Create Floppy Disk Images for 86Box

Published: 05 September 2025

In an earlier post I was using existing floppy disk images with qemu and 86box. Now I need to know how to create my own images.

Create a blank file to serve as our disk image. This creates a file that is 1400 Kilobypes or 1.44 Megabytes. If you want a differnt size disk, adjust to your needs.

dd if=/dev/zero of=floppy1 bs=1440K count=1

Now we have a blank file. You can now mount this image with the emulator, where you can format the disk with native tools. Or, you can format and mount it to add files directly.

Format the image and mount it locally.

mkfs.msdos floppy1.FLP
sudo mount -o loop ./floppy1.FLP ./floppy

Now copy the files you need, unmount with umount floppy and use with your emulator.