Categories
blog howto windows

Mount network drive shared folder in DOSBOX

Newer versions allow you to mount a shared folder from the network straightforward using the below syntax.
mount P //server/P-share/
* Note the trailing slash, it’s required!

Some (older) versions of DOSBOX do not allow you to mount (a drive letter connecting to) a network share, but you can circumvent this by using a soft symlink.

Let’s say we have a network drive with the letter P: that we want to mount inside DOSBOX.
We create a folder DOSPROGS on the C: drive to hold the symlink (and perhaps put the DOSBOX executable inside as well).

We then create the soft directory symlink by running the following command in a CMD prompt.
Note that I prefer to use the UNC path, because I think it’s more reliable than a drive letter to a share (that might be disconnected), but you can use both.
mklink /D C:\DOSPROGS\P-DRIVE \\server\P-share
mklink /D C:\DOSPROGS\P-DRIVE P:\

In DOSBOX we can now mount it using the symlink.
MOUNT P C:\DOSPROGS\P-DRIVE