Installer that can create Floppy Disk sets?

Add-Ons
1

Hi all,

Odd request I know…but does anyone know of any modern Setup installer software that creates floppy disk sets? Something that would allow a modern Win10 machine with a USB floppy disk drive to install a software app created with Xojo - using multiple floppies?

Many Thanks
Mark

p.s. Just to pre-empt any expected responses saying “Why do you want to do that?” or “Why use floppies man?” or “I don’t know why anyone would want to do that - floppies are ancient” etc…I just do OK! :wink:

2

I think Inno Setup still supports disk spanning.

3

I think NSIS with the CABSetup plugin can still do this.
https://nsis.sourceforge.io/CABSetup_plug-in

4

don’t forget that a minimal “hello world” xojo app measures around 24MB
if you use any commercial plugin this can double rapidly
so you will need at least 15 floppies to handle the smallest app made with xojo.

1 Like
5

Many thanks to both of you.
You are right Anthony…Innosetup does support disk spanning on floppy disks.
I will download and have a play. Thanks.
Mark

In case anyone else needs it (unlikely, I know!) the support page says:

If set to yes, the disk spanning feature will be enabled. Instead of storing all the compressed file data inside SETUP.EXE, the compiler will split it into multiple SETUP-.BIN files – known as “slices” – suitable for copying onto separate floppy disks, CD-ROMs, or DVD-ROMs. Each generated slice contains a number in its name which indicates the disk onto which it should be copied. (For example, SETUP-2.BIN should be placed on disk 2.) The generated SETUP.EXE always goes on disk 1 along with the SETUP-1.BIN file.

The size of each slice and the number of slices to create for each disk are determined by the values of the DiskSliceSize and SlicesPerDisk [Setup] section directives, respectively. Other disk spanning-related directives that you may want to tweak include DiskClusterSize and ReserveBytes.

Note that it is required that you set this directive to yes if the compressed size of your installation exceeds 2,100,000,000 bytes, even if you don’t intend to place the installation onto multiple disks. (The installation will still function correctly if all the SETUP-*.BIN files are placed on the same disk.)