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First post, by brostenen

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I am at home in regard to installing optical drives in Dos, when it comes to IDE. The problem for me, is that I really do not have had any firm education or introduction to SCSI. All I know, is something that I have learned on my own. Setting up the hardware I know, to the extend of only setting things up on the hardware level. What I do not know anything about, and have no real clue on in dept, is the software part of installing stuff.

Now.
What do I need to do, when installing a CD-Rom drive or DVD drive in Dos, when I am dealing with SCSI? What are the requirements of this? I mean. When having to deal with IDE, then I simply install the driver it self in CONFIG.SYS and install the CD extension in AUTOEXEC.BAT
What are the things I need for Dos, when dealing with SCSI, and what might their IDE counterpart be? Just so I can set things into perspective.

Finally, I need to test two Plextor drives and possible more. Is there a good download site for SCSI CD-Rom drivers for Dos, Win3.11 and Win9x?

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
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Reply 1 of 3, by eisapc

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Usually it is no wizardy setting up an optical scsi Drive in dos if you have the drivers handy. Easiest is if you have an adaptec controller (host bus adapter) and a copy of EZ-SCSI. Just run the setup or install script and you are done.
But doing it by hand is not difficult either:
- First you need the aspi driver matching your adapter. This is usually named aspiX.sys by adaptec (X stand for a number corresponding with the adapter family like aspi4.sys for AHA154x or aspi8.sys for AHA294x) or ibmscsi.sys for IBM adapters and belongs in the config.sys file.
- second is the aspicd.sys file which is the driver for the optical drives and needs the name for the optical drive(s). Use it like any ide cd-driver in your config.sys
- third is the mscdex.exe recalling the previous given device name. This one is placed in the autoexec.bat
IIRC Win 9x usually detects the device automatically and installes the matching drivers.

It would be easier if you can name the maker and type of your adapter so the correct drivers can be named.
As Adaptec and LSI seem to be the only two manufacturers left for SCSI cards most drivers can be found there, or at motherboards manufacturers sites using the chips for their onboard SCSI.
(Symbios Locic has become LSI while Adaptec bought allmost every other makers of scsi host adapters like trantor, ICP, DPT)
Feel free to contact me per PM as I have a pretty decent collection of SCSI equipment and the corresponding drivers.
eisapc

Reply 2 of 3, by brostenen

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Thanks.
Basically speaking, the procedure is as following on a SCSI CD-Rom installation under Dos...

1: Install the controller driver.
2: Install the CD-Rom drive driver.
3: Set up mscdex in autoexec.bat.

Running just the controller and one harddrive, can be done without the controller driver (doing it right now), so why that controller driver? What specifically makes it an requirement regarding SCSI compared to IDE?

EDIT:
I am running a BusLogic BT-445s VLB SCSI controller with this test setup right now. The CD drives are both Plextor SCSI. One is the PX-R412Ci (4,2,1 speed caddy drive) the other is an PX-W124TSi (12/4/32 speed tray model). Then I have a Yamaha 4x Speed, that I need to test as well.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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Reply 3 of 3, by brostenen

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Sorted it all out..... And I have a working installation right now, on a fresh installed MS-Dos 6.22 setup.
Then I created a bootdisk that can be used for a complete setup of a SCSI system for the BT-445s controller.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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