this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
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MS-DOS gaming
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I'm not home right now, but I once wrote a batch script to help do exactly that as a context menu option for Windows systems, to boot an IMA/IMG image directly into DOSBox.
Once I get home, I'll see if I can locate those old scripts and try to share. Granted the difference between Windows and Mac, but the basic command lines for DOSBox should effective work the same.
No promises, but if I find those script files (holy crap I have way too many files!), I'll see about sharing them later, translation to the Mac environment will be up to you though.
I think my approach was to copy the default dosbox.conf file to a temporary file, then append the temporary file with what image to boot from under [AUTOEXEC], and just consider the temp dosbox.conf as exactly that, temporary, to be rewritten every time I used my custom DOSBox Boot Floppy context menu thing.
I dunno, I'll see later, when/if I get a good chance soon.
No pressure but I appreciate the effort. I'm sure I'd be able to make something for macOS based on it.
Funnily enough, just a few comments back in my profile I've offered to find a config file for someone else and I also have absolutely no idea where to find it yet!
I found the core script file, BAT format for Windows though, that I used to do exactly what you're looking for...
Thank you very much! My memory of these files is coming back seeing your syntax, although this is more advanced than anything I wrote in my DOS days. I’m looking forward to experimenting with it!
I wrote that back in my Windows XP days, so keep that in mind when looking at my BootImg.bat script. I had it writing the template and temporary config scripts directly to the Program Files folder like a dummy, I should have used the %TEMP% folder instead.
And of course you'll still have to translate, adapt and overcome to get the same sort of thing working on a Mac.
Good luck fellow stranger, let me know how it goes!
Edit: Don't mind the registry file too much, it's not only proprietary to Windows, it also depends on WinImage being installed and also the default program to open IMA/IMG files. But the command itself was solid.