- MAC EMULATOR FOR DOS HOW TO
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- MAC EMULATOR FOR DOS DRIVERS
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This was an early competitor to the more popular Iomega Zip drive, but had the distinction of also being backward compatible with standard 3.5-inch floppy discs.
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Floppy drives use an entirely different USB storage subclass, while the problem with CD-ROM drives is that iOS doesn’t know how to read a ISO/UDF filesystem used by CDs and DVDs.įor the floppy disc drive, Mitchell used an Imation SuperDisc drive.
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Since iDOS 2 doesn’t have any more of a concept of device drivers than MS-DOS did in the first place, it needs to simply rely on what iOS 14 is capable of handling - and iOS can’t deal with normal floppy disc drives or CD-ROM drives. All this gets connected to the iPhone through Apple’s Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter, using a standard USB hub to handle the multiple connections.Īs Mitchell notes, however, the process isn’t as simple as it looks. In the 14-minute video, Mitchell pulls out all the stops when it comes to the use of vintage technology, going so far as to use an old PS/2 keyboard and Compaq mouse (via a PS/2 to USB adapter), as well as appropriately compatible floppy disc and CD-ROM drives. Now, however, Mitchell is offering up what we can only call his pièce de résistance - firing up iDOS 2 on his iPhone and then using legacy PC-era equipment to actually load in games from a floppy disc and CD-ROM. These videos are a lot of fun for anybody who remembers those halcyon days of technology, or even just wants to take a peek back into an era long before the iPhone was even a glimmer in Steve Jobs’ eyes. You may remember Mitchell from other great classic iPhone throwback combinations that have included an Iomega Zip Drive, a vintage 1986 Apple Hard Drive, and even a 1977 Atari 2600 Joystick. Of course, since iDOS on iOS will now allow you to access the Files app, you can place software there for installation, but Niles Mitchell of the YouTube channel Will it Work ? decided that it would be much more fun to go completely retro, using iDOS to turn his iPhone into an old-school DOS PC.
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Instead, you needed to install software from a floppy disc, CD-ROM, or other local file system. So, needless to say, network connectivity wasn’t something that was built into MS-DOS. MS-DOS was birthed in an era when most PCs used 300bps modems - that’s “bps” without a “k” or “m” or “g”, so to put it in terms of a modern internet connection, it works out to around 0.0003mbps. While most Linux power users can figure out how to get around iSH, and there’s even a helpful Wiki on GitHub, the old-school DOS environment in iDOS is another matter entirely. The apps themselves provide only the basic shell and command-line environment, requiring you to figure out your means of actually getting any real software installed. Around the same time, another developer managed to get iSH, a Linux shell for iOS, also approved by the App Store - albeit not without some controversy.īoth iDOS and iSH effectively do the same thing, just with different low-level operating systems - DOS and Linux. However, iDOS 2 wasn’t the only low-level emulator app that seemed to qualify under Apple’s new and more relaxed policy. In fact, the approval was such a surprise that iDOS 2’s developer, Chaoji Li, feared it was merely a mistake.
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Last September, however, he was encouraged to try submitting an update with document storage enabled, and Apple surprisingly approved it, opening up iDOS to a much larger world. Until late last year, however, iDOS 2 had largely been neutered by the inability to actually access anything outside its own sandbox, and the developer appeared to have mostly given up on it. However, it actually made a return about six years ago as iDOS 2, and for whatever reason it’s been allowed on the App Store ever since. It’s had a rough ride over the years, first briefly popping up back in 2010 before being unceremoniously removed by Apple, and then appearing and disappearing over the next few months. IDOS is an emulator from the days of old MS-DOS-based PCs.