Yes they should be. Once I connected a dvd-rom drive on the IDE interface of a sound card in my 286 pc, and worked fine.

which driver did you use?

or do I have to get some of these: http://cgi.ebay.de/New-Retail-Box-Enhanced-ID … =item415696f7ef

I have tried the following driver from this page http://www.hiren.info/downloads/dos-files

Download atapicd.sys - Standard ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM Device Driver 2.12

actually recognizes the drive, but all disks will be always be shown empty

If you're trying to read DVD discs from DOS, I don't think you're likely going to get anywhere.

Here's a relevant thread:
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/140982-cant-r … ve-in-dos-mode/

no I'm talking about regular cdroms in a dvd drive

Silly question, but (assuming you've tested this drive in another computer and have verified that it works) did you set the master/slave jumper appropriately? (I hate it when I forget about that.)

yes it is working and properly jumpered.

i tried the atapicd.sys again (the only device driver so far which recognizes the drive) with mscdex instead of shsucdx, if I want to read the disc there comes an error message that the disc is no iso9660 format

I think I used the oakcdrom.sys. Isn't that in the windows boot disk? I remember reading dvd-r discs in dos ok.

this sounds like a driver problem....
assuming you find one that works, there will be no problems reading 4.7gb discs under plain DOS.
Infact the dvd/cdfs are so similar that this works in other old platforms too, like the amiga.

keropi wrote:

assuming you find one that works, there will be no problems reading 4.7gb discs under plain DOS.
Infact the dvd/cdfs are so similar that this works in other old platforms too, like the amiga.

But not all DVDs use the same filesystem. I definitely know for sure that UDF multisessions on a DVD cannot be read under Win98, for instance.

that's just pushing your luck with multisession stuff... I am talking normal single session closed ISO9600 dvds , I should have clarified that 😀
dvdfs just happens to work due to similarities, it must be considered as a "bonus" feature

How about if you used SCSI? Would the same restrictions apply?

I don't see a reason why the drive wouldn't work if the controller is ATAPI compatible
if it's not ATAPI compatible, CD-ROM drives shouldn't work either

software support though is another issue

sliderider wrote:

How about if you used SCSI? Would the same restrictions apply?

I've been thinking about going SCSI for optical drives on systems that don't have their own controllers (486VLB and before). Problem is, I only got a single SCSI CDROM drive laying around and it's untested.

If I could quiet down those SCSI harddrives, then I'd even consider using SCSI kinda exclusively on old rigs actually.

you can get quiet SCSI drives... but they got to be newer ones

TheMAN wrote:

you can get quiet SCSI drives... but they got to be newer ones

How new would those have to be btw? Frankly, my knowledge on SCSI harddrives is quite limited

I think I have a 10 year old 40 gig SCSI3 drive in my old bsd box... it was brand new when I got it (free)... the noise level was comparable to the IDE consumer drives of the 90s... but it was stupid fast! 😁

oakcdrom also does not work

It might be best to completely rule out a software problem. Do you have another computer with a DVD drive that you can boot up with an MS-DOS bootdisk (with CD-ROM drivers) that you can use to try to access the discs you're using for testing?

Alternatively, does your 386 have the capability of booting from CDs? Have you tried that?