floppy_and_cdrom_drives Floppy & CD-ROM drives

The Floppy & CD-ROM drives page contains settings related to the emulated machine’s base removable storage drives.

floppy_tab Floppy drives

Up to four floppy disk drives can be attached to the emulated machine, although not all machines provide BIOS support for more than two drives. The following settings apply to the selected drive:

  • Type: floppy drive to emulate. Click 🅧 to search for types by name. Some types have special properties and should only be used in very specific applications:

    • 5.25” 1.2M 300/360 RPM, 3.5” 1.44M 300/360 RPM and 3.5” 2.88M 300/360 RPM: “3-mode” drives, which are capable of reading 360K 5.25” or NEC PC-98 3.5” disks if the emulated machine’s BIOS supports 3-mode operation.

    • 3.5” 1.25M PC-98: NEC PC-98 drive, which is 3-mode and inverts the polarity of the Density Select pin.

    • The special PS/2 drive types have been removed, as the required inversion of the Density Select pin is now performed automatically on IBM PS/2 machines.

  • Turbo timings: run the drive mechanism as fast as possible. This decreases access times and makes some incorrectly-dumped floppies readable, but may cause issues with some operating systems and applications.

  • Check BPB: use the DOS BIOS Parameter Block when determining the physical media format for a floppy image on this drive. See Floppy disk detection for more details.

  • Audio: emulate the mechanical sounds of a real floppy drive. A list of drive models to choose from is provided; the None option disables these sounds.

Note

  • Disabling Check BPB may be required in order to access UNIX/Linux installation floppies or other non-DOS disks, as outlined on Floppy disk detection.

  • The Audio option is only available if the asset pack is installed.

Floppy disk images can be inserted and removed through the status bar or Media menu.

cdrom CD-ROM drives

Up to eight CD-ROM or DVD-ROM optical disc drives can be attached to the emulated machine. The following settings apply to the selected drive:

  • Bus: storage bus to attach the drive to. ATAPI (IDE), SCSI and Panasonic/MKE interfaces are supported.

  • Channel/ID: where to attach the drive on the selected storage bus. See Adding a new disk for more information.

  • Speed: maximum transfer speed for the drive. Up to 72x is supported.

  • Type: CD-ROM drive model to identify as. A list of drive models (suitable for the selected bus) to choose from is provided; click 🅧 to search for models by name or speed.

  • Use EDC/ECC emulation: enable checking of CD-ROM error correction data. Can be changed without a hard reset of the emulated machine.

Note

  • Only models with DVD support (indicated by the dvdrom_small DVD icon on the status bar) are able to read discs or host folders larger than 1 GB, unlike in previous 86Box versions.

  • Some emulated machines have manufacturer restore discs locked to a specific drive model.

  • The 86Box 86B_CD 1.00 model emulates early versions of the ATAPI and SCSI standards as required by older drivers.

  • Disabling Use EDC/ECC emulation may be required for some copy-protected discs.

CD-ROM / DVD-ROM disc images or host drives can be inserted and removed through the status bar or Media menu.