbox VM.... opened an MS-DOS prompt window, navigated to the floppy disc, loaded the install.bat file and... VOILA ! Look at that ! It works now !!!
![Fighting :box:](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/fighting0030.gif)
So the problem is not Virtualbox at large... only the MSDOS VM is affected.
So, great, now I know how to make my own floppy images from the Linux command line, and I know they work fine ! So tomorrow after work I will spend 2 hours creating all the images !!!
![Cool 8)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/cool.gif)
Stay tuned !!
![](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/orcad-for-msdos/?action=dlattach;attach=1585429;image]https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/orcad-for-msdos/?action=dlattach;attach=1585429;image)