Fine, I'll mount CD images with IMGMOUNT from now on, and use IsoBuster to create .bin/.cue files.

Thanks!

Hmm, this just doesn't make sense. Why doesn't DOSBox work with CDs that have audio tracks with anything other than IMGMOUNT? I just figured this out recently, and it's pretty annoying... I have a bunch of DOS CD games that have CD audio, and having to make images of them all, then use the DOSBox config file to manually add whichever one I want each time I want to change discs... that would take up a lot of hard drive space I'd rather not waste on games I have on disc and would be quite annoying.

Anyway... I have Vista. In Windows, CD audio works fine, either through the DVD drive or through mounting through Daemon Tools. The only audio problem I've had in Vista itself is that I couldn't get sound working in SimTower, but that's a "really old midi drivers" issue or something like that, quite unrelated... anyway, In DOSBox, however, CD audio does not work through either an actual CD or an image mounted in Daemon Tools. Put in a disc in and go into a game's config screen and I find that the config just doesn't have "CD Audio" listed as an option... or if it does that CD Audio doesn't work. In a DOS music player it just skips over the CD audio tracks in actual discs or images (including Bin+Cue images) mounted in Daemon Tools.

IMGMOUNT works with CD audio, but with bin+cue images only, not with anything else, like NRG, CDI, or iso+mp3 or iso+wav cuetables. That's kind of annoying, because of the images I have most aren't in bin+cue format, but most could be converted I'm sure... but that does nothing to help with the problem that I really don't want to have to go through everything I'd have to to use everything off of images when I've got the discs right here. Having to re-edit the DOSBox config file every time I want to change discs and fill up gigs with stuff I could keep off my hard drive? 🙁

Bah, this makes me want my old computer back again, almost... I knew that there was a reason I stuck with WinME over XP, and it was perfect DOS backwards compatibility. Apart from games that couldn't work because of speed problems even with MoSlo, didn't have to deal with DOSBox at all for the most part until last year when I got a new computer... between stuff like no color in the main window in A-Train to this to some color issues (when you switch to fullscreen sometimes the colors mess up) to The Patrician's issues (but that's another subject), it's just not the same... pretty good, considering, but not the same. Oh well.

/me pats A Black Falcon on the head and reminds him that he can create minimal, game-specific configs for each game with the exact mounting instruction inside.

Why in the world would it be harder to support CD audio in CDs than it is to support CD audio in mounted images, though? That makes no sense...

Anyway, sure, you could put each disc on a different mounted drive or something, or use customized startups (would this require having a separate dosbox folder/exe for every DOS CD game, though? I like having one DOSBox exe which I can use for everything, and then navigating around in DOS to get to the program folder... doesn't seem like a feasible option.) or mount every disc to a different mounted drive (and so I'd end up with potentially dozens of "CD" drives... somewhat ridiculous...)... and that's not getting in to the amount of wasted hard drive space. Bah. But I guess there's no other option...

Uhm because it is REALLY hard to support cd audio if Vista removed
the specific interface? And thanks for letting us know that YOU think
it is so easy. Just fix it, sources are on sourceforge.

A Black Falcon: your rants won't get you anywhere. Read this, and try to understand it. Digital CDDA (= Windows interface) and analogue CDDA (= older games) are very different.

You don't have to use DOSBox if you don't like it. I think it's pretty bold (or even stupid) to criticize something you don't seem to even remotely understand. It's either DOSBox, or a Win9x/DOS system for old games.

The DOSBox config system is very flexible. What you are writing about various DOSBox exe files, or the large number of mounted drives is simply bullshit. Read the DOSBox readme, and the FAQ's/guides on VOGONS, and maybe you'll understand how to use DOSBox correctly. If you have enough hd space for the bloated POS that Vista is, then you shouldn't have to worry about some gigs for CD images. Besides, you could put the images on DVD's, Einstein.

No, DOSBox is a great program. Nothing else can emulate DOS like it, certainly (apart from perhaps the limited emulation in SCUMMVM)... I'm more annoyed at Microsoft than anyone else, for removing fullscreen DOS mode in Vista... it's there in windowed form, why the heck did they remove the ability to make it fullscreen... it's like how in ME they hid the "reboot into DOS mode option", but worse, because there at least you could get into real DOS mode if you knew how.

(And yes, I know that the SB Audigy and X-Fi don't have the SB16 emulation drivers that Creative included with the Live! that I used for DOS sound on my old computer. That's kind of sad too, though in Vista it doesn't matter... but for XP it should would have.)

Anyway, are you not allowed to like something but still be annoyed at its flaws or something?

Oh yeah, and I was wrong about A-Train; that's been fixed in the latest version, I just forgot about it... for quite a while color wasn't working right in the game, but it does now. There certainly are still issues with The Patrician, but I'm not sure if that's the game or the emulator.

http://www.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/showthread.php?t=12421

That makes sense, then. MS is annoying and loves to pointlessly remove features that older products need... ME, XP, and Vista all did it to various things. I know that some of it is done in order to make things simpler for new products, but still... what's the point in removing things like analog audio or fullscreen DOS modete? Does that really give MS anything other than removed features? Most people just don't seem to care, sadly...

The DOSBox config system is very flexible. What you are writing about various DOSBox exe files, or the large number of mounted drives is simply bullshit. Read the DOSBox readme, and the FAQ's/guides on VOGONS, and maybe you'll understand how to use DOSBox correctly. If you have enough hd space for the bloated POS that Vista is, then you shouldn't have to worry about some gigs for CD images. Besides, you could put the images on DVD's, Einstein.

I have plenty of hard drive space, I just don't like wasting it on stuff like that... but yeah, burning it to DVD would be an option. Didn't think of that.

And I've been using DOSBox on and off for years (when I came here to post, I noticed that I'd registered in 2003 but never posted anything and forgot that I'd registered... 😀). I know how to use it well enough... I just don't use (or want to use) a frontend or customized startups so that you'd need to run separate things for each game you wished to play. I like it to be like using actual DOS, so you start at drive C and then go to the folder in question and run the games, so I have it mount the various drives/folders I want available at the end of the .conf file. While on my old computer I just mounted all the drives as themselves, in Vista I just put all the DOS stuff in one folder tree and mounted that folder as C in the autoexec section of the conf file, along with several other folders mounted as other drives and the floppy drive and CD drives (real and image), and finish it with c: so that I don't start at Z every time. Works quite well.

Anyway... ahh, so you can mount multiple images, and switch through them, in succession. Didn't notice that... never had to use disc mounting much before in DOSBox. Still kind of clumsy (press CTRL-F10 ten times to access the disc you need!), but better than the alternatives that are available.

Hmm, issue... is there a limit to the number of images you can mount per drive with imgmount? It works fine with up to three per drive (with a limit of five imgmount drives), but go over that and it just gives one of several error messages and doesn't load any of them. Hmm... it's not the images or path text, as they work fine when put on their own drive. It just doesn't work with more than three images? Or am I missing something... I looked, but can't find anything that says specifically how many images you can load. It makes it sound like there isn't a limit, but if I put three in the line it works, but if I put four or more it gives some erroror other (I've seen several different ones) and doesn't mount anything. Hmm...

Heh, OK - this looks much more friendly than your previous post(s). (;

Are you aware that you can unmount/remount drives while DOSBox is running, from within DOSBox (also, most of the config, like cycles, core, etc.)? I have all my games in one directory, which i'm using like one large c:\-drive. I'm starting the games with batch files, which set the correct config, and mount any neccesary drives. The only important thing you can't change inside DOSBox (yet?) is the "mapperfile".

Example of a batchfile:

1@echo off
2cls
3echo Launching game... [X-COM - UFO Defense [CD]]
4echo.
5config -set "cpu cycles=25000"
6config -set "cpu core=dynamic"
7mount e "..\..\_roms\PC\CDRips\UFO - Enemy Unknown" -t cdrom -label "UFO_14" -ioctl
8c:
9cd c:\games\ufocd\
10call UFO.BAT

To mount a drive letter that's been previously mounted, you'll have to use a "unmount" command ("mount -u <drive letter>" or "imgmount -u <drive letter>").

Btw, a note to the DOSBox devs: the "imgmount -u" option is not documented in the readme (official 0.72/Windows)! Didn't notice that until now.

There are limits to the imgmount command. I know there is a limit to the length of the parameter list, which I why I keep my ISO's on a short path, e.g.:

imgmount D "G:\ISOs\WC3-1.iso" "G:\ISOs\WC3-2.iso" "G:\ISOs\WC3-3.iso" "G:\ISOs\WC3-4.iso" -t iso

There might also be a limit to how many images you can mount.....

Note: imgmount understands virtual paths, so you can do a:

mount X "\very\long\path\to\my\isos"
X:
imgmount D "iso1.iso" "iso2.iso"