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7   Managing Disks, Floppies, and CD-ROMs

In order to use Simics, you must have images (also called disk dumps) with the operating system and the applications you plan to run. Depending on the type of machine you are using, these images will corresponds to the contents of a disk, a flash memory, a CD-ROM, etc. Virtutech provides images that work with the example machines located in the targets directory.

Simics images are usually stored in a special format called craff (for Compressed Random Access File Format) to save disk space. Simics also accepts a raw binary dump as an image. This is sometimes more practical if you are manipulating images outside Simics. Simics comes with the craff utility to manipulate and convert images in craff format (see section 7.1.7).

This chapter will explain the following:

• How to work with images in general
• How to use CD-ROMs and floppies with Simics
• How to use the SimicsFS filesystem
• How to import the contents of a real disk inside Simics

To provide you with a more practical overview, here are the ways you can install and modify the operating system and the applications you wish to run:

Using Simics:

• You can install a completely new OS or simply copy files using a simulated CD-ROM drive, by linking it to a real CD-ROM drive on your host machine or by using a CD image file (refer to sections 7.2.1 and 7.2.2).
• You can copy files from the simulated floppy drive by linking it to the real host floppy device or by using a floppy image file (see sections 7.2.3 and 7.2.4).
• You can use SimicsFS to directly access your real file systems from the simulated machine (see section 7.3).
• You can download files over the simulated network (see chapter 10).

Don't forget to read more about images in section 7.1.1 to learn how to save or re-use your changes.

Using External Programs

• You can install a new OS along with new programs on a real machine and create an image from the real machine storage (disk, flash memory, etc.). Section 7.4 shows how to perform this with a disk.
• You can modify an image directly with Mtools (see section 7.1.4).
• You can modify an image directly via a loopback device (see section 7.1.5).

7.1   Working with Images

7.2   CD-ROMs and Floppies

7.3   Using SimicsFS

7.4   Importing a Real Disk into Simics

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