I've been obsessed with this program the past few days. I've used it before but recently I've been really messing around with it. I'm having one small nagging issue with it right now though and I'm hoping someone can help me. I haven't been able to find it in the manual or on a Google search.

Basically, I've written a batch file to automatically mount a drive and have pointed it to my classic games folder. But I also wanted to mount the CD\DVD drive but when I launch DosBox it immediately throws a, "There is no disk in the drive" error for the CD\DVD drive. What I want it to do is not even look at the CD/DVD drive but automatically go to the A drive. Which is already does but it gives the error for the CD\DVD drive.

I'm not even sure if what I've typed makes any sense. Basically, when I run DosBox I want it to automatically go to the "A" drive without looking at the "D" drive. How do I do this? I want to leave the "D" drive mounted but I don't want DosBox to look at it until I put a CD\DVD into the drive.

You can't.

mounting is a filesystem action. A DVD drive is a device-object. You cannot mount a device-object, but you can mount filesystems within a device-object.

This is true even for hard drives. Hard drives are device-objects. Partitions on hard drives are what can be mounted, once formatted with a filesystem. However, it is impossible to mount a hard drive itself.

The reason you're getting confused is because modern windows cheats to keep a persistent drive letter reserved for the disc drive. But it's nothing more than an illusion. You'll get the same error about no disc if you try to open the disc drive in Windows without it containing a disc.

Windows is also the only operating system that does this. *nix OSes have a very distinct difference between device-objects and data partitions.

But you can mount it to install from it. I just did it with Dark Forces. Unless you mean I can't permanantly (I can't spell right now...apparently) mount the CD\DVD drive which makes sense.

yes, I'm talking about you not being able to permanently mount it because that's what you said you wanted to do with

"I want to leave the "D" drive mounted but I don't want DosBox to look at it until I put a CD\DVD into the drive."

Obviously if there's a disc in there, you can mount it.

Your confusion is understandable and is due to your Windows experience. Even the name "drive letter" is misleading because it doesn't correspond with drives.

Yes, I did want to leave it mounted. I thought there was a way to do it. But after you explained it to me it made more sense as to why it can't be done. Sorry.

I guess now that my question has been answered we can move this along to DosBox. What games are we all playing on it right now?

Me, I'm playing Wing Commander 1 and 2 plus all the Secret Missions as well as Wing Commander Privateer, Star Wars: Dark Forces, and the King's Quest games.

I suggest using a frontend for DOSbox if you have more than one DOS game. That way you can have separate configurations for each game, and you'll only have to mount the CD-ROM drive for games that use it.

I originally had Loonies but it seems to have been deleted. I have not reinstalled it yet. Although, last time I ran Loonies I had trouble getting Dark Forces to run.

Ooh, I also forgot I'm playing Wasteland, Star Trek and The Bard's Tale via DosBox. Which is odd considering I have the optimized version of The Bard's Tale through Steam.

I'm probably about to boot up Warcraft: Orcs and Humans on DOS. Diablo 1 to. It's very... strange, playing all these old games during 2013. You begin to respect how much gaming has advanced over the years when you struggle with the finnicky controls of old.

I have Warcraft running too. I also have Diablo but it's currently not installed.