mac.calder Posted January 8, 2006 Share Posted January 8, 2006 qEmu is able to create virtual drives within guest operating systems from directories on the hard disk. I dont know the mac interface, so I cannot tell you how, but I would try going to the image's properties. I had a bit of trouble getting the strand application to freedos to tell the truth. I ended up actually opening the disk file using virtual mounting tools, and copying them across - it was a mess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grahame Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 Well, this qemu OLE isn't working as well as it appeared.... tried to load in a show file today for editing, and I'm unable to find it either on C: drive or on floppy. On floppy I get 'bad disk read', although it doesn't seem to actually attempt to read the floppy at all. On the c:\ drive I get directories for 1)freedos 2)genuispro and 3)shows; none of which appear to have anything in them.Can anyone tell me where exactly the qemu is looking for the show directory? Does it need to be in a folder within the qemu folder you install from or what? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mac.calder Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 qEmu runs virtual machines - that means that the freedos c: drive is different to the c: drive on your computer. The a: drive is not real either. I did not set up the advanced options on the image, like linking the floppy disk on the host computer to the images a: drive, because that would make the image OS (and even machine) dependant. I suggest you go to the website where you downloaded qEmu, and IIRC they have some graphical front ends for windows - install one of them and then you can easily either create a fake drive under freedos (ie an f: drive) which is direct access to a folder on the host machine, or create a link between your floppy disk and the a: drive on qEmu. Or you can go to the qEmu site and read up on the command line syntax. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sohotoph Posted January 24, 2006 Share Posted January 24, 2006 Hi mac.calder.thanks for all your advice and work, I've managed to install both QEMU and your freedos on my machine and the OLE works fine. I also installed a windows front end (qGUI, from the freeoszoo website) to try and get the real a:\ drive to work, or any other real folder, in order to load shows in, but I couldn't get it to work. Any advice you could offer on how to do it? Many Thanks,sohotoph Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mac.calder Posted January 25, 2006 Share Posted January 25, 2006 I use it under linux, so I cannot be sure. IIRC the qemumenu batch script executes something along the lines of: qemu.exe -L "\Program Files\Qemu\bios" -m 64 -hda "C:\Program Files\Qemu\freedos.dsk" -enable-audio -localtime Now the linking of the a drive is done when you call the qemu program, and not actually in the image. Under linux, adding floppy support is as simple as adding the following switch/argument to the command: -fda /dev/fda Under windows, you MAY be able to do -fda A: Another thing to look into is to create a directory on your pc and use the switch/argument -fda fat:floppy:"C:\directory here" I have no idea if they will work though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sohotoph Posted January 25, 2006 Share Posted January 25, 2006 Hi,thanks for that, I've tried writing both your suggestions into the batch file, but it then hangs as soon as it gets to where I've put it in. has anyone else here had any success in making this work on XP? I've googled for help with batch commands for dos and checked out the technical information that comes with QEMU, but I'm afraid I'm stuck. Any help would be appreciated, Cheers,sohotoph ;) - Needless repeat of entire previous post removed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mac.calder Posted January 25, 2006 Share Posted January 25, 2006 I have spent a restless night making a batch file specifically for the strand OLE which makes windows users lives much easier. It is also the latest version of qEmu, which is a tad bit faster. Windows users, visit http://www.mlug.org.au/strandole/index.html for further instructions (including a step by step guide to instalation and use. When you boot qemu, if you are using a floppy drive, there has to be a floppy in It. You can swap them whilst the system is running, with no problems, it is just it checks to make sure your floppy drive exists before loading the OS. And part of that is a disk read. No way arround it either. Other OS's download http://www.mlug.org.au/strandole/StrandOLEimg.rar. There is not much difference between the old one and the new, except the new one has the help files, and the strand splash screen, but if you have saved everything on floppy disk and not on the images hard drive, it is a drop in replacement. Bedtime now. Oh - and the post I made that I replaced this with: -fda \\.\a: is the answer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TWilkie Posted January 26, 2006 Share Posted January 26, 2006 Hi All, Mac.Calder, Fantastic !!! We're able to get the 550i screen up on our XP Pro machine uing your software and have pointed the show file to D:\StrandShow\ but the showfile doesn't load. Is there a way to force load the show ? How would the OLE normally load the show ? BTW- The PC we're using is a dual boot computer with C: partition being Windows 98SE and D: is Windows XP Pro... Regards, Terry Wilkieterry.wilkie@cirquedusoleil.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mac.calder Posted January 26, 2006 Share Posted January 26, 2006 Okay, tad confused by what you told me, but I will make some assumptions and answer you. Now: I assume that you have qemu installed in a location that we will call {{qemu}}, and on your hard drive, you have a show file, in the location d:\strandshow\ - for the sake of 'genericness' I will call that {{show_loc}} now: You run the strandole.bat file, and that little interface of mine comes up. Press d <<ENTER>> which will allow you to assign the OS's D: drive to a folder on the host computer, so you type in {{show_loc}} (in your case d:\strandshow) and press <<ENTER>> You are back at the opening screen of the script, and you should see D-Drive: (-hdd fat:{{show_loc}}) If so, press enter to boot. It does it's thing, and you end up with the strand OLE. The way I usually do it, is to ctrl-F8, press F3, then browse to (D:) and the show file should be there ready for you to load. HOWEVER. You cannot save onto the D: Drive, so you may be better off copying the show to the c:\shows directory or using a floppy disk. The main reason I added the D: drive ability is I know a lot of places that have a couple of hundred show files that they use as bases for other shows. Saving them onto a floppy drive would be a pain in the rear end... It is also an easy way to import fixture libraries without saving them to disk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sohotoph Posted January 26, 2006 Share Posted January 26, 2006 mac.calder,you're a star. Thanks very much for this, it works a treat. Cheers,sohotoph Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b1nuzz Posted January 26, 2006 Share Posted January 26, 2006 Wicked. Thanks alot. Works a dream. Just out of interest. I cant find mac 300's in the patch library. How do I go about getting these into it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gareth Posted January 26, 2006 Share Posted January 26, 2006 Just out of interest. I cant find mac 300's in the patch library. How do I go about getting these into it?You have to add them yourself - those fixtures don't appear in Strand's fixture library as standard. There's been a lot of discussion about this in the past on the BR - have a search through the archives for topics/posts about adding fixture definitions to the fixture.lib file on a Strand desk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommo Posted January 27, 2006 Share Posted January 27, 2006 Next question......is there any way to have multiple screens running in the OLE. I.e Cue list plus 1 or more channel screens.Otherwise a fantastic solution. Cheers Mac Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mac.calder Posted January 27, 2006 Share Posted January 27, 2006 At the moment, to my knowledge no. I doubt that qEmu can run in multi-headed mode, but will certainly look into it. I suppose one way that COULD work, but would take a lot of fiddling would be to work with the networking and run multiple sessions... it would be very messy and resource intensive and I know next to nothing about the networking of strand desks and the OLE etc. I also have a feeling that I would have to change the OS to something with better network support. I know next to nothing about dos networking. The other avenue I could look into would be trying to get the OLE running under reactOS in multiple dos boxes which is not elegant at all. Give me a few days. --edit-- Re reactOS -> Project appears to be down whilst they ensure all their reverse engineered code has been done to clean room standards, so it may be a bit more difficult. Add to that the network features will not work on the OLE without having backup edition, I dont think multi-headed use is possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b1nuzz Posted January 27, 2006 Share Posted January 27, 2006 sorry guys. failed to find anything with a search about how to create your own fixtures. I have no idea how to do it. Can someone send me a link to a post if its not too much trouble. cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.