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Need help troubleshooting an ISA CD-ROM IDE Controller Card (Creative CT1870)

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First post, by headmeter

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I'm having some trouble getting a cd-rom drive set up in my 486. I recently purchased a Creative CT1870 IDE controller card and that seems to be the source of my problems but I can't quite figure out what to do next. With everything hooked up, and after editing my autoexec.bat and config.sys, I keep getting a "No CD-ROM drive detected" error. Here's all the troubleshooting steps I've taken so far:

  • Tried several different drivers including oakcdrom.sys, vide-cdd.sys, and atapicd.sys - same result with all of them
  • Verified the cd drive was working by testing in another computer
  • Verified the IDE cable was working by testing in another computer, with multiple drives including the one I'm installing in my 486
  • Tried installing a different cd-rom drive in the 486
  • Tried everything with and without any other peripherals plugged in (the only other thing I have plugged in is a Soundblaster 16 (CT1740))
  • Removed all the SB16-related stuff from autoexec.bat
  • Tried the controller card in different ISA slots

All that leads me to believe something is up with the controller card or how it's set up. It doesn't have any jumpers or anything so I'm not sure what my options are for changing any configuration settings with it. Any advice on what I can try to get this thing working?

The cd-rom drive in question is a Compaq CDU701-Q1 32x, and I'm using DOS 6.0 and Windows 3.1

Reply 1 of 4, by Horun

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What 486 motherboard are you installing this card into ? does it's BIOS support 4 HD's ?
The card has no jumpers so suspect it is locked to either the secondary IDE port 0170 or possibly Tertiary port 01E8. Cannot find any good info on that controller...

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 2 of 4, by BitWrangler

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How many IDE ports does the computer already have? 1 on an ISA? 2 on VLB controller? 1 or 2 onboard? It's most likely hardwired as secondary IDE port, other ports that think they are the secondary IDE port may override it. Assuming you only have another 1 port onboard or 1 on an ISA controller, all you should have to do is run a generic IDE device driver and mscdex

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 3 of 4, by headmeter

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Well, I feel like a dummy... For some reason it never even occurred to me to just plug the cd-rom in using the slave connector on the board's main IDE interface, and now it's working just fine. Anyway, I am still curious what the issue was with using the controller card.

To answer those questions, the computer is an AT&T Globalyst 515 - the motherboard is a FIC 486-GAC-2 I believe, and the BIOS appears to support 2 hard drives. I have one IDE port on the board and one on that ISA controller card. I'll look into loading up an IDE device driver and see what happens. At least my cd problem is solved, but I'll report back on if I can get the controller card going (for posterity's sake)

Reply 4 of 4, by Horun

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Ok found the archive for your card and it is Plug-n-Play so you need the Creative PnP Configuration Manager or Intels PnP cofig tool to set it up first. Note the Creative CT1860 is a jumper set version:
ct1871 http://web.archive.org/web/19980210071808/htt … ard/ct1871.html
ct1860 http://web.archive.org/web/19980210071802/htt … ard/ct1860.html
Creative PnP manager: https://support.creative.com/downloads/downlo … nDownloadId=230 or http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?file … &menustate=57,0
Intel PnP config Utility: http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?file … &menustate=57,0

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

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