Adding a floppy drive in wine

[Bob Melson]

Forgive me, please, if this is something that's been asked and answered in
the past - I don't find the "problem" or answer anywhere.

Briefly, my problem is this. I have wine installed under FreeBSD and am
attempting to add a floppy drive to the wine configuration. Following
instructions, I start winecfg, click on "drives", then "add", select "A:"
and enter the path to the device (/dev/fd0); click on "apply" and exit.
Checking .wine/dosdevices shows A: to be a link to /dev/fd0. So far, so
good - following the instructions seems to work.

Next, execute "wine explorer"; sure enough, "a:" shows as one of the
lettered drives; put a (formatted) floppy in the drive, click on "A"
to view the contents and ... "path not found" - clearly, the device isn't
found.

Check again. Somebody says to configure a device, you have to use "A::";
try that, "a" no longer appears in the explorer devices.

So, what do I have to do to get wine to recognize my floppy drive? Or CAN I
get wine to recognize it at all?

Any help gratefully accepted.

[Chris Davies]

Post by Bob Melson
Forgive me, please, if this is something that's been asked and answered in
the past - I don't find the "problem" or answer anywhere.
What do I have to do to get wine to recognize my floppy drive?

Googling "wine /dev/fd0" returns a set of results that appear to answer
this question. Although I don't have a floppy drive with which to test
the answer, it appears that you need to tell wine that A: is a floppy
device rather than a filesystem.

[Drive A]
"Type" = "floppy"
"Path" = "/media/floppy"
"Label" = "/media/floppy"
"Device" = "/dev/fd0"

Chris

[Bob Melson]

On Tuesday 01 March 2011 04:44, Chris Davies (chris-***@roaima.co.uk)
opined:

<snip>

Post by Chris Davies
Googling "wine /dev/fd0" returns a set of results that appear to answer
this question. Although I don't have a floppy drive with which to test
the answer, it appears that you need to tell wine that A: is a floppy
device rather than a filesystem.
[Drive A]
"Type" = "floppy"
"Path" = "/media/floppy"
"Label" = "/media/floppy"
"Device" = "/dev/fd0"
Chris

Thank you, Chris. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to work - same
symptoms/error message.

[Chris Davies]

Post by Bob Melson
Thank you, Chris. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to work - same
symptoms/error message.

OK. I wasn't able to try it, myself.
Chris

[Doug Laidlaw]

Post by Chris Davies

Post by Bob Melson
Thank you, Chris. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to work - same
symptoms/error message.

OK. I wasn't able to try it, myself.
Chris

I have a floppy drive, and "A:" shows in the list of drives in winecfg. Put
a floppy in (containing a manual in text format) open Wine Explorer, double
click on "A:" and I get a message: Wine doesn't know what Windows program to
handle this type of file , or words to that effect. In other words, it is
seeing A: as a file, not as a drive. After mounting the floppy drive
externally to Wine, its contents came up as I would expect.

From a command prompt, the path may need to be stated differently. For
BigJig on my C: drive, the launcher is: wine C:\\Program\
Files\\BigJig\\bigjig.exe Note the extra slashes, no doubt as escapes.
You would need to do the same, substituting A: for C:.

In practice, if I am using a command prompt, I use the Linux path.

Doug,
Using Mandriva 2010.2.

[Bob Melson]

Post by Doug Laidlaw

Post by Chris Davies

Post by Bob Melson
Thank you, Chris. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to work - same
symptoms/error message.

OK. I wasn't able to try it, myself.
Chris

I have a floppy drive, and "A:" shows in the list of drives in winecfg.
Put a floppy in (containing a manual in text format) open Wine Explorer,
double click on "A:" and I get a message: Wine doesn't know what Windows
program to
handle this type of file , or words to that effect. In other words, it is
seeing A: as a file, not as a drive. After mounting the floppy drive
externally to Wine, its contents came up as I would expect.
From a command prompt, the path may need to be stated differently. For
BigJig on my C: drive, the launcher is: wine C:\\Program\
Files\\BigJig\\bigjig.exe Note the extra slashes, no doubt as escapes.
You would need to do the same, substituting A: for C:.
In practice, if I am using a command prompt, I use the Linux path.
Doug,
Using Mandriva 2010.2.

Doug,

Thanks for your reply to my earlier query. Part of my problem, I think, is
that I expect wine to behave like windows WRT detecting and using the
floppy drive. I so rarely use windows or anything remotely related to it
these days that those expectations are more likely based on faulty memory
than in reality.

I've found that if I configure "A:" to be a mount-point in an
external-to-wine filesystem (like /cdrom or /mnt), wine will hum happily
along when I've mounted a (pre)-formatted floppy. That's OK for what I
wanted to do, but kinda begs the question: how do I get wine to detect
and handle the raw device? I'd like to be able in winecfg to
configure "A:" to be /dev/fd0 (on my system). When I do, however, "A:"
never appears in wine explorer or returns a "path not found" error if it
does appear.

Bob
(FreeBSD 8.2)

[Doug Laidlaw]

Post by Bob Melson

Post by Doug Laidlaw

Post by Chris Davies

Post by Bob Melson
Thank you, Chris. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to work - same
symptoms/error message.

OK. I wasn't able to try it, myself.
Chris

I have a floppy drive, and "A:" shows in the list of drives in winecfg.
Put a floppy in (containing a manual in text format) open Wine Explorer,
double click on "A:" and I get a message: Wine doesn't know what Windows
program to
handle this type of file , or words to that effect. In other words, it is
seeing A: as a file, not as a drive. After mounting the floppy drive
externally to Wine, its contents came up as I would expect.
From a command prompt, the path may need to be stated differently. For
BigJig on my C: drive, the launcher is: wine C:\\Program\
Files\\BigJig\\bigjig.exe Note the extra slashes, no doubt as escapes.
You would need to do the same, substituting A: for C:.
In practice, if I am using a command prompt, I use the Linux path.
Doug,
Using Mandriva 2010.2.

Doug,
Thanks for your reply to my earlier query. Part of my problem, I think,
is that I expect wine to behave like windows WRT detecting and using the
floppy drive. I so rarely use windows or anything remotely related to it
these days that those expectations are more likely based on faulty memory
than in reality.
I've found that if I configure "A:" to be a mount-point in an
external-to-wine filesystem (like /cdrom or /mnt), wine will hum happily
along when I've mounted a (pre)-formatted floppy. That's OK for what I
wanted to do, but kinda begs the question: how do I get wine to detect
and handle the raw device? I'd like to be able in winecfg to
configure "A:" to be /dev/fd0 (on my system). When I do, however, "A:"
never appears in wine explorer or returns a "path not found" error if it
does appear.
Bob
(FreeBSD 8.2)

That really isn't what wine is about. Wine isn't Windows, as they keep
telling us. It is a utility to let you run Windows programs. So many
people want wine to be a free version of Windows. wine has to avoid
Windows patents.

What you really need is for your OS to automount the floppy, then wine will
see it O.K. That is where it must happen. The mounting is done under the
parent OS, not under Windows. Until it is mounted, wine will see only the
empty directory /media/floppy. Automounting seems to be rather a vexed
question. Plenty of people have problems with it. A question in Linux
Forums got no reply at all. I don't know if BSD is any different. The
other thing you need to watch is unmounting. Linux can delay writing to the
disk, and if you simply pop it out, the write is unfinished. Windows has a
small amount of delay and has a "safely remove" button in the system tray.

HTH,

Doug.

[Bob Melson]

Post by Doug Laidlaw

Post by Bob Melson

Post by Doug Laidlaw

Post by Chris Davies

Post by Bob Melson
Thank you, Chris. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to work - same
symptoms/error message.

OK. I wasn't able to try it, myself.
Chris

I have a floppy drive, and "A:" shows in the list of drives in winecfg.
Put a floppy in (containing a manual in text format) open Wine
Explorer, double click on "A:" and I get a message: Wine doesn't know
what Windows program to
handle this type of file , or words to that effect. In other words, it is
seeing A: as a file, not as a drive. After mounting the floppy drive
externally to Wine, its contents came up as I would expect.
From a command prompt, the path may need to be stated differently. For
BigJig on my C: drive, the launcher is: wine C:\\Program\
Files\\BigJig\\bigjig.exe Note the extra slashes, no doubt as
escapes. You would need to do the same, substituting A: for C:.
In practice, if I am using a command prompt, I use the Linux path.
Doug,
Using Mandriva 2010.2.

Doug,
Thanks for your reply to my earlier query. Part of my problem, I think,
is that I expect wine to behave like windows WRT detecting and using the
floppy drive. I so rarely use windows or anything remotely related to
it these days that those expectations are more likely based on faulty
memory than in reality.
I've found that if I configure "A:" to be a mount-point in an
external-to-wine filesystem (like /cdrom or /mnt), wine will hum happily
along when I've mounted a (pre)-formatted floppy. That's OK for what I
wanted to do, but kinda begs the question: how do I get wine to detect
and handle the raw device? I'd like to be able in winecfg to
configure "A:" to be /dev/fd0 (on my system). When I do, however, "A:"
never appears in wine explorer or returns a "path not found" error if it
does appear.
Bob
(FreeBSD 8.2)

That really isn't what wine is about. Wine isn't Windows, as they keep
telling us. It is a utility to let you run Windows programs. So many
people want wine to be a free version of Windows. wine has to avoid
Windows patents.
What you really need is for your OS to automount the floppy, then wine will
see it O.K. That is where it must happen. The mounting is done under the
parent OS, not under Windows. Until it is mounted, wine will see only the
empty directory /media/floppy. Automounting seems to be rather a vexed
question. Plenty of people have problems with it. A question in Linux
Forums got no reply at all. I don't know if BSD is any different. The
other thing you need to watch is unmounting. Linux can delay writing to the
disk, and if you simply pop it out, the write is unfinished. Windows has
a small amount of delay and has a "safely remove" button in the system
tray.
HTH,
Doug.

Yeah, I'm aware that wine is an emulator and not the thing emulated. As I
said above, I had expected it to behave similarly to windows WRT detection
and use of the floppy drive. Obviously that's not going to happen. I'll
be dropping the subject after this, but thank you for your reply.

Since I rarely have need to use windows or a windows emulator, I really
don't want to get into automounting. Manually mounting a floppy is
sufficient, if unsatisfactory, given my needs and expectations.

[vince]

Post by Bob Melson
Briefly, my problem is this. I have wine installed under FreeBSD and am
attempting to add a floppy drive to the wine configuration. Following
instructions, I start winecfg, click on "drives", then "add", select "A:"
and enter the path to the device (/dev/fd0); click on "apply" and exit.
Checking .wine/dosdevices shows A: to be a link to /dev/fd0. So far, so
good - following the instructions seems to work.
Next, execute "wine explorer"; sure enough, "a:" shows as one of the
lettered drives; put a (formatted) floppy in the drive, click on "A"
to view the contents and ... "path not found" - clearly, the device isn't
found.

Not familiar with FreeBSD - so a couple of dumb questions.
Does FreeBSD automatically mount your floppy when you put it in the
drive?
When wine explorer fails to see the contents of the floppy, can you
see the contents of the floppy with a native FreeBSD file manager?

I'm guessing you can't see the floppy because it's not mounted. I
could easily be wrong!

Additionally (on Linux), my WINE install uses the mount point (eg.
/media/floppy0), not the device (/dev/fd0).
ls -al .wine/dosdevices/a\:
lrwxrwxrwx 1 user user 14 2011-03-01 17:53 .wine/dosdevices/a: -> /media/floppy0

[Bob Melson]

Post by vince

Post by Bob Melson
Briefly, my problem is this. I have wine installed under FreeBSD and am
attempting to add a floppy drive to the wine configuration. Following
instructions, I start winecfg, click on "drives", then "add", select "A:"
and enter the path to the device (/dev/fd0); click on "apply" and exit.
Checking .wine/dosdevices shows A: to be a link to /dev/fd0. So far, so
good - following the instructions seems to work.
Next, execute "wine explorer"; sure enough, "a:" shows as one of the
lettered drives; put a (formatted) floppy in the drive, click on "A"
to view the contents and ... "path not found" - clearly, the device isn't
found.

Vince:

Thanks for your response, below.

Post by vince
Not familiar with FreeBSD - so a couple of dumb questions.

The dumb question is the one never asked.

Post by vince
Does FreeBSD automatically mount your floppy when you put it in the
drive?

No. You must mount the floppy manually.

Post by vince
When wine explorer fails to see the contents of the floppy, can you
see the contents of the floppy with a native FreeBSD file manager?
I'm guessing you can't see the floppy because it's not mounted. I
could easily be wrong!

No, actually, I think you're spot on. One of my basic assumptions
was that wine would behave similarly to windoze WRT floppies. IOW, tell it
what device is represented by A:, put a formatted floppy in that device
and wine/windows would recognize it. That evidently is not the case -
after some piddlin', I finally tried mounting /dev/fd0 on /mnt (outside
wine), then using "wine explorer" to see if I could see the floppy. Lo
and behold, it was there and I was able to copy files to<->from /mnt -
which is to say, to the floppy.

Since that seems a somewhat round-about means of accessing a floppy under
wine, I still wonder how you might configure wine to recognize the raw
device as A:. Guess I'll have to ask the folks at winehq.

Post by vince
Additionally (on Linux), my WINE install uses the mount point (eg.
/media/floppy0), not the device (/dev/fd0).
lrwxrwxrwx 1 user user 14 2011-03-01 17:53 .wine/dosdevices/a: -> /media/floppy0

Thanks again.

Bob

[j***@gmail.com]

Post by Bob Melson
Next, execute "wine explorer"; sure enough, "a:" shows as one of the
lettered drives; put a (formatted) floppy in the drive, click on "A"
to view the contents and ... "path not found" - clearly, the device isn't
found.
Check again.  Somebody says to configure a device, you have to use "A::";
try that, "a" no longer appears in the explorer devices.
So, what do I have to do to get wine to recognize my floppy drive? Or CAN I
get wine to recognize it at all?

Wine doesn't have filesystem support. Reading from a raw device is
primarily used for supporting DRM (copy protection). To read the
contents the device must be mounted and OS needs to support the file
system (FAT in the case of DOS and Win). Wine can then access the
contents trough the OS.