Using physical hard disk in PCem on UNIX/Linux systems

[Martin_Riarte]

I was experimenting how to use a physical hard disk in PCem and this is what I got:

Step 1: Connect / reserve a physical hard drive for work.

Step2: Link the hard disk to an .img file (previously enable the necessary permissions
if it is going to be used in user mode):

ln -s /dev/sdb filename.img (where sdb or hdb should be replaced by the name of your physical hard drive).

Step 3: Load the file filename.img in the created machine (depending on the architecture, the operating system and
the size of the disk, it will detect all or part of it).

Step 4: Boot the virtual machine to create partitions, load system, etc.

PD: In my case, my 40GB physical hard drive is in /dev/sdh, the BIOS detected it as PCen with 32253MB and with
PCem the MS-DOS 6.22 created a 500MB partition, for the first test, it's fine!.
Then I will be adjusting it to see if it uses the whole disk and since MS-DOS 6.22 prepared it in this way by default.

Here is a video showing the test:



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[shermanp]

This seems rather... adventurous. What would be the reason for wanting to do this, if I may ask out of curiosity?

With regards to the size the PCem BIOS sees, you'll probably only have luck with sizes over 32GB using the Award 430VX BIOS. You may want to experiment setting the CHS geometry to n/16/255 instead of n/16/63 in the config file (note the GUI won't let you do this).

Good luck. You've got more courage than I do for attempting this!

[Martin_Riarte]

Just to know if I can, at this moment, I'm formatting the 40GB physical hard drive from the CentOS desktop, loading Win98SE and installing from PCem, I accepted it without problems.
I tried 5 times with MS-DOS 6.22 on several machines, and now with Win98SE and it works.
I am playful by nature with hardware and software since I was 15 years old (in 1986 !!, my dear 80s !!!).
I like to "hack" both software and software and I like to get away with mine ... Martín 1 - Emulador 0.-

[Martin_Riarte]

Do you need another screenshot or make a video and the link from youtube?...

[Martin_Riarte]

Sorry if I miss words in Spanish, I use google to translate to English, I am Spanish speaking or obviously !!.

Desde Argentina con cariño para todos!!.

[darksabre76]

I could imagine one reason for doing this would be easy transfer of a lot of files without setting up compatible network shares or fake CD/ZIP images to pass things in.

[Martin_Riarte]

Well, yes, but to satisfy more than anything the question "can I do it? ..." and because
I have a physical hard drive from Asus "when I had it" that I purposely add as a virtual
machine and retrieve information from that important time for me. , photos of dad before
dying, videos with mom showing him a voice synthesizer made in Talent MSX DPC-200,
etc.

[szadycbr]

Hey Martin , thank You , this is kinda cool. i guess memory stick in linux could be used to. ill try it later, but i like the idea and possibillity

[Martin_Riarte]

I already learned to paste images and videos without attaching them,
thanks to my oldest son, I do not know what I would do without you boy!

[EluanCM]

In one of the screenshots, the disk seems to be mounted while being used by PCem? That seems dangerous!

[Martin_Riarte]

The virtual machine is paused and mounted to illustrate the moment, you should NOT have mounted
the hard drive, it could corrupt the data or lose the complete information of the disk, I repeat, you should
NOT have mounted the disk when using it with the virtual machine.
This procedure I had already used with VirtualBox, and while we do not do silly things like assembling
the disk while using it, everything will be fine.
Good comment @EluanCM, I missed that one.