Any IDE controller supports ATAPI CD-ROM drives - even DVD ones. If using DOS you have to load proper drivers to access the unit.

You can use CD-ROM on generic ISA I/O controller on a 286 computer.

In your case set the CD-ROM to slave, HDD to master and with drivers you'll be albe to use it.

Does windows 95 not natively support cds that are burned?

I got a drive to finally work and while it will read a burned copy of some drive software , it will not read a regular disk burned on windows 7 with just files on it

This likely has more to do with the drive itself and less with the OS or other components. Try a different drive- something newer, or a different brand of burnable CDs. I have a whole pile of drives and they definitely don't all act the same or read the same types of CDs.

emosun wrote:

it will not read a regular disk burned on windows 7 with just files on it

I agree that if the drive is sufficiently old, the hardware might be incapable of reading whatever burned discs you are using. Note that a brand-new 52x IDE CD-ROM drive ought to work just as well as a 2x IDE CD-ROM drive of the same vintage as the motherboard.

But it's also possible that whatever you are using to burn the disc in Windows 7 might not be a standard disc format. The easiest way to check would be to use ISO Buster, whose disc-reading capabilities are independent of the OS; I have no idea what the last version is that runs under Windows 95, though.

ok i tried a different brand of cd's which seem to now work. I previously tried changing the drive itself which seemed to do nothing , but the drives were one from 2005 and another from 94

It also helps a whole lot if you burn at 1/2 the max speed available to burn the disc at. You not only get a much better burn, but the older drives can generally read them as well.

Just a note... CD-RW discs won't get read by drives older then 1998 (check google for your exact model if in doubt).

Just to add to what's been said, reading burned cds depends on the drive. I ha(d) a 4x creative cd drive from 1994 that read burned cd rs perfectly, yet I have a 32x creative drive from 1998-1999 that refuses to read them. It's all the hardware.

Some later cd rom drives, like aopen ones from the early 2000s could read cd rws as well as cd rs.

And to add even little more informations, these drives usually cannot read discs burned in Joliet or UDF format. You need ISO 9660 (found that the hard way - burned few of the discs in Joliet and my 486 tower cannot read them).

The speed you burn CDs also have an influence on how "compatible" the CD will be. Try to burn them at the lowest speed you drive can do. I burned an el-cheapo CD with Quake at the lowest speed it could get and I don't recall finding any computer that couldn't read it.
Now I remember the CD drive of an IBM activa from 1997 that had issues reading it (kinda slow and the music didn't work ingame) but it was still being read. I'll try it someday on the 4x CD drive that I've got in my pentium because I never managed to start a burned cd inside it. Why do I keep such "bad" CD drive ? Because I've got plenty original games and because it makes ZERO noise ! I've never seen a CD drive that silent. You just can't hear it unless you stick your ear right next to it and even there, the noise it makes is barely hearable 🤣

I may use one of my "retro" CD burner and look if I can't burn a CD at lower speed. Then I'll look if it doesn't work better

emosun wrote:

I got a drive to finally work and while it will read a burned copy of some drive software , it will not read a regular disk burned on windows 7 with just files on it

This may be a filesystem problem.
Windows 95 supports ISO9660 and Joliet, while your disc is most probably in UDF.
Joliet is an extension of ISO 9660 and is recommended for Windows 9x.

https://cdburnerxp.se/help/appendices/filesystem

krivulak wrote:

And to add even little more informations, these drives usually cannot read discs burned in Joliet or UDF format. You need ISO 9660 (found that the hard way - burned few of the discs in Joliet and my 486 tower cannot read them).

I would be very strongly inclined to believe that is an OS limitation rather than a fundamental limitation of the hardware.

Deksor wrote:

Because I've got plenty original games and because it makes ZERO noise ! I've never seen a CD drive that silent. You just can't hear it unless you stick your ear right next to it and even there, the noise it makes is barely hearable 🤣

There's at least one thread somewhere around here describing ways of limiting the speed of faster CD drives.

Sure, but none of the drives I slowed down were as silent as this one ^^

when using a boot disk like a windows 98 bootdisk , can this allow me to BOOT from the cd drive or will it only allow me to have access to it?

Azarien wrote:

This may be a filesystem problem. Windows 95 supports ISO9660 and Joliet, while your disc is most probably in UDF. Joliet is an […]
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emosun wrote:

I got a drive to finally work and while it will read a burned copy of some drive software , it will not read a regular disk burned on windows 7 with just files on it

This may be a filesystem problem.
Windows 95 supports ISO9660 and Joliet, while your disc is most probably in UDF.
Joliet is an extension of ISO 9660 and is recommended for Windows 9x.

https://cdburnerxp.se/help/appendices/filesystem

It ended up just being the disk brand I was using.

emosun wrote:

when using a boot disk like a windows 98 bootdisk , can this allow me to BOOT from the cd drive or will it only allow me to have access to it?

I'm pretty sure there are some boot floppies that will allow you to boot from the CD drive; I keep forgetting which ones they are. I don't recall the standard Windows 98 boot disk having such capabilities.

Looks like http://schierlm.users.sourceforge.net/bootdisk/ might do it.

emosun wrote:

when using a boot disk like a windows 98 bootdisk , can this allow me to BOOT from the cd drive or will it only allow me to have access to it?

You can burn a floppy boot image onto a CD and boot from that CD. This will give you an emulated floppy drive, so only 1,44 or 2,88 MB will be accessible, but with a proper CD-ROM driver for DOS configured on that floppy image you can access the rest of the disc in the usual way.

Azarien wrote:

You can burn a floppy boot image onto a CD and boot from that CD.

If I'm not mistaken, that still requires particular BIOS features (i.e. the 1995 El Torito spec) that might be missing on a 486.

Responding to the original post: It has been my experience that many onboard older ISA IDE controller cards do not seem to work with my IDE CD-ROM drives, even after trying several DOS drivers. I didn't dissect the problem in detail; instead bought an ISA card which was intended only for CD-ROM drives. It was $5 back in 1999 and worked without any tinkering. Now days, I run all my older 386 and 486 systems with SCSI, so I use SCSI CD-ROM drives, which are often bootable.