Haunted Games

Linux

Something that's not getting published but might be useful if you have to work with .ima floppy backup images created using WinImage, rather than Linux-standard .img files that you can just mount as a device.

Do all of this as superuser.

List your loop devices: losetup

If there's anything in this list, pick a loop device number that doesn't appear. I used 10.

If you don't already have a dedicated mount point for floppy drives: mkdir /mnt/floppy

losetup /dev/loop10 disk.ima mount -t vfat /dev/loop10 /mnt/floppy

I threw each disk of the sequence into a different loop device, and then sequentially mounted them on /mnt/floppy to swap disks in DOSBox.

You can also copy the mounted loop device to a more Linux-friendly img file, thus: dd bs=512 if=/dev/loop10 of=image.img

Thanks to this person from 2008 who published the solution to their own question, thus saving me a lot of trial and error: https://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?185346-How-to-deal-with-WinImage-ima-files-in-linux

Why yes, I am still making replacement floppy disks to replace dead ones in sets of installation media.

Back up your magnetic media while you still can.

#SoftwarePreservation #DataRecovery #FloppyDisks #Linux